BennyEast.Com/Blog The official blog of Kenny West

Let’s See Where This Goes

So, something interested has kind of, caught my attention from all this testing I've been doing.

If you stand around long enough drinking a beer, and throw words in the direction of enough people... Eventually some of them toss words back.

So here's how this has been going.  When I went to my first festival this warmer air season... I basically wasn't expecting much.  Obviously the whole point of ALL of this has been to meet a girl.

Since that's not happening... I'm kind of seeing where the unintended consequence thing goes.

Let me side track for a minute.  Most things in life, will not work out the way you intend them.  Actually, I'll argue that ALL things in life won't.  You'll start doing one thing and then something else comes out of it.  Or it takes another direction.  Most stuff in life is... Very... Predictably unpredictable.

This is how things have gone with the festing.  What I found is if you hang out long enough, and even just stand around, there will usually be something that happens that forces you to talk to someone.  Most of the time it's things going "wrong".

Someone drops something.  Something happens where you have to help someone fix something.

This kind of stuff is what connects and binds us.  Everyone hates when things go wrong.  But things going wrong are kind of the glue that brings people together.

Sneezing.  Borrowing sunscreen.  Someone trips and drops the contents of their bag.

Without this stuff... A lot of conversations never would get started.

If you go to an all day drinking festival, stuff will happen.  It's the nature of how it works.  Let's say there isn't beer... You bump into people anyways.  But... Add beer?  People are more clumsy with beer.  People are more likely to talk to each other.  It's an amazing substance really.  It let's random strangers totally strike up a conversation and sit there chatting for an hour without even realizing that the time has flown by.

It's fantastic.  without beer?  I probably would talk to someone for 5 minutes before getting bored.

With alcohol?  I'll talk to you for an hour easy and not even realize it was an hour.

Alchohol binds us because it induces things to more likely go "wrong" which then give us even more of a reason to connect even more.  It's fascinating really,  It's the reason why people who work together for years, suddenly find themselves making out at the end of a work party happy hour because they are totally both sauced.  Maybe they regret it the next morning at an early morning office meeting.  Or maybe they end up tying the knot years later.

Without alcohol, they would have just come in to work at 9am and punched out at 5.  It also makes two people that aren't physically attracted to one another... End up together.

Crazy stuff if you ask me.  But as Homer Simpson once said... "Alcohol, the cause and solution to all of life's problems."

Wise words.

So okay... Well on Saturday I go to this Can Jam event at Sly Fox.  I end up staying the entire time and completely close the place down.  I had NO idea that an old friend...The guy that recorded trumpet on one of my songs "Embers", was going to be playing there.  It was an awesome surprise.  And after I chatted with him I ended up talking to a whole bunch of other people.

Then yesterday, I went to Celtic Fest.  I ended up striking up conversations with lots of people there too.  Here's the thing... early on in both of those festivals, I tried to start conversations...

No one was feeling chatty.  It was tough going.  The conversations would fizzle out.  People weren't interested.

2 or 3 drinks later for all of us?  Chats galore.

Alcohol is amazing like that.  It makes people that would normally be completely disinterested and not even give you the time of day...

Talk to you for an hour.

The other thing is... You just have to keep chatting.  If one person isn't feeling a conversation... You just bid them farewell and chat up the next person.  Eventually someone... Will keep chatting.

Eventually there will be a connection.  Go to enough places... Talk to enough people... Something will happen.

So what happened at Celtic Fest?

I ended up befriending a guy that does IT stuff.  So he invited me to this networking thing for IT people in the higher ed community up in Bethlehem.  There will be people from nearby colleges there... And as well some other technology firm reps.

Okays so YES... It's mostly a networking event to try and get reps to pitch their sales things for their IT firms to try and get in with colleges.

But, I'm up for checking it out.  It's a couple weeks from now.

I figure... Let's see where it goes?

I mean, the whole point here is to meet the girl I some day marry.  Who knows... Maybe there will be a girl there at that event that will be the one.  Or maybe I then end up networking and chatting with some other guy or girl who is friends with someone who is friends with someone... Etc. etc.

