Suddenly Swipeless

 I find dopamine to be a fascinating subject. In all honesty, I feel like my every moment is a constant search for that next hit. I love wine and am working on my relationship with alcohol, I still smoke cigarettes in the evenings (gross, I know.) Then add in the swiping and the dating and the almost desperate urge I get to make a connection with someone, it's like every evening while I'm alone is a giant maze and I'm trying to find the happy button at the end. It's hardly our faults. Since the internet came around, or really smart phones with the world wide web at our fingertips, we've been conditioned. How often do we really just sit with our thoughts, anymore? We don't. When we are bored we scan facebook - oh look, someone liked our last post - dopamine hit! - or we look at twitter or pinterest or whatever your fascination may be. We text with our friends when we are bored, we watch tik tok and reels. It's all instant gratification. We don't really kn

  It's likely no one will ever read this blog. I'm really doing it more for me, than anything. But just in case anyone does, here's a little about me. I'm 41, soon to be 42 in April. I'm an empty nester with a 22 year old daughter, who's living across the country and thriving. I have one dog and two cats. I own a successful pet sitting business and live in a little townhouse in the suburbs.  I'll sum up my relationship background as quickly as possible. I was in a relationship from 23 to 34, yes that's right, 11 years. For all of those 11 years I wanted to get married. We bought a house after two years together, but there was no ring until year ten. And to be honest, by the time he proposed I already knew it was over. We were just never a good match. Although sometimes I wonder if I hadn't have had all that resentment over getting married, maybe we'd have been ok. Suffice to say, we finally called it quits for good after 11 years. I quickly disco