I have never used Tinder. But for the past weeks I have been looking for a job online.
Upload a cool pic of yours, not too casual, not too serious. Carefully choose the words that will present you in your full glory to the world. The inscrutable algorithmic cupid computes your match likelihood in a thousand parameter hyperspace. You swipe right and left waiting for a small spark to light up in your guts: this one I like. In parallel, you have two threads running in your mind, like agonizing lab rats in a wheel. Will they like me? And could I like them? Could this be the one?
Lately I've been describing my experience with science to friends using a relationship metaphor. At some point I fell in love. My PhD was a breakup, and I am in the mourning phase now. How could I ever love again? My heart has hardened. I am dispassionate, I see flaws in every single potential partner. Some try to comfort me saying that now I know what I want much better than before. But it surely does not feel that way: I know what I do not want much better than before, and that's a big difference. I don´t seem able to want anything the same way I did before. I have always been in love when I made a career move. At least for a few months. How can one ever be ok with a choice without falling in love with it? Why would anyone go on a date if they don't think it can be forever?
I can hear the voice of disagreement from some other part of my brain. "Work to live, not live to work, and all that. Did you forget? You are asking too much of something truly prosaic: a way to give your time in exchange for deferred freedom." But why shouldn't I love my job, any less than I love my partner? I will surely spend approximately the same amount of time with both of them. Didn't we as a society conclude that arranged marriages were a bad idea? Why then settle for a job that might give you a nice car and a big house, and give you a stable, calm and sad life?
Still, that portion of my brain: Why the hell do you need to be so romantic?
I scroll for my future wife on LinkedIn. My dead eyes reflect the screen. Animal and brutish as cows'.