Evernote

Evernote has been a go to application for me since version 2 for Windows and before the application became a web based service. I have been a user and a huge advocate for the service for a decade and I'm sad today because things look grim. I don't want to belabor the point, I'm sure you know better than I.

There are three things you need to do to revitalize Evernote and none of them include pain. They build community, communicate openly, and remove uncertainty.

The first thing you need to do is pull back to the old pricing. Evernote is too expensive and since 90% of your customers don't use half of your features that's a problem. Not to long ago your service was valuable at $50 a year. Now you've doubled the price and added zero new features or capabilities for the average user. To make matters worse you haven't addressed any of the features that many users have requested. This is a huge issue and if you're coddling for our five big corporate customers that's fine, but the rest of us don't care or want to pay for it, period.

The second thing is openness. There's a ton of ways to import into Evernote but not a single simple way to export from Evernote. We get it, you want people to stay. However now when we're all wondering if you're going to make it we need to feel like we can have our shit if you go out of business. So what happens now is that I have spent 6 days exporting and indexing 6,000 individual notes that I have accumulated over the last 10 years. unless I see some strong commitment to openness from Evernote I'm just simply never coming back. I don't think I'm alone and I don't think I'm going to be alone. I'm seeing new videos and new articles daily wondering when your company is going to stop being viable. face the reality of what's going on head on and be honest with your community or they are going to leave one at a time.

This is the key to the third thing is to communicate openly. I'm hearing a lot about Evernote from everybody else except Evernote and that's a huge issue right now. All of us deserve to know what's going on, if you're going to change the logo and make the application look different I'm going to pack my stuff and go. That kind of corporate dishonesty is not something I'm going to tolerate at this point in the game. Evernote doesn't need a new look, or a new logo, or a new icon. Instead it needs a new honesty, a new community, and a new openness.

Thanks for taking the time to listen to an interested user and long time customer.

Ross Winn

ross.winn@gmail.com

+1-727-200-2021

Triggered

I’ve written pretty honestly about my addiction and my issues so far, and I’m going to try to write some more about that now. I went on a double date with two ex-girlfriends. One I dated twenty-five years ago, and is now married with grown children. The other ex-girlfriend is the woman I lost when my addiction took over my life.  I’ve re-connected with both women and have developed very strong relationships with them.  So, thankfully I was very much among friends tonight when we decided to see A Star Is Born. In case you don’t know this is the fourth iteration of that story starring Bradley Cooper and the incomparable Lady Gaga as the titular star.
Much has been written about just how good this movie is and I have to agree. There are few films I’ve ever seen in my life that are as complete as this movie is. I can say that now, after spending the night emotionally unpacking this last night and then finally getting some sleep. This film is brilliant, but I probably shouldn’t have seen it. I’ll explain why here.
Lady Gaga is a wonderful and versatile singer and it shows well throughout the film. This would be a massive failure with the wrong actress, and was a success because of her honesty, her vulnerability, and her incredible range.  It could be said that she’s just playing to type, but there’s a lot more there than just a singer playing a singer. She’s representing some of the struggles in her own life, and all that she’s embracing really pays off. Both herself and the parts that are not her and she’s fearless when she does it.
Bradley Cooper was shocking as Jackson Main. The way he spoke, walked, sang, and talked just smelled like suicidal addiction and self destruction. Bradley Cooper was why I shouldn’t have seen A Star Is Born. I know what self-loathing and self-destruction look like because I did it for 5 years and this is an absolutely ugly terrifyingly honest representation. Lying, lashing out at the people you love, self harm, all of it. If I hadn’t been with two of the women I trust and care for, I know that I would have walked directly into a bar, ordered whiskey, bought a pack of cigarettes, and bought a bag.
The portrayal of all of these things were so honest in the film. This made it hard for me not to be there in my own head. Well, to be honest, I was there in my own head and thankfully I was not by myself. If I were giving them away today Bradley Cooper would have an Oscar for best actor, and probably best director too. That this film is his debut behind the camera was maybe even more surprising than his performance. One can only hope that his sophomore effort is as good.
Such a real picture of addiction is a difficult thing to pull off. You can’t romanticize the drug use. You can’t make it pretty or appealing. If you’re able to make it just a little ugly and hide it from the audience that’s even better. The film does that in little tiny ways that might not be obvious to you if you’ve never had a problem. It was like snorting pain for me and I had to hate the performance for what it did to me, but I love it for the brutal honesty it brings. It upset Kelly because “you don’t get to leave”. I understand that now, but man it was super hard to watch.
The supporting cast has to be mentioned, because this is kind of a film review. Andrew Dice Clay is wonderful as the dad. Dave Chappell shows up at the prefect time. Anthony Ramos is a great best friend. Rafi Gavron is a great foil, and Sam Elliott hits one out of the park as Jack’s older brother and father figure. The film really feels like an ensemble piece because the actors are so good, even if they only have a few lines or scenes. Still, we go back to the lead performances, and it’s all but impossible for me to say that one is better than the other. I was a fan of Bradley Cooper despite his amazing talent. After all, you have to hate someone who is that smart, that talented, and that good looking. I thought that after the Hangover he was just going to be one of those unlikeable bro actors. Then I saw Limitless and he sort of threw me for a loop. Once I saw Silver Linings Playbook, I was floored. I mean the guy stood toe-to-toe with Robert De Niro for an entire movie and didn’t die. So, after that and his other films since I’ve become a fan.
Stefani Germanotta gave a fearless and riveting performance as Ally. I say that because it wasn’t Lady Gaga on screen. This was a girl from around the way, that I felt like I knew. She was pretty, but not classically beautiful. She wasn’t terribly put together. She just appeared raw and honest. If that was just a part of her performance, I have more respect and not less, because that kind of authenticity is hard to portray. Thousands of words have been written about her, so I’ll just say this: If you don’t like Lady Gaga then you owe it to yourself to see this movie. I think you’re going to understand her talent, even if you don’t like it.
If you’re a drunk, bipolar, and have a drug problem like I do this movie is going to be very hard to watch. I actually had to look away from the screen several times. I sat at the end of the film and really couldn’t find any words to express my thoughts and feelings about the movie. I want to thank Andrew, Kyra, and Kelly for being a great support team for me. Recovery is a process and not an event. The funniest things can set you back and trigger you. I’ve had a love affair with film for most of my adult life, so I went without even thinking about it, but there it is.
Go see A Star is Born, but just don’t go see it alone.

