Disclaimer: Still too soon after my last relationship, so I'm still not really dating much right now. Instead, I'm training for AIDS/LifeCycle, welding together a new bed, building art installations for friends parties, travelling, catching up with old friends, and occasionally meeting new people just to say hello.

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Life has been very kind to me. I feel like someone flipped a switch on my videogame console a decade ago, and I'm stuck playing the great game of life in easy mode. The rebellious east-coaster in me is suspicious of the easy life, but I'm learning to be all right with that.

Happiness (my own and others) is important to me, and I spend a fair amount of timing thinking about how to improve the net happiness of the universe. It's a hobby.

My ideal relationship is being with someone who I can love as hard as I possibly can, and who will love me back the same way, and neither of us will freak out as a consequence. This is apparently no mean feat. (In the meantime, mere dating is acceptable.)

Some other random things about me: I'm honest, direct, and articulate (if I find myself at a loss for words, it's probably because I really like you). I love to travel. I think this world is a beautiful place, and I want to see as much of it as I can. I love getting lost in cities. I'm a maker, and I'm usually in the middle of a dozen half-finished projects. I'm compassionate, geeky, political, and creative.

Things I'm not so good at: I tend to overshare (a tendency that could potentially be career-limiting, but hasn't been so far). I'm also not the most observant tool in the observatory: I daydream routinely and miss the details sometimes. The question, "Jonathan, did you notice anything new?" is likely to send me into conniptions.

I'm a nerd, but in the John Green sense, who wrote: "nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff… Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-in-the-chair-can’t-control-yourself love it. When people call people nerds, mostly what they’re saying is ‘you like stuff.’ Which is just not a good insult at all. Like, ‘you are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness’."

So, I geek out about technology, but I'm involved in a variety of music and art projects on the side, because they keep my brain fired up.

Brooklyn-born, I'm Jewish by heredity, and in the nominal sense that God got my foreskin and so now he owes me. I actually belong to that extremely reform branch of Judaism known as "Atheism." Me and God: we've got this understanding, see?

This is my favorite bizarre-o OKCupid question: "In a certain light, wouldn't nuclear war be exciting?" Sure it would, in a horrific way. As a child of the 80s, I was raised on dystopian fantasies and fiction, but you'll never catch me immanentizing the eschaton.

Things I'm up to right now:
- building a life-sized space capsule for a friend's Yuri's Night party.
- going on an ecotourism jaunt to Belize.
- riding from SF to LA for the AIDS/LifeCycle charity.
- re-teaching myself Ableton Live.
- welding together a new bed for myself.
- somehow also keeping my phoney-baloney job.

I'm trying to make my life as enjoyable and worthwhile as I can possibly make it. I spend a lot of time thinking about how to do this properly. Ask me about my theory about the twelve fundamental pillars of human happiness, and you'll see what I mean.

Also: http://tofighthiv.org/goto/jonmayer

I spent several youthful years wandering the Himalayas, studying ancient kung-fu kissing techniques from the great Bodhisattvas and Bodhisattvettes of the Five-handed Inward Lotus vinaya.

I'm uncensored and straightforward.

TL;DR -- I have good taste, and I voraciously consume books and music. I'm resisting the urge to try to define myself by the media I consume. If you're good I promise to make you a mix tape.

I just finished reading the first three books of A Song Of Ice and Fire. I tried to resist, because the world has many great books and only a few great television programs, but ultimately I just had to know. What happens. At the end. Don't worry, I won't ruin it for you.

I'm now reading a great book called The Fish That Ate the Whale, a biography of Sam Zemurray who ultimately took over the United Fruit Company and turned Central America into banana republics. Fascinating, repulsive, and humanizing by turns.

a book
a project
a friend
google maps
a city
CNC tools

My interior landscape doesn't reflect my exterior. I think of myself as shy though I've obviously overcome my shyness ages ago. I see myself as a fiercely independent loner even though I'm connected to great friends and strong communities who seem to like and value me.

I know that I'm ready for a more serious relationship because I can describe the shape of the space inside of me that is vacant. I'm ready to feel safe, wanted, understood, and cared for, and I want to do the same for another.

I worry that my standards are too high and I hope for too much.

First of all, this:
http://www.rhymeswithorange.com/wordpress/strips/Rhymes_with_Orange.20120802_large.gif

Second: yes, you should message me. I would like to hear from you.

At a very minimum, if you're capable of transporting yourself to Ritual Roasters on a weekday evening, odds are good that I'll buy you a coffee. Why not ask?

(* - Answer: The worst that could happen is that I might be too busy to be checking my OkCupid mail and I won't see your message until it's embarrassingly late for me to respond, which might make you feel bad. But it's not you, it's me.)