My Dating Profile
My Dating Profile
I miss OKCupid. Unlike so many of the swiping apps, it gave us the room to express ourselves; to explain who we are and what we care about. The text below is an updated version of the profile I originally wrote there.
It's true: I used to be a pastry espionage agent. Yes, I smuggled samples of flour and melted chocolate; yes, I shamelessly videotaped the baking of bread; yes, I stole the cookie from the cookie jar. The only thing I feel bad about - killing the occasional éclair (and making it look like an accident).
The rest is even more true, but far less glamorous.
1. After college, I founded a non-profit to support the half-million survivors of the 1984 Bhopal chemical disaster. Our efforts helped them win cool stuff like access to poison-free drinking water, better medical care, and $330 million in additional compensation.
2. An ex and I once discovered $24,000 in cash left behind and forgotten in a cupboard.
3. I love smashing ice, and I don’t care how silly I look. Smashing ice fills me with unbounded delight.
4. I’ve been the subject of corporate espionage, I’ve snorted lines of household dust, and I once walked 20 miles barefoot on gravel roads – only one of which is false.
5. The most complicated dish I make is Chicken Machboos, a Bahraini meal. Others are Maltese, Tajik, and Congolese. For the last few years I’ve been working my way through a Thai cookbook – Thai is my absolute fav – but when in doubt, I’ll often make an Indian curry of some kind.
6. I learned how to bicycle relatively late in life – when I was 19 – but biking has since captured my heart, and if I need to get somewhere, I usually ride there. A driver in Seattle gave me a cute little scar on my chin, but otherwise biking has given me nothing but joy. If I ever find the time, I’d love to bike across the country, but for now the longest solo trip I’ve taken is a 550-mile trek around the Olympic Peninsula, in Washington state.
7. I’ve been to every state in the union; the house I grew up in didn’t have a phone for 11 years; I partially atoned for 2016 – sitting on my ass instead of campaigning for Clinton – by donating my savings to a late-term abortion clinic and the ACLU. Only one of these is false.
8. The police like me. About fifteen raided my house when I was a high school senior. I've been told that I'll be arrested if I set foot in Midland, Michigan. And I got thrown against a bus stand by some cops in New York after (ironically enough) an Amnesty International protest. Fun fact: they ripped the seat of my pants, and I had to walk crosstown covering my butt.
9. I cover my walls with old National Geographic maps because they bring me joy, and I fill the windows with houseplants for the very same reason. I tried candle-making because it sounded fun; I built my own desktop computer because it sounded challenging. Making homemade liqueur is neither fun nor challenging; all it takes is fruit, an alcohol base, and time.
10. When I worked at Greenpeace, they had a rat problem. For months, it divided the organization into two camps: the rats-cause-disease/I-don’t-care-what-you-do-just-get-rid-of-them faction and the violence-is-wrong/rats-are-people-too faction. People threatened to quit. Years later, I heard that a colleague who stayed late eventually cornered one of them, and beat it to death with a baseball bat. I also heard the bloodstains on the carpet weren't easy to explain away.
One final thing: I have a black belt in pankrácia - a martial art in which you're only allowed the use of two fingers, and the occasional thumb. Despite the challenge I took an interest in grade school, and I've practiced nearly every day since then. I won my black belt after an unusually intense match with my teacher and master at the time, a Dell SK-8115 keyboard.
I know who I am, what I stand for, and what I want to do. And as I’ve gotten older and more mature, I’ve come to feel more deeply that love and understanding and tolerance – caring about the person next to you – is what gives life meaning, and that it both represents and enables the very best in us. It’s a feeling that continues to shape my life, and guide my efforts to grow and develop as a person.
If you're curious, you can read more about:
Why I gave my spare kidney to a stranger.
What I'm like to work for.
Some of the things I've done to bend the moral arc towards justice.
But the reason why I’m here is simple. I want to invest time, emotional labor, and heartfelt communication in a relationship with someone special.
I’m trying to make things better, in my small way.
I spent the first half of my career as an advocate for environmental justice and environmental health. Because the status quo – in which people get poisoned because of who they are – is a moral outrage.
Such things are enabled by systems, and so that’s what I studied in grad school. Since then, my work has focused on climate change, climate justice, and how to speed up the clean energy transition.
Change is often hard. It takes time, strategy, effort, people, luck. But it’s possible to make a difference. I know this is true because I’ve done so, and because as an organizer, I helped other people do so.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote that “to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition – that is to have succeeded.” I don’t think I owe it to myself to make the world better. But I do think I owe it to others to try, at the very least.
Listening. Tell me your stories; I want to hear them. Vent to me; I want to sympathize. Teach me; I want to learn from you.
Gifts. I plan years in advance for the people I care about.
Lists. I write stuff down, and then I cross it out.
Massages. Had a stressful day? I'll rub your forehead for an hour.
Let's see. In no particular order:
Love. Not just giving and receiving love, or the people whom I love (like friends and family), but love as a moral calling; love as a form of creativity and expression; love as the prism through which I view and engage with the world. E.g., I advocate for justice as an expression of love.
Inspiration. Writers and thinkers who make the world better, like Rebecca Solnit and Michael Hobbes. Movements that change the way we think - and what's politically possible - like #MeToo, BLM, marijuana legalization. Policies that shape the economy and society, like the Inflation Reduction Act, or the expanded Child Tax Credit. New technologies that solve problems and improve human welfare, like thermal batteries or the Covid vaccines. New knowledge that reshapes our understanding, like that generated by Esther Duflo and Jennifer Doudna. I could go on.
Ice tea. A necessary prerequisite for the first two because without it, I can't love, or be inspired.
Work that has meaning. Earning a paycheck - nice as that is - does not qualify. I don't just want to shape the world through charity, or via the way I treat others; I want my labor to do so, too. That's why I've spent my career in environmental non-profits, and why I currently Chair the Board of a non-profit.
Beauty. Music that moves me to tears; swirls of fallen leaves that fill me with delight; long afternoons spent biking along dirt roads, just because.
Tolerance. I'm allergic to contexts (like the military) or people (like fascists) who demand hierarchy and rigid conformity. The world is a diverse place. I prefer it that way.
In no particular order:
Progressive social change, and how to foster it effectively.
Morality. My world view is infused by it, and it bothers me to no end when deeply moral issues – like “health care reform” – are intentionally discussed in ways that avoid it. 40 years ago, the Jesuit Daniel Berrigan and several others broke into a draft office and poured homemade napalm on U.S. draft files. He said: "Forgive us, dear friends, for the crime of burning paper instead of children." Those are the kinds of moral stands I find compelling.
Sex, food, and other decadent pleasures.
History and world events.
Character-driven films and television shows.
Relationships – with my family and with my friends. And with my significant other, when I have one.
Books – those I’ve read and want to read.
Web design, strategic campaign planning, and other things that tickle the more analytical parts of my brain.
INTJ. Not the personality type; I mean my online banking password.
Any of the following apply:
You’ve also spied for your baker and want to swap croissant stories/talk about the good old days.
You've grown tired of your submarine/spacecraft/gigantic diamond and need someone to get rid of it for you.
You love cuddling and making out, even – sometimes especially – when it doesn’t lead anywhere else.
You’re original, creative, or different in some way.
You like to stay up and talk late into the night.
You can prove me wrong about things, or prove me right in ways I hadn't thought of myself.
You like massages, because I’m good at that.
You feel deeply, care deeply, and love deeply.