Understanding

One of the things that being in recovery has taught me is that if I can't see the other person's point I'm not really paying attention. In my practice I've studied and I have found this advice in many places, you must believe the opposite of what you know is also true. This is not the opposite of what you believe or what you might think, this is the opposite of what you know to be true. Right now the whole internet is jumping up and down crying because Kavanagh is going to be confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice. I don't think this is a surprise and I don't think anybody with half a brain shouldn't have realized this weeks ago. Unless we had a Smoking Gun and a lot of corroboration I don't think there was ever a chance of derailing his nomination or his eventual confirmation. Maybe it would be a different conversation after the midterms, but I doubt it. Rarely do people show up for midterm elections, but they love to talk about it.

Now I think Kavanaugh is an absolutely horrible choice for Supreme Court Justice. I don't think he has the experience, I don't think he has the smarts, and I don't think he has the legal acumen necessary for the job. It is pretty clear he's been a political appointee and hatchet man since his college days. I think he's probably done sexually inappropriate things in college and probably after college, but unfortunately most of that is not a crime in America. I think it's really stupid that it's not a crime but them's the breaks.

Molly Ringwald wrote a really interesting article about the less than subtle sexual violence and rape reinforcement in the John Hughes movies, like 16 Candles. While I think she stopped short of excusing his assertions I do think she does put it in the proper historical context. I think that is something missing from the current debate. Yes I absolutely think that this kind of behavior is wrong, but it wasn't always considered wrong. We need to be aware and cogent of the facts as well as the historical context in which they took place in order to have a reasonable and meaningful discussion. As an example of this kind of thought, there was a lot of racism among the founding fathers. With few exceptions they didn't see most brown people as humans much less equals. Still they were the founders of our nation and great men in their historical context.

