My horcruxes are a little different than Voldemort's.

In the Harry Potter mythos, Voldemort broke his own soul into 7 different pieces and ensnared them in various objects that were dear to his heart so that he could live forever. Put all the horcruxes together and you complete Voldemort. Destroy them and you destroy Voldemort forever.

In a similar vein, I’ve decided that I have 11 horcruxes. Many of them are actions, not objects, but all of them are dear to me. If you embody all of these elements, you have direct access to my heart and soul.

1. Your Grandmother: If you adore your grandmother (and/or grandfather), I will adore you.
2. Chocolate: If you give me chocolate, I will adore you.
3. Laughter: Find the fun in things and laugh even when the joke’s not all that funny–there’s a certain vulnerability about making a joke, and I like to surround myself with people who encourage that type of vulnerability. Laugh the hardest at things that are truly funny, of course, but if you easily laugh at things, I will adore you.
4. Biddy: Be sweet to my cat and I will adore you.
5. Awareness: I am drawn to people who are aware of the people around them. Some people march through life as if they’re the only person alive. Others hold the door open for the person behind them, help people reach top-shelf cereals in the grocery store, and adjust their position to allow a new person into a group at a party. Be aware of the people around you and I will adore you.
6. {this one is censored because it involves a certain bedroom activity}
7. The Blog/Writing: I want you to have your own hobbies and passions, but if you take the time to read my work too, I will adore you.
8. Slurpees: Surprise me with a Coke Slurpee every now and then and I will adore you.
9. Personal Space: Give me personal space without me having to ask for it and I will adore you.
10. Acts of Service: Do something to save me time and I will adore you.
11. Your Thoughts: I’m mildly interested in what you’ve been doing and what’s happened to you. What really interests me is what you’ve been thinking. Some people do and others think. If you’re the thinking type of person, I will adore you.

What are some of your horcruxes?

I’m here to confirm those rumors.

When I was in high school, I ran into a daily decision of epic proportions: What to wear. Perhaps you had the same decision to make (unless you grew up in a nudist colony or went to a private school).

However, I had a very hard time remembering what I had worn on previous days. I simply don’t have that capacity in my memory. I would try to remember so that I wouldn’t wear the same outfit over and over again, but unless the item of clothing in question was in the laundry basket, I had no idea what I had recently worn.

I needed a system for recording outfits so that I could space them out. Hence the spreadsheet.

I wish I could show you the spreadsheet, because it was a thing of beauty. The tracking was fairly simple–dates ran horizontally while shirts and pants were in rows–but it was what I named my shirts that I wish I could share. Every shirt had a name. I don’t think I even had that many shirts, but almost all of them shared a color with another shirt, so I had to distinguish them from one another.

That system worked for years. I can’t remember exactly when I ditched it–maybe when I went to college–but my current system works without a spreadsheet. Shirts I haven’t worn in a while are on the left side of the rack, and after a I wear a shirt, I hang it on the right side of the rack, so they’re constantly filtering through the system chronologically. It works well.

But I still can’t tell you what I wore 2 days ago.

What’s your system for not wearing the same outfit every day by accident?

But it gets weirder.

The other day I was talking with a coworker who is potty-training his 2-year-old, and the conversation triggered a memory that I later confirmed with my parents.

When I was really little, I used to constipate myself.

You read that correctly. For some reason, whenever I had to poop, I’d hide behind a chair or bush to give myself a quiet moment to hold it all in.

One of my parents would eventually realize what I was doing, and they’d find me in my overly obvious hiding spaces. “Hey there, bud,” they’d say. “Whatcha doing back there?”

I think I knew I wasn’t doing the right thing, so I wouldn’t say much in response. But if I had answered accurately, I would have explained that I was saving my poop. Why? I don’t know. Maybe I just wasn’t ready to let go of this creation of mine.

I’ve heard that most kids have some odd potty-training story–do you have one, either for you or your kids?

