I was recently contacted by a guy on Fridae that wanted to be friends with me on MSN. I added him onto my alternative MSN account simply because he looked decent in photos. After getting a little acquainted with him, I found out that he is actually an accomplished photographer in Beijing having taken photos of many Chinese celebrities and for various magazines such as “Men’s Health,” “Esquire” and many others.

Our second day of chatting, he suddenly began calling me brother and asked me if I would be willing to listen to what he had to say. More or less, someone who would be willing to understand him. Innocently I said, “Sure why not?”

Then it started to get strange, he asked me,
“Do you like me?”
“I just became your friend yesterday that’s a bit difficult to say. ‘Like’ is rather strong, no?”
“That’s cold. I feel really sad now.”

From then on, the chat just got… creepy.

In the past, I’ve always felt extremely insecure when people told me what they did for a living. “I work for CNN,” “I do online campaigns for Google,” or “I work for Microsoft.” Those types of phrases from people always made me feel so insignificant, in fact, when guys tell me they work at high level positions at bling bling companies I automatically process that as “I am way out of their league.”

However, this experience with this Chinese guy is making me feel a bit different. In the end, we are all human. Regardless of where one works and does, loneliness is universal. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so hard on myself in the future. Perhaps by myself, I am enough.