Now if we just take the criminal persecution of Kavanaugh by itself for a second. Let's all admit that the justice system was designed on purpose so that 9 guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is convicted. You know, but those incredibly racist founders. Yes it's super crappy for those people who get the short end of the stick, but that doesn't make it wrong. As many other attorneys I know have said most of this testimony doesn't even hold up to civil procedure “preponderance of evidence” standards. If she wants to file a lawsuit against him for damages from inappropriate sexual behavior she is more than welcome to do so but unless there is some significantly better corroboration I think it will be for nothing. Yes all of this sucks for all the accusers. None of them are going to get Justice and that's bad. At this point in the process it doesn't matter whether or not we think he's guilty, the reality of the situation is what can be proven.  

The other realities of the situation no matter what each of us personally feels is that unemployment is at record lows. If the stock market is an indicator of overall economic growth, and that's debatable as well but if it is, well then our economy is incredibly healthy. Personally I think that has fuck all to do with the President. We're probably keeping the Republican majority and if things keep going this way it is likely that Trump will be re-elected in 2020. so if you were looking for a Judicial solution to our problems I have some bad news for you.

We elect Congress to make and pass laws, and if Congress was doing their job who was nominated to the Supreme Court wouldn't be nearly as important. However the reality of that situation is that Congress has abandoned their responsibilities and is allowing the Judiciary to make laws. If anyone in Congress had any balls in the last 50 years abortion would be legal in all 50 states because it would be a federal law. We wouldn't still be having this argument because Congress would have solved the problem, and not left it to the Supreme Court.

The other things I think we need to do is stop insulting everyone else whenever we have a difference of opinion. if we want to be respected we need to be able to have reasonable discussion even when the emotional nature of the subject can readily lend itself otherwise. We need to realize that many things are truly horrible, and a lot of this is a bunch of rich white people telling each other how full of shit they are. I have a really good friend and a lot of you would probably consider him a terrible person. He's very sexist and he's very racist however considering where he came from and how old he is those are not inexplicable things. His sexism and his racism are very subtle when he can recognize them, and he has children that he's raised to be good people. He's even a really good grandfather, but he doesn't believe any of the allegations brought about against the current nominee. the question I had for him was what if these things that happened to his daughter and he said “they wouldn't because my daughter wouldn't allow it”. He might be right. You see those things that happened 40 years ago, they couldn't happen now because also in the historical context women didn't say anything back then. So yeah Kavanaugh is complete shit, and society conspired against this woman as well. Now those things are different. Many more women come forward and are believed. Yes it's still true that too many do not, but progress had been made.

I know many more conservative women than men. As has been said before the problem with liberals is that they lose all the time. Assuming that your argument is the most logical is always a loser. You have to assume that your opposition is just as smart as you are but believes differently. All of the liberal beliefs about the last election were wrong. Nobody is paying attention.

All of those things being said, if you think the people that are supporting him and his nomination just don't care you're missing the point. If you think that those people are evil because they don't agree with you, you are missing the point. The point is that all of us have to realize that the other side isn't stupid, and that other people have valid opinions as well they're just different than the ones we might have. Interesting to note the coastal liberal rage against Manchin. Yeah he's not popular and it's not pretty but the guy is going to vote for Kavanaugh because that is what the vast majority of his constituents, to whom he is accountable, want. Isn't that the whole point of our democracy is that we elect people who will vote our way.

If all of that is true I've got some more ideas that might be completely and totally backwards. What if Kavanaugh is a really nice guy? What if he's a cool guy to hang out with? What if he's a good brother or a good husband or even a good father? What if everything you know about this guy has been manipulated by somebody else to make him look bad? Who knows he could even become a really good Justice. It wouldn't be the first time someone had changed the way they thought based on new evidence, now would it? Well we're all going to see because as I predicted when I began writing this, he was just confirmed.

Trying Progress

It's been a rough year for me in 2018 but there's been a lot of good things too. I think that's something that all of us forget. That even though things are tough, that people suck, and that we might also have a long way to go, we should still acknowledge the progress we've made. Yes I do have a point and I'll get there eventually but just take a walk with me.

This is just as true when we discuss societal changes. There's a lot of groups pushing some very radical changes in America today. When I was a kid we were just getting over the largest changes in civil rights in history. Getting over is maybe a term that many would take issue with but I will submit that it might be le mot juste. Even when all of these changes are right and correct there's a huge amount of existential exhaustion that takes some time. Remember that the Civil Rights movement from the second World War to 1970 was at best only halfway a success. Sure there were huge inroads, and many outright triumphs, but people still sometimes ended up “strange fruit” here in the south.

