As I calmly wade through my daily emails with subject titles such as: “How To Teach Your Employees To Confidently Survive an Active Shooter Without Having To Incite Fear,” and watch the nightly news to see Maui burning to the ground, I think maybe I should go for a walk at Percy Warner and get some tree bathing in while trees and the world still exists.

I think my intuitive, collaborative, empathetic, compassionate feminine brain is starting to take on man brain qualities these days. I find myself having this newly found extraordinary ability to compartmentalize things, such as being troubled by all the apocalyptic news headlines in one box and buying shoes on the RealReal in another. It’s so weird, this crazy ability now to be able to mentally put things in a box. And let me tell you, the world being the way it is, my brain is very busy nailing down a lot of lids!

Which brings me to a whole other box with apparently no lid on it, which unfortunately is more like Pandora’s box, my dating life.

It’s kind of weird and unsettling in some respect to find myself and my son comparing dating notes. It’s a turn I never thought my life would have ever taken. I always saw myself as rather traditional in nature and it turns out I’m now, anything but.

For example a typical conversation between my son and I these days after my having gone on a first date with someone in NYC while up there visiting him is him telling me, “Mom, calm down, just because someone doesn’t ask you out for another date doesn’t mean you won’t hear from them again.” My son at that moment feels like the only rational voice in the room, because the ones in my head are ricocheting off the walls after a great and wonderful 11-hour first date with someone I met on Hinge no less.

A few nights later my son comes home from a date, and I ask how did it go? What was the person’s name? How old are they? He just shrugs like a weary traveler who’s been on dating apps way too many times and just wants to go to sleep, with a look on his face that I now recognize as another dating app date gone nowhere mixed with some hopelessness and who cares, and I respond with, “Stop dating 23 year olds! Their frontal lobes are not developed yet!”

Which brings me around to developed frontal lobes since it seems to me, I have now met many over 60-year olds whose lobes may have never developed!

However, I’m beginning to think, I might have just met one whose lobes have developed! Let’s just say, I’m cautiously optimistic at this moment because yes, I did hear back from my first date Hinge match, and date number two was yet another 10-hour soiree meeting his friends, his neighbors, vegan ice cream and talking, talking, talking and walking, walking, walking. New York is such a great date city. It’s like being on a movie set…which happens to be said person’s profession. And while I am cautiously optimistic at this point, I’m resolved to taking my dating life literally as one date at a time. (I think the 12-step program could probably start a new group for people who are compulsively on dating apps and use the slogan, One Date at a Time.)

So, while it looks like I may have cracked the code this time to meeting someone online, I still have no idea how things will turn out. Meanwhile my masculine brain is busy telling me to put a lid on it for tonight, close that compartment.

However, for a little female empowerment moment, I think I’ll go see the Barbie movie for the second time around, just to be reminded of the strong feminine brain because, spoiler alert for the movie, nobody can put Barbie back in the box! And I for one say yay to that!