Work Keeps Me Busy

Through all the conversations I've had with the guys I've met online so far, I keep seeing the same sentence: "work keeps me busy."  I'd like to think that this is somehow reflective on how society has changed - that it's no longer 8 hours at the office and then you go home for you time or family time or whatever time you intend to have.  I'm more inclined to believe, however, that this is a big load of crap and a lame attempt at coming across as a person who doesn't sit on his butt all day playing around on FB or random dating sites.


Work keeps you busy, really? It consumes all of your time except for those precious few moments when you get to go on the internet and look for the next love of your life, and those even rarer moments when you get to go out in public and meet the lady on the computer screen?  If that's the case, I may need to rethink you as a potential Mr Right.  Don't get me wrong, I get that having a job can be time-consuming.  I have 2 of them, which tend to result in 14-16 hour days and some lost nights on the town. But with the exception of oil spills and strange requests, neither of those jobs consumes my time away from the office.  When I'm off the clock, I'm off the clock unless you REALLY need me to do something. If you spend your time off the clock still working as though you're at the office, that's just not gonna work.  But you know what will work? The guy who says, "Work takes up 8 hours of my day/40 hours of my week, but what really keeps me busy is my kick-ass social life."  I have yet to be contacted by one of those guys.  So is the "consumed by work" thing a ploy to seem busy or am I just really good at attracting guys who have no social life and therefore consume themselves with their jobs to stay busy?


The latest of these "my job takes up my entire life" messages came from Soccerdoc.  He wanted to let me know that he's a pro at long-term commitments ("I had one that lasted 4 years and another that lasted 5 years") and that he'd stopped dating to focus on work, but now he's ready to make another half-decade commitment (give or take a few years).  So I'm thinking, "Good for you, pal! Here's a guy who's serious about his career and his personal life. Sounds like a winner!"  He must have been reading my mind, though, because then he continued by telling me how much of a winner he really is.

So if you have some free time and want to get to know more about me, you can check out these links to these half a dozen or so sites that each profiled me and my many accomplishments.  Or if you prefer, you can also google these super-technical terms for things that I developed while in school for my PhD (I told you, he's really proud of that thing).

My initial reaction was to laugh hysterically, in such fits that my cat shot me an evil look for waking her from yet another precious nap. When I finally stopped laughing at what a pompous ass this guy was, I started thinking about how I should respond.  I came up with a few options:

• Wow, Soccerdoc, you're quite accomplished! We should absolutely meet up ASAP, because I can't lose a catch as good as you.
• Gee, Soccerdoc, I'm sure they're all really great articles, but I'm so super busy with work that I don't know if I can spare the extra minutes to read up on you.  When I do get a free moment or two, I'll do my best to check these out.
• Articles about you? That's nice.  I've got a few myself.  Why don't you look me up on the Miss Louisiana website, or check out this link for an article my college newspaper did on me a few years back. If that doesn't work, you can google me and see my participation in all these really cool things I did when I was in high school (why wait till college to be a superstar, right?). And if you provide me with your mailing address, I can send you a copy of the Hillbilly Gazette, which profiled me and featured me on the cover for being so amazingly awesome. Don't worry, though, I'll spare you the stories of that political science conference I presented at as an undergrad, because that's really such a trivial thing.

Of course, there's the standard "no response" option, but that's just not very fun.  In the meantime, I have added Mr PhD-publication-fancypants to FB (yeah, he's one of those) and will proceed with caution so as not to get squashed by his giant ego.