That kind of change takes a lot out of the society. It also takes a generation for the society to integrate those changes. This might be even more true when things are sorely needed. When everyone knows that the fight is coming and they just want to get it over with. I think that this is part of the problems with our society today. Even if liberals are right, and I'm sure they are about many things, our society is exhausted and we need to take a generation to rest and recover. Let's face that our children are going to do what they want anyway, and trying to enforce our will upon the future is probably as futile a struggle as we've ever seen. That's a larger issue and probably the subject of a different essay so we should leave that alone.

Anyway by about 1972 things were going so well in the Civil Rights movement that everyone decided that Women's Liberation should be handled next. By the way, the previous statement was irony and extreme sarcasm. Any other interpretation is completely facetious. The Civil Rights movement was eclipsed by the “dumpster fire” that was the end of the Vietnam War. Watergate came soon after and America was shaken to its very foundation. It's hard to explain to anyone who wasn't alive back then just how scared a lot of people were. I think we were much closer to a violent insurrection in America than anyone talks about now. Had there been anything like social media in those days there probably would have been. It was a scary time for America.

In the late 60s and early 70s we went from the Civil Rights movement to Women's Liberation with only a crisis to separate them. I think that's why so many people think so fondly of Ronald Reagan. Ronnie was safe and paternal. He wasn't going to let women and brown people take anything from decent white guys. So we created the global drug trade and simultaneously continued Nixon's egregious anti-drug policies in order to incarcerate an entire generation of black men. This gutted the Civil Rights movement and left only the Women's Liberation movement for people to deal with. The women’s movement took a break, but not consciously and not for no reason. A legion of women were attending colleges and building careers they couldn't before, so their daughters could do even better. America was getting over the idea of women as second class citizens. Women were running for office and even if they didn't win as much as they should, people got used to the idea that candidates weren't always men. Women eventually started again and “Women's Liberation” became “Equality”. That word was a lot easier to deal with and progress continued. Not at a pace many women felt was quick enough, but progress was made.

Brown people and Women were competing for space in the public consciousness. I'm not sure how black women felt, but it's probably not as good as the others did. So while there was progress it wasn't something that anyone was happy with. I'm just some guy but I thought any progress was greater than none. Even though we might not all hold hands and sing “Kum ba Yah” some change is still better than none. Gradual improvement works. About the time that things started to move again the LGBT community jumped in and started their quest for equality. Now America has a huge problem with gay people, probably even a bigger problem than they have with brown people or women people, no doubt because of our Puritan roots. Everybody tells you in school that the pilgrims came to America fleeing religious oppression. What they don't tell you is that the pilgrims were the oppressors. Most of Europe threw them out rather than deal with their petty exclusionary views on everything. The whole myth about Thanksgiving was actually a metaphor for putting America back together during Reconstruction. Anyway I'm digressing again so let me get back to my point.

The playing field got really crowded and there were a lot of groups moving in different directions. All of them wanted equality but most of them weren't interested in sharing the stage with anybody else. Now I get that women deserve to have women's issues, and that brown people deserve to have their issues, and that LGBT people get to have their issues too, but I don't understand why they can't all have the same issues. Every single person that you know deserves to be treated equally. There are no exceptions to this. Even though we might feel differently about certain issues, we all need to realize that we have more in common than any supposed differences that separate us.

Oh, by the way, before anybody decides to burn me in effigy, the reason I say brown people is because what I'm talking about is “not white people” and all of the myriad issues surrounding them. There's a whole lot of those issues and almost all of them are valid. That's hard to swallow for many people but I don't think that makes it any less true.

The recovery community is like that as well. A great many of us feel like we're different than others. Many of us feel like the “Recovery Police” are going to show up any minute and tell everyone that we're frauds. That we don't belong in the real community, with the real addicts. At the end of the day, once we really surrender, we realize that all of the differences we saw are actually the things that bind us together. Each of us had or has our own addiction and our own issues and each of us can use tools to deal with those stresses and situations. Many if not most will use a 12 step program. Others may use a program like Rational Recovery or SmartRecovery. Some might need a fellowship, others might need a therapist, and a few might even be able to do it alone. No, I've never met anyone who's gone solo, but I'm sure it's happened at some point in the past. Still, all of us humans need to stop trying so damnedably hard to be so sensitive and hurt all the time.