1. You can stop disdaining therapists and people who go to therapists. I went to two therapists for a few months each in my mid-20s. I had a really hard time doing that because up until that point I had really looked down on the profession and the “type” of person who needed therapy (I put that in quotes to show my previous ignorance). I thought people were weak for going to therapy and that therapists preyed on the weak. But that’s not at all true. It really isn’t. If you feel that way at all, go see a therapist for a month and you’ll understand.
2. You can stop using your friends and significant others as therapists. We all have things we’re working through. Every day, all the time. Pobody’s nerfect, as Pam would say. And we all deal with that stuff in different ways–there’s a spectrum of externalization and internalization. For people who externalize their processes and need to talk out their issues, it’s very easy to turn to friends and significant others. To a certain extent, that’s okay. But if they develop into ongoing discussions, you haven’t realized it, but you just turned your friend or husband or wife into a therapist. And that’s not their job. That’s not their role. If might be really difficult to realize that’s what you’re doing until you talk to a therapist and realize how you’ve been using the people around you as your therapists.
3. You can recommend it to someone who really needs it. Not everyone needs ongoing therapy. But sometimes you might see that someone in your life could really benefit from therapy, and soon. If you haven’t been to a therapist, then who are you to suggest that to them? Going to a therapist–even for a short time–gives you the perspective and clout to offer that suggestion (tactfully) to someone you know who really needs it. Consider this a way to make a hugely positive impact on a loved one’s life.
4. You can vastly improve the success rate of your marriage…even before the wedding. Especially before the wedding, actually. One of the top three indicators for a successful marriage is if you see counseling as a couple before getting married. It’s a chance for you to put a lot of things on the table and make sure you’re making the right choice. The article I read suggested that all couples do this even if they’re perfectly happy before getting married. It’s such a high indicator of success that if you truly want your marriage to work out, it’s a no-brainer.

Perhaps it’ll help my case that this is coming from someone (me) who did not have a good experience with therapy. I saw the value, but I really struggled with the idea that it’s to the therapist’s financial benefit not to help me solve my problem. Because the longer I’m in therapy, the more money they make. Sure, it’s unethical, but therapists are human too.

Despite that, I think the reasons above state a pretty solid case for everyone to experience at least a taste of therapy before turning 30. What do you think?

Oh! And I captured my cat doing something that I’ve never been able to get on camera before. Watch the work-friendly 17-second video here. It’s pretty amazing.

The year was 1988. I was in second grade central Virginia; needless to say, I wasn’t the only kid with a rat tail. But there was something special about having that stringy patch of hair snaking down my back.

I think it was about 5 inches long when my parents cut it off. I didn’t put up much of a fight–I knew the time had come.

But now it’s time to get that rat tail back. The adult version, that is.

That’s right: I’m growing a mullet.

Some backstory: This past weekend I spent quite a bit of time conceptualizing the latest iteration of my annual Festivus party. I’ve hosted the part for 7 years now, and I wanted to add a twist to the 8th year.

So I came up with A Classy/Trashy Festivus. Here’s how I explain the three ways to dress in the Evite:

Classy: Dress in your finest evening wear. Tuxes, ties, suits, elegant dresses, perhaps even that bridesmaids dress you’ve only worn once. The twist is that once you get to the party, a trashy drink (a huge beer) will be affixed to your hand with duct tape ala Edward 40-hands.

Trashy: Dress in your trashiest outfit. Ragged jeans, 10-year-old t-shirts, miniskirts, those tube tops that you continually have to adjust–anything that shows a little too much skin. To balance it out, you’ll have an assortment of top-shelf spirits and mixed drinks from which to choose.

Half and Half: The most challenging option is to come dressed half classy, half trashy. You can do a true half and half–top classy, bottom trashy (or vice versa)–or you can employ a classic hybrid option like a tuxedo tee, yoga pants, or an inappropriately revealing dress. The half and half crowd will have their choice of classy and trashy beverages.

Half and Half is the most challenging, so as the host, I feel obligated to dress that way. Right now I’m playing around with the idea of a combination of jean shorts, a dress shirt and tie on top…

…and a mullet. Business in the front, party in the back.

Now, the difficulty is that I only have a month to grow the mullet. My hair is already quite long, but not nearly long enough in the back. I like to keep this (gestures towards body) all natural, so I don’t want to get a wig. So basically, I’m just going to let it grow and see what happens. And I figure that I can mimic the top half of the mullet by following the leads of my good friends Christiano Ronaldo and Andre Agassi the day of the party.

Yes, I’ll post photos when the time comes.

11 Jamey Points for the best childhood hair style noted in the comments.

I just sent a reply to a gentleman in LasVegas and when I hit the send button, your profile was displayed in the “others like so & so”….and I just had to make a comment. WHAT on GODS green earth is a movie star good looking, Intelligent young man, that lives in a BIG city and has MANY opportunities to meet young women…doing on a Dating Site??

Oh, if you were 30 years older……nope…maybe not….don’t plan to leave Montana, but it would be tempting, LOL!!

First, I’m rather tickled that this woman e-mailed me. It definitely made me smile.

Second, why is Match pairing me with women twice my age who live thousands of miles away?!

Third, I love–love–that she would rather have Montana than a 30-year-old plaything. I’ve been to Montana, and I remember spending most of my time making loud sounds so the grizzlies wouldn’t attack me. It appears that I should have been more worried about the cougars.

