I arrived expecting a directory and that says everything

When I first started looking I genuinely expected to find something like a listing service. Names, descriptions, some way of choosing. That is what the internet had trained me to expect, and I spent about four months looking for a list that does not exist before I understood that the thing I was looking for is not a service and cannot be arranged like one.

Forty four, Manhattan, eighteen months of this and nothing to show. What finally landed was reading a woman write that she gets forty letters a month and answers three. That is not a directory. That is a person with a life, being written to by a crowd.

So this is my attempt at the opposite. One thing about me that is true and specific: I have eaten dinner alone at the same hour every night for six years, and it is the part of my life I would most like somebody else to have an opinion about. That is a strange thing to admit and I am fairly sure it is the most honest sentence in this post.

What I want is a long arrangement with structure in it. Rules about ordinary things. Somebody who expects a report and notices when it is late.

What I am not is in a hurry, entitled to anybody's time, or under any illusion that having understood my mistake makes me interesting. It only means I have stopped making it.