To paraphrase some other people; none of us are beautiful or unique snowflakes. Even if we were snowflakes guess what, we still have more in common with each other than we do separately. If you think you are one in a million that's awesome, but there's still about 7,000 idiots on this planet just like you. Stop overreacting. Yes we all have a long way to go separately and as a society, but we can't forget how far we've come. Yes it's probably going to take a generation or two for racial equality. Maybe a little more for gender equality. Even longer than that for gender identity and issues of sexuality but damn it, we've come a long way. We went from Selma to the White House in a little more than 40 years. That's amazing. Women have come as far but not as fast. Hell, gay people were institutionalised as recently as twenty years ago. We've come too far and worked too hard to let some people (who think we possibly haven't tried hard enough) to ignore everything.

I'm going to spend the next month or two celebrating just how far we've come.  For the next two months I’ll also focus on being inclusive. Who knows, it may become  a habit and maybe I'll just do it for the rest of my life.

After all, we’re all in this together, and nobody gets out of here alive!

Navel Gazing

So the title of this is "Navel Gazing" and I understand if that's not your cup of coffee. Actually after the time I spent in jail I understand a lot about coffee. The only coffee they have in jail is freeze-dried. The water is never warm and so the coffee is never hot. I've even seen a grown man snort a line of freeze-dried coffee off his bunk. That was freakish, of course this was the same idiot that used to drink cups full of soap. I'm sure his colon was extremely clean, but that's disturbing enough as it is. There were a lot of things about jail that were really weird. However it's hard to talk about jail and not talk about why I was there.

I'm not going to sugar-coat anything and I'm not going to hold back, so if you don't want to read this that's okay. I'm not scared of the truth anymore and that's pretty cool because I was scared of everything and a big fan of secrets for a long time. I hated myself for a long time. Not because of my family or any other outside influences. I just hated myself because I wasn't capable of thinking and doing right. There are reasons, people and other triggers that I could point to and try to blame but that's not helping anyone. So the simplest explanation is this: I couldn't process my pain and grief like most other people do. So in order to numb myself I was drinking, getting loaded, and harming myself for several years.

I decided to stop. You know that sentence is deceptively short. Like it was easy. That sentence took me ten days to say out loud. That was after seven days in suicide watch and 14 days in a psychiatric cell. I decided to stop. I decided that I didn't want to harm myself anymore. I decided that I wanted to live. I decided that I had let drugs destroy my life. Nobody else decided this but me. All those crimes they accused me of, yeah I committed them all. Every single one. I know better, and I knew better the whole time. Still I decided consciously not to give a fuck for a long time. When I got sober I realized that I had made mistakes. I also realized that I needed to change for myself and I decided on recovery.

Why I'm guilty is a big question I get a lot. I'm guilty because I was a drug dealer. I'm guilty because I knew it was illegal. I am guilty because I didn't care who I hurt or who I sold to. although I did lie to myself and say “hey at least I didn't sell to any kids”. It doesn't matter I made bad decisions and that made me a bad person but I also decided to change. I will not be defined by those mistakes any more than I will be defined by other mistakes that I have made in my past. Instead I'm going to find myself by the choices I make in the future.

My story isn't unique. Actually everything I did reads like a bad story in a bad movie about a bad guy. I am not unique nor am I special, I am just taking ownership for my damage. Feeling like a fraud isn't unique either. I was convinced that for my first week of NA meetings that the “NA Police” were going to come through me out because I was a fraud. Then someone else brought that up in a meeting and everyone laughed. That was when I realized that I wasn't different, or unique, even in feeling like that. It might sound silly to you but this was a profound discovery for me.

In case you were wondering about why I was writing about the weirdos in jail at the beginning of this here it comes. There are a lot of crazy people in jail. People so damaged by the system and so institutionalized by their constant incarceration that they are incapable of helping themselves. Many of those employees to help them within the system are themselves so institutionalized that they are incapable of helping as well. I was appalled watching this. It was only because there were some good people who wanted to help me inside and a few of my friends and family willing to help outside that I wasn't lost in the system.