Fourth, I want to address her semi-rhetorical question. Because I’ve been asked this before by other women on Match, and I don’t think it’s a fair question for these reasons three:

1. It insinuates that there’s something wrong with online dating, and thus something wrong with people who use online dating sites. It’s 2011. There is absolutely no stigma attached to online dating.
2. It’s flattering, but really, I’m pretty weird. Movie star good looking? If I was movie star good looking, I’d be in movies.
3. Last, this question makes me want to explain why I’m on Match. I’m not good at meeting women in real life. I’m terrible at initiating conversations in person. Terrible. I’m good at batting my eyes from across the room, but beyond that, I’m hopeless. Online dating gives me a way to break the ice in an easy, noncommittal way–a wink or a quick e-mail. After that I’m fine.

All in all, thank you, 62-year-old woman from Montana, for making me smile and sparking a blog entry. I wish you the best in finding that special someone.

If you want more confessions, you’ll find the rest here.

My three:

1. I would take only the classes that really interested me. I’m glad I went to Wash U. It’s a great school, the quality of education is better than most universities, and it looks good on my resume. I’m not as glad that I went with a business degree. Although I love entrepreneurship and elements of organizational behavior and marketing, I trudged through tons of other business classes that were of no interest to me simply because I thought I wanted to go into business. I much rather would have enjoyed the majority of my classes than kept my eyes open for calculus, accounting, and finance. Oh, and I’d have taken Spanish in addition to Japanese. I think languages are some of the best things you can study in college, as a complement to going abroad. I also wish I had studied graphic design and programming, things that I could teach myself at this point, but it would have been great to have a professor to guide me.
2. I would seek internships at every opportunity. I’ve learned so much while working in the real world, and I could have started to learn some of those life lessons during college and every summer. Now, I don’t think I necessarily wasted my summers–there was a period where I wanted to open a restaurant after college, so I worked as a waiter for two summers to see if that’s something I really wanted (it turned out that it wasn’t). But I could have made so many connections and learned so much through internships.
3. I would loosen up a lot quicker. I don’t mean that I would have started drinking sooner or gone around hooking up with every cute girl I saw. But I carried a lot of stereotypes and stigmas into college that I wish I had let go of a lot sooner. Perhaps the slow process of learning was what I needed, but I also think I could have learned things first hand (and probably made some mistakes) up front and been the better for it.

Limiting this to the top three things was tough. There are plenty of little things I’d change, but these are the big three. Overall, I had a great college experience, particularly my year abroad. But sometimes I look back and reflect upon the experience (lately this was prompted by this article and some of the links…I kind of wish I could try it all again.

What are your three?

Here I am, three months later, my Match subscription about to end, and I’m still technically single. I’ve met a lot of great women, and I’m honored they’d go out with me, even just for a date.

Why stop now?  To be honest, I’m exhausted. I’m not saying I’m giving up on dating, not by any means, but on Match, there’s a constant influx of women. You wink at one woman and three wink back. I don’t want that to be my dating life forever. In small doses it’s fine, but I can’t sustain this.

And in a way, my willingness to meet new women during these three months hasn’t been completely fair to the women themselves. By entering a world of thousands of options, I made it difficult for myself to give my undivided attention to any one person. In hindsight, I wish I had limited my subscription to a single month and just renewed it a few times–three months is a lot of women to talk to, while one month isn’t as many.

18 first dates (and many other dates) in three months is also expensive! After the first girl I went out with ordered five glasses of premium wine over dinner, I decided to avoid first-date dinner dates in the future. For the most part, most of the first dates were over a beer or two, as well as a few root beer floats (any woman who wants a root beer float on the first date is my kind of woman).

I learned a lot about myself by going on these dates, and even more about women. I need to add a few questions to my “perfect woman” survey:

1. I’ve found that arrogance is really unattractive (the “it’s his loss” attitude…please, women, I know you feel empowered when you say that, but that’s for your best friend to say about you, not you)
2. Trying too hard to be cool is unattractive.
3. I’m a little hesitant if you have a dog.
4. If you’re still into going to nightclubs, that’s cool, but we’re in really different stages of our lives.
5. If you ever stop talking and say, “Well, enough about me,” you’ve actually reached the point of conversational imbalance well before you stopped talking. Here’s the lesson, and it really isn’t that hard: Ask questions. Force yourself to do this even if it doesn’t come naturally to you.

