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From: oaf@mit-vax.UUCP (Oded Feingold)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: how relationships happen?
Message-ID: <137@mit-vax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 29-Jan-86 17:54:10 EST
Article-I.D.: mit-vax.137
Posted: Wed Jan 29 17:54:10 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Feb-86 04:13:05 EST
Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 38

>	Actually, I'd like to "date"; it's just that you take your average
>	CS person who works a nominal 40-hour week (which is often more
>	like 60), add school into the mix, throw in a couple of corollary
>	organizations, and add the time to maintain existing friendships,
>	and you don't have a whole lot of time left over.   [aMAZon]
		     ------------------------------
    I'd   call   that  an  argument  for  careful  choice  of  corollary
organization.  But what do I know?   The  relationships  I've  had  were
(are?) initiated by the oddest things...

    I'll admit my experience is limited - with my  spectacularly  boring
life, I don't imagine I'd be much of a date, nor do I think I'd be found
in a "conducive" setting.  (How do those things get started, anyway?)

    I've often discovered an activity because someone I liked (or wanted
to like) was involved in it.  Usually, though, something came of it only
after I got involved enough with the activity that I "fit  in"  to  what
was  happening.   Only then did personal contacts feel natural enough to
follow up on them.  Usually,  not  with  the  person  I  was  originally
interested  in.   (Should  there  be  an  "of course" at the end of that
sentence?)

    I've deliberately ignored the other thread involved in this  ongoing
conversation, namely that of work and the question of sacrificing it the
sake of relationships.  My feeling is that we learn 
	what we want
and 
	what we can get (in terms of work-vs-relationships)
in  different  ways  and at different rates:  Each person makes the best
choice she can, given mutable and imperfect knowledge.  Hence no formula
works for anyone but its author, and usually not even then.

[Rereading  my  message,  I think it makes no sense.  But that shouldn't
stop anybody on USEnet.]
-- 

Oded Feingold     MIT AI Lab.   545 Tech Square    Cambridge, Mass. 02139
OAF%OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA   {harvard, ihnp4!mit-eddie}!mit-vax!oaf  617-253-8598