As I sit down to quickly write this blog, I find it incredibly fitting that I just came home from a very stupid run. It was stupid in the sense of when I did it: coming off of a sickness and eating limited food this last week (for Passover), I should not have been straining myself today. And yet, an overwhelming desire to feel the wind against my back and feel the beautiful spring day (not to mention to make myself look amazing for the wonderful women of New York) overwhelmed me… and I made a stupid decision.

So here I sit coughing again and writing this entry. Yet, like many things that have happened in my life in these last three years in Dallas, this was yet another piece of training. In one sense, the run was training to get myself back into shape — I got an annoyingly long cough after Israel that I let prevent me from exercising. Yet, it was also another way I am slowly — but surely — hoping to make myself a fine specimen in a new dating scene.

My hope is that New York will lead to some great dates and adventures for myself, and through that, some great advice that I wouldn’t have been able to spread forward without the change of pace I’m headed for. Yet even in Dallas, I’ve probably held back on some of my better advice for fear of embarrassing myself. While I think one entry is too little space to spare the countless misadventures I’ve had for you to learn from, I’d simply like to remind you that every experience is a great way for you to learn… and laugh.

In a sense, I feel like I’ve messed up even in the course of blogging these last few months. I wish I had more to regularly offer you as readers — more consistently insightful moments, more secret tricks you didn’t know, something to really change your dating life. I know I used to look for that kind of advice all the time when I was serious about changing my luck. I’ve come to my own relatively simple answer, however… which is to focus on what I can control and fix it, and otherwise learn to work with the cards I’ve been dealt.

I may not always have your easy fix, and I apologize if you came here seeking a secret I couldn’t give you today. But in the next few weeks I’ll be sharing some of what I did when I realized Dallas and I weren’t as compatible as I wanted — and hopefully in the coming months I can mess up enough for all of us to learn from my not-so-smart decisions.