I’ve also learned a few things about online dating:

1. It’s okay to ignore people. I know, this sounds odd and perhaps offensive, but I’m telling you, ignoring an e-mail or wink from someone is way better than creating the awkward situation of replying and then revealing a few e-mails later that you’re not at all interested. I realized this was okay when I started to notice that I couldn’t remember the women I had winked at who hadn’t replied. Even though I might have been excited about them when I winked at them, a few days later, I had no recollection of it if they hadn’t winked back. I think there’s only one woman I winked at and e-mailed who I was genuinely disappointed that she hadn’t replied (her profile indicated that she reads Fast Company magazine, which is just hot for someone like me who’s always thinking about business ideas and structure).
2. Don’t say in your profile that you “love to have fun.” “Fun” is inherently something good. It’s not something to like or love. It’s not like some people like fun and other people love fun. Please, show me someone who doesn’t enjoy fun. And while you’re at it, start thinking of real, actual things that you think are fun and put them in your profile instead of that generic, meaningless phrase. (Yes, Match has made a cynic of me.)
3. Don’t suggest we meet up in your first e-mail. That’s way too fast, and it’s creepy. You don’t even know me and you want to meet? Let’s e-mail for a bit and see if we’re on the same wavelength first.

One of the big takeaways that I have from this whole experience is that it’s okay to live in the moment. Even though I got on Match looking for someone special, a first date isn’t necessarily a gateway to marriage. I was reminded of this by one girl who had a dog. On our second date, I expressed my concern to her about Biddy meeting her dog (and being attacked by her dog). She said, “Why does Biddy have to meet my dog?”

And she was right. It was our second date. I didn’t need to worry myself with future logistical concerns. If those are valid concerns, they’ll come to the surface soon enough. But I should just enjoy the second date.

You may be wondering how many second dates I went on. I estimate about seven overall. I’m not sure if that’s high or low. For the most part I was able to tell after a first date if there was any sort of connection.

That leads to an even greater question: Why am I still single? Simply put, the answer is that I’m not going to settle. If something feels wrong, I’m not going to ignore it like I’ve done for past relationships. I’m looking for an amazing connection with someone special. Not love at first sight–but at least some bubbly excitement from the beginning and through the first conversation. I had one like that recently that I’m curious about exploring. We’ll see what happens.

So that’s my story about Match. Maybe I’ll reactivate my account someday; who knows? For now I’m grateful for the experience, extremely grateful for the new friends I’ve gained, and relieved to take a break from all this.

I love swishing it around in the glass (I’m a stemless kind of guy). I love smelling it, listening to it, tasting it.

I love all the pretense around wine. It’s like a prop for overacting. The more you pretend to know about wine, the more fun it is. You can claim definitively that you know the year, the soil, the locality, the tannins, the “hint of raspberry and springtime and sapphire and shoelaces.” It’s spectacular.

It was a sad day several years ago when I made the connection between wine and headaches. I had been getting headaches almost immediately after drinking wine–especially white wine–but it took me a while to realize the cause. Red wine really isn’t too bad, but I’m always self conscious while drinking red wine because it often leaves red residue on your lips and teeth. You always know when someone’s been drinking red wine because they look like they put on lipstick for the first time that day.

So now I’m the guy at wine tastings who has a Bud Select in hand. And the allure of wineries is pretty much gone. I’ll have a sip every now and then, but that’s pretty much it.

However, I may soon be getting back on/off the bandwagon. I learned the other day from a friend that there is a wine that doesn’t cause headaches. She didn’t reveal this mystery wine, but I shall be trying it soon. If you know of any similar wines, let me know.

Daily Quickie: Lately there seems to be a rash of my best ideas being brought to fruition in innovative ways. This company has taken my treadmill racing/MarioKart Gym idea and merged it into a single treadmill that you could even buy for home use. Well done.

I hope these people don't mind that I'm posting a photo of them on my blog.

I’ve already written about how I use Outlook to plan my life. I plan ahead for meals, for friendships, for alone time and social time. Time is the key–I’m incredibly intentional about my time.

Because of this intentionality, I miss out on things. If I plan on having an evening alone to unwind and read and write (I’m an introvert–I need this kind of time) and a friend texts me at the last minute about going out, odds are I’m going to say no.

At least, that was the way I used to be. And still am, in many ways. But something is changing. In the past few months, I’ve become considerably more spontaneous than ever before:

• On a whim after a long drive, I called a friend late at night about having a beer on his balcony. It was awesome.
• I went on several completely spontaneous, unplanned dates earlier this month.
• I went to the Deer Tick concert last week with basically no advance notice.

Those are just three examples that come to mind, but there are a number of other instances of spontaneity over the last few months. Little things, big things…somehow I’m starting to loosen up about time.

Oddly enough, I’ve barely written any fiction over that time period. That hasn’t been an intentional choice, but somehow without my own expectations for fiction writing hanging over my head, I’m much more willing to let go of those nights when I intended to hole up and pound out a short story.

Ideally, I’d keep the spontaneity (and even continue to increase it), but add the writing back into my life. We’ll see how that goes.

Daily Quickie: My publishing startup was featured on the front page of today’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Check out the article here.