Think about all the people that have ever gotten married.  Those two people had to "find" each other some how.  Everyone married right now.... At some point.... Didn't know each other.  And most people were introduced to each other by someone else.  A mutual friend.  A connector.

This is how I got to where I'm at right now with the acting class.  I went to my next-door neighbor's play.  Then I went to the movie screening of an actor that was IN the play.  Then I went to the xfinity live event.  Then from there I went and signed up for this class.

Now I'm getting to know these people in this class.  Maybe one of the people from that class will then have a party or something and I'll get invited to that party.

Networking.  And booze.  I mean okay yes, you can network without booze.  But it DEFINITELY helps with the conversation to have a couple drinks.  I'll tell you that for sure.

My thing about this whole "finding love thing" is... okay so on the dating sites.... You just sit there and click.  You swipe, and click.  And then you talk and talk.  And it's REALLY hard to get a connection just by messaging back and forth.  When you finally meet in person, that is IF you finally meet, they are usually nothing like the impression that you had on the site.  Then you have to re-adjust for that.

Online dating though, it's... It's kind of cheap.  What I mean is... Okay... Let's say I go to like 15 different leads.  I meet someone at a festival.  I then go to a networking event.  I then from there end up becoming friends with someone who has a party and invites me to the party.  I then end up going with some other friends to some other event from that party.  I then become close friends with someone I meet there... I then am introduced to that person's old college roomie... Or something.  And THAT's the girl I marry.

That connection is SO much stronger.  That story gives our connection SO much more substance than...

We both swiped right.

There's just no... trail leading up to it.  There's no genuine substance behind it.

And I feel like, that's why I'm not meeting someone.  Because by doing the online dating thing... I'm ruining the pathway that is trying to lead me to her.

See, all these years I've probably almost been lead to her.  I've probably crossed paths RIGHT beside her.  But because I was maybe at a restaurant on a date with someone from online dating... I missed bumping into her.  Because I was walking along staring at my phone clicking on profiles on dating sites...

I walked right by her.  And maybe she was doing the same.

Maybe we've even looked at one another's online dating profiles.  But because text is missing 99 percent of who a person ACTUALLY is... There's no attraction.

That's the problem with my Facebook.... and this blog.

It's not my smile.  It's not my laugh.  It's not me telling a joke and making someone else laugh.

It's not me as a person.

It's just words.  On a screen.

But these encounters I have at these festivals.  They are different.  They are like... a thousand blogs over the course of just a few minutes of interacting with someone.

Anyways so on my search for that girl that I some day marry.. I mean YES maybe I'll meet her in online dating.  But I'm just you know, pondering... Maybe I shouldn't be online dating?  Maybe I should just live in real life.  Maybe I should just go with the leads that are sent my way.  The networking events.  The acting classes.  The festivals.

When a friend tells me I should check out a new restaurant.  When a friend introduces me to another friend at a concert.

Science After Hours.  You know... Just... Connect.  Go from connection to connection until someone introduces me to someone and says...

"Oh, this is my friend..."

And that's it.  We turn to face one another and it's just like... Oh... Hi.  And something clicks.

Something that could never have clicked in all the swiping and online dating.

It's worth a shot.

So, I'm going to go to this little IT networking event and see what comes of that.  Maybe it's just some cheesy sales pitch... Or maybe it leads to some new job entirely because I end up networking with someone that works at another college or something and they recruit me.

Or maybe I end up sharing a drink with someone in the back of the room and we both think that the event is TOTALLY bogus and we both start cracking jokes and then me and her realize that we like one another's company and we say to each other...

"You wanna get out of here?  Go grab a drink somewhere else?"

"Totally.  This trick is bogus.  Let's go crash a party in New Pretty Town..."

"Oh my God... You've read that book too?"

"Way.  Let's get on our hover boards and get out of this place."

No one can ever predict the outcome of anything really.  Sometimes...  You just have to see where it goes.

I bet most people that are married had no idea they were going to marry the person when they first met them.  They just kind of... Went with it and low and behold... It led to getting married.