“Hope for love, pray for love, wish for love, dream for love… but don’t put your life on hold waiting for love.” -Mandy Hale

To say I’ve been bored out of my mind lately would be an understatement. I did find out that New York received my California paperwork finally, so my license should be in the mail within the week (Yay!), but I still will not be able to start my job until January. I’m walking dogs when I can, but most of my time is spent in the apartment avoiding the judging eyes of Gracie. I’ve learned that I cannot leave the apartment without spending money that I do not currently have. The other day I went out with Margaret to Urban Outfitters to help her find an outfit for a party we were going to that evening. I gave myself a nice pep talk on the way there consisting of thoughts like, “Remember Mads, you have no money. You don’t need clothes. You don’t need ANYTHING at ANY STORE under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES”. Fast forward two hours and Margaret is walking out empty-handed while I just charged another $100 to my credit card. *Sigh*. It’s impossible.

So I got back on a dating app the other day. Swipe left, swipe left, episode of Narcos, swipe left, Ooooh swipe right, swipe left, some Assassin’s Creed, swipe left left left left left. It’s amazing how collectively short the male population of New York is, considering I’m almost six feet tall barefoot. A few matches later and I’m learning more and more about why I am still single. Carrying conversations with these men is damn near impossible. Here’s an example of one I had with…we’ll call him C (all misspellings and punctuation are as he wrote them):

**It starts out alright,

C:  Hey hows it going im chris

M: Hey Chris! I’m Madison. Things are going well so far tonight, how’s your Saturday?

**Then we start to lose all punctuation and understanding of adverbs and conjunctions.

C: Not bad finishing a paper than heading out to meet some friends

M: That’s great that you’re in school! What is your paper about?

C: Criminal databases

**The end I guess? How do I respond to this?

M: That sounds fun. You’re studying something to do with Criminal Justice I assume?

C: Hellz yeah

And then I was done. Hellz yeah? with a Z? What are we, a 7th grader aspiring to be Lil Wayne? Kill me. Another one started to ask me about travel nursing and then told me he can’t fly because of inner ear issues and deleted the match. What’s even more depressing is that these were the best examples of DECENT conversation. Other men just come right out with disgusting opening lines that I will not allow to be dignified by repeating them here. What are we supposed to do with this? Being a millennial is awesome in so many ways, like how I can order a bottle of wine on an app and have it at my door in an hour, but dating at this age is literally the worst. Especially in New York, where tall straight men with any sense are few and far between.

I guess I’ll to return to Assassin’s Creed and the art of loving myself, let me know if you all out there have had better luck THAN mine, for I would love to hear about it.

Love.