Let me make this clear as well. I made the mistakes that put me there. I'm also making the positive choices to get better. I'm more whole today than I have been in years. So if you want to put me down, joke about me having sex in jail, talk down to me, or anything else just keep on walking because I don't have time for you. I've got work to do and I'm not going to carry your negativity with me.

Rejection

So, in the last column, we talked about dating in the era of #metoo, and so basically about personal choice and responsibility as a man towards women. Now I think we need to talk about rejection because nobody likes it.

First, some people have asked, where have I been? Honestly I've been in jail. I was arrested in October of last year and have spent most of the last eleven months in a “correctional setting” both in the county jail and in residential drug treatment. It has been a long and painful process. There were a few bumps along the way but somehow I got out of this without dying and without spending the rest of my life in prison.

The reason I'm writing these things down is because when I was in jail I realized that I was a mess in a few different ways. One of those ways was that I wasn't treating the women in my life well. I was a fairly toxic man in a fairly toxic patriarchy. One of the major goals in my treatment is to rebuild my moral compass. One of to the best ways to do this is to improve the way I treat women. There's a lot of detail missing from these sentences because I think that might be tedious and banal for the reader. If you want to hear more about me and my recovery plan, please send me an email to ross.winn@gmail.com. If I get enough responses, I'll write more about my recovery and how it has worked for me.

So hey, back to the point of this. You may have managed to approach a woman in a respectful and polite manner. She laughed at your jokes, you laughed at hers, and you thought you might have made a connection. You ask for her number and she says no. She's not overtly rude about it. She might even tell you she's flattered but she's not interested. So what do you do now?

Well I'd thank her for her time and walk away smiling. However many people aren't as enlightened. Here's what you shouldn't do. You definitely should not try to play the sympathy card. You shouldn't try to guilt her into going out with you. Don't talk disparagingly about that person or their choices in life. Most especially, don't get angry or violent. Yes, I know this seems to go without saying, but there are many extremely insecure men who are so self centered that they feel every rejection is completely about them. Some of these unfortunates can't conceive that this rejection doesn't even take them or their feelings into consideration.

As hard as it is for some men, and many women, to believe and understand much of the rejection that each of us will face in life has nothing to do with us. There's no reason that it should be about anything except that another person made a different decision than we were hoping. Maybe they really dislike guys who wear skinny jeans or green shirts or maybe they aren't interested in your gender or maybe there is no reason at all.

When we don't respect the decisions of others what does that say about us? If we whine to our friends that she's a little tease or whisper that she must be a lesbian that diminishes us. When we diminish ourselves we make our next bad decision into a habit. All of these things are incredibly disrespectful of women, but also of ourselves. If we can't respect all women why should any of them want us? 20 years ago this was a completely unthinkable chain of logic, women should be glad we gave them any attention at all, or so we thought. 35 years ago when I graduated from high school nobody thought this way. That's why I have a lot of problems with this stuff and I do carry a lot of cultural baggage with me.

It can be difficult for older people to wrap their heads around these ideas because they're so alien to the way that we were raised. I was taught many antiquated views about women and about holding doors and protecting them. Even when I was in treatment 6 months ago a counselor said that women's addictions were more difficult because they were prostituting themselves to get high. One of my male friends stood up and said “women aren't the only ones who prostitute themselves”. This is true, lots of men do as well, but the commonality and the experience isn't analogous with men. So just as it's wrong to think that only women can prostitute themselves, it's also wrong to assume that everyone does and this can be a double blind.

I think this cultural baggage is permeated through our society. Well maybe not as much in the Northwest but especially here in the south. People over 40 think differently. We are in many ways, culturally disconnected from the more modern world. Many of us who are middle-aged realize that we are disconnected or are becoming disconnected and take steps to remain culturally fluent in the mores of the time. However we struggle because the things that we learned as children are difficult to overcome because those patterns are deep and worn.

However those of us who are more mature also have an advantage. We have seen 40, 50, or more years of change in America and many of our attitudes have changed over time as well. So while it may be difficult to change we know that it can be done it just takes more time, awareness, and effort now that we're older. At least it does in my life, in my recovery, and in my morality. Maybe some of you will even make this a part of your own journey too. Please share in the comments if you have used these ideas to make positive change.

