I sent two hundred messages and every one of them was bad

I did the numbers last winter because I wanted to know how bad it was. Something over two hundred messages sent in five years. Six replies. Two conversations that lasted more than a week. Nothing that ever reached a room.

The obvious conclusion is that the board is hostile. The correct conclusion, which took me another three months, is that a man who sends two hundred messages is not writing letters, he is running a machine, and everybody on the receiving end can tell.

Thirty one, Brooklyn. What I did with that was stop entirely for six months. Not out of sulking. I wanted to break the habit, because the habit was the problem: I would read a post, feel something, and be typing within ninety seconds. Ninety seconds is not enough time to have anything to say.

Now I read a post, and if it stays with me a week later, I write. I have written twice this year. One woman answered and we talked for a month before it went nowhere for perfectly good reasons, and that month was worth more than the previous five years put together.

What I want is a real arrangement with structure and duties, over years rather than weeks. What I want first is a conversation that neither of us is rushing. I am not asking to be congratulated for having worked out something obvious. I am saying it because there are men here doing what I did and wondering why.