Treat Her Like A Lesbian

I'm really not sure about anything anymore. One of the most confusing things in the world is dating. Frankly, it seems like as men and women we just can't do anything right. I hear women complain all the time that some man isn't decisive enough and the next day I read about some other man being accused of sexual misconduct. Men don't know what they want, and neither do women. It seems like we have reached an impasse as men but I think I have a solution. Well okay, I have a solution that works for me and you can decide if it works for you too.

Sometimes the strangest thing in your past come back to be useful. There was a time after my second divorce that I was single and trying to date.  Truthfully, I was horrible at it. I've always mingled with lots of non-traditional people. Goths, gays, nerds, and intellectuals were just some of the flavors that were regularly in my retinue. They were far from the only kinds of people but I think this may have made me aware of the challenges men now face early.

My daughter noticed this almost immediately, even before I did, and made fun of me all the time. You see I was misreading so many signals, and it turned out that every woman I made a pass at, for nearly six months, was a lesbian. There was a lot of laughter and much learned understanding when I realized what was going on. I met some fantastic women and some remained friends for a long time, and I learned, the hard way, not to assume. Maybe even more importantly I learned not to take the answers I received personally. Maybe it was easy for me because I've never been everyone's cup of tea. It's an important point that we'll come back to later.

As the LGBT community became more mainstream there is even more chance that all of us, men and women, will encounter people whose sexual and gender identity isn't compatible with our desires and we need to have respect for that and them.

Lately I go to NA meetings on a regular basis and I've found that their insistence on hugging everyone really sets my teeth on edge. I don't mind hugging people I know and I have friendships with lots of people, no matter their orientation. However, the immediate insistence that we hug total strangers, who don't even know my name, is off putting in the extreme. I think it is especially disturbing when it is men and women. Really, who are they to insist that I hug them when they don't know me?  And how presumptuous is it of me, or any man, to try and hug a woman I don't know, regardless of her orientation or identity?

What I guess I'm trying to say is that in 2018, I need to see some pretty clear body language, and preferably some actual spoken language before I initiate any physical intimacy with anyone I've recently met. No, it isn't always necessary they say “please kiss me” but in this day and age, it certainly helps. I know it isn't what we're taught to expect in the movies. As a result, all of the expectations set by the media are horribly and completely inappropriate. This means that women need to be aware of this too. I've heard many women frustrated because there's no magic and no romance. I think that what many are looking for is a psychic connection that they see in the movies and television, and is a complete fiction. As men in this post-#metoo society are painfully aware the line is very easy to cross. What was considered by many to be acceptable twenty years ago isn't okay today.

As men, I think we need to be aware of some important ideas. Nobody owes us thanks for our sexual attraction. As a matter of fact, the very idea that a woman should be flattered that we notice them is ugly and misogynistic. I'm reminded of an old picture on the web of a woman walking in the street and scrawled across her midriff is the statement “still not asking for it”. The fact that we find a woman attractive, whether she's in a housedress or a bandeau really has nothing to do with her and everything to do with us. We need to find ways to meaningfully communicate our attraction and accept polite rejection.

This is the hardest thing in my opinion for many men to process, especially men who are self-involved like me. We have a tendency to assume that all women we see are available, uncoupled, interested, and aware. Not only is this not the case, it is exactly these things that make women feel so threatened and uncomfortable. Instead, I had believed that it is best to assume that any woman who I meet isn't just not interested in me, but not interested in men at all. Approaching women as simply people seems to go a long way towards making them feel positive, unthreatened, and paradoxically more open to social contact. Not that I'm suggesting that you do this in some insane quid pro quo. On the contrary, what I'm saying is that as the current generation of young women mature using previous paradigms of communication will result in less and less success. This, in turn, will breed more contempt and less success thus creating a vicious cycle.  This is in direct opposition to our need to be seen as attractive and desirable to others, be they male, female, other, straight, gay, whatever.

So, my suggestion is to treat each woman who you meet as a person. Assume she's a lesbian and that she doesn't like you. Speak to them as an equal and a person. Don't assume that their gender defines them or their desires. Ask them if they might want to be pursued, and if they say no don't ever insult them for being of a different opinion. Just thank them for their honesty and walk away.