Holiday Loneliness 2017

by Raymond Stone in Personal on 12-22-2017

Holiday season exists to remind me that I’m 30 and never been in a relationship. Yes, you read that correctly. I am 30-years-old and have never had a romantic partner. In fact, I’ve only once been on what I can even call a second date. The fact that I’ve neither seen nor felt any improvement in the seventeen months since I wrote “10 Reasons I Will Always Be Lonely” proves that some things never change...unless they get worse. As someone who’s neither spiritual nor religious I’m not the type of person to believe without real evidence that good things are waiting for me just around the corner. I believe the best predictor of the future is the past.

Race and Dating: A Starbucks Conversation

by Raymond Stone in Personal on 06-21-2017

This morning I got my usual double-smoked bacon, egg, and cheese Starbucks sandwich because buying comfort food at 5 AM is what loners do. A female barista and a male barista have a conversation as I wait for my order to cook. Oven: “Ding!” Female barista: In the direction of the male barista as she grabs my order, “but hey, I thought I’d be married by now.” Me: “Don’t feel bad. I’m pushing thirty and I’ve never even been in a relationship.” Both baristas’ jaws drop. Female barista: “Really? I don’t get it.” Me: “Yep. After a while I’ve figured it’s probably mostly due to race.”

12 Ways Job Hunting is Like Dating

by Raymond Stone in Misc and on Medium on 02-14-2017

I have an art degree, so the fact that I’ve spent more of my non-college adult life job hunting than actually working should surprise no one. In fact, the jobs I’ve had were all earned almost entirely with self-taught skills. The point is…I’m no stranger to unemployment, which means I’m no stranger to rejection in the professional world. I’m an American male, which means I’m also no stranger to rejection in the dating world. In Raymond voice this Valentine’s Day article outlines the similarities between job hunting and dating from the male dating perspective, though most, if not, all of these also apply to women who are actively dating and/or job hunting.

7 Memorable Dating App Bios I've Read

by Raymond Stone in Misc on 02-14-2017

I thought I’d begin Valentine’s Day on a lighter note. If you read my previous blogs you’d know I’m no stranger to dating apps. After all, I design apps and websites for a living and I’m a nerd who doesn’t like to approach women, which means dating apps and I were destined to cross paths. I bring you the seven most memorable info sections I’ve come across. Honestly, these probably sounded funnier in my head than they will in yours, but here they are, nonetheless.

The Likely End of an Unremarkable Modeling Career

by Raymond Stone in Personal on 02-02-2017

Several months after being laid off from my full-time design position I turned to a different industry. An industry in which I had more of a love-hate relationship, without most of the love of course. In mid-November 2016 I submitted recent images to every reputable Bay Area modeling agency I discovered online. Most rejected me immediately, which is not unlike most non-modeling jobs I apply to.

2016

by Raymond Stone in Misc on 12-31-2016

Time travel twenty years into the past all the way back to the days leading up to the 1996 presidential election. Tell those Americans of mid-90s past that exactly twenty years from then, we will decide whether the World Series champion Chicago Cubs will be welcomed to the White House by President Hillary Clinton or by President Donald Trump a year after the first black president welcomed the NBA champion Cleveland Cavaliers to the White House. Have fun deciding what part of that previous sentence is the least believable to typical mid-90s Americans.

10 Reasons I Will Always Be Lonely

by Raymond Stone in Personal on 07-24-2016

I’m a very lonely person. I’m also a person whose primary source of happiness is independence. See the problem here? Why is a single man in his 20s and living in the second most densely populated city in the country at home on Friday nights and weekends blogging about loneliness?

10 Favorite Things About San Francisco

by Raymond Stone in The City on 07-23-2016

Living in San Francisco for the past ten months has had a tremendous positive effect on my mental health. This city makes me feel like I was born a San Francisco person and my experiences inspire me to write about it.

5 Least Favorite Things About San Francisco

by Raymond Stone in The City on 07-22-2016

“Nothing is perfect.” That is a common phrase used for something that is accepted despite its flaws. San Francisco is my favorite city in the world, which is obviously a major reason I live here, and I will link this post to my list of favorite things about the city when I eventually get around to finishing it. But even my favorite place has its drawbacks, so I listed five of them below.

Dick Taylor Craft Chocolate 72% Madagascar Sambirano - Review

by Raymond Stone in Chocolate on 07-13-2016

Admittedly the package design drew me to this brand as I browsed the chocolate section at Farm Fresh Store in the Ferry Building. So a note to chocolatiers out there: package design is important. The first thing you’ll notice about this brand is the cardstock envelope with a fancy paper texture. Then you’ll notice the Dick Taylor logo and type of chocolate printed in gold, and a sketch portrait in black ink depicting a ship being assembled. I’m not entirely sure what the sketch has to do with the chocolate but I will guess that it’s somehow associated with Madagascar culture.

Laid Off. Now What?

by Raymond Stone in Design Life and Personal on 06-30-2016

Making a living in the industrialized world often takes the form of providing labor for an organization writing you checks in regular intervals that roughly reflect the value they believe your work brings to the organization. Unfortunately, as valuable as your work might be sometimes the money well runs dry, which means positions must be cut and heads must be lost. In a nutshell this is what the CEO of a health and wellness agency broke to his emotionally paralyzed group of employees as they gazed back at him with dejected stares during the company meeting yesterday. I was among that group, having worked full-time for this agency as a junior level interaction designer for the past eleven months.

Growing Up Without a Father

by Raymond Stone in Personal on 06-19-2016

In my daily life I rarely think about fatherhood. I’m not a father nor did I grow up with one in the traditional sense. My grandmother largely played that role in my early childhood but no patriarch existed, which is not uncommon for families of certain ethnic minorities. But there have been moments throughout my life that forced me to think about fatherhood, mainly how the absence of one affects my life.

What Your War on Bandwagon Fans Really Means

by Raymond Stone in Misc on 06-08-2016

If you have a reasonable number of Facebook friends, your feed has likely been flooded with posts by disgruntled sports fans accusing local teams of having bandwagon fans just as those teams ascend to greater levels of success within a given sport. It comes as no surprise that with two Bay Area teams each competing in the championship rounds of their respective sports, the bandwagon witch-hunt is in full swing.

CA Primary: Politician or Principle?

by Raymond Stone in Misc on 06-07-2016

If you read nothing beyond this sentence then I have just one point to make: are you voting for a person or are you voting for a principle? My main goal this primary season and election cycle is not to argue policy or ram down the throats of my readers the reasons my candidate is “better.” As a psychology enthusiast, my main goal is to create a spark of self-realization by asking you to be honest about why you support who you do.

Paris

by Raymond Stone in Adventure on 05-31-2016

On May 8, 2016 I visited Paris, France and stayed until the morning of the 14th before heading to Amsterdam for one day and returning home. Coincidentally, on May 8th "The Simpsons" released an episode where the family takes a vacation to Paris. The photo albums from each day of the trip are below and you can find them at the Gallery section of this website.

Dandelion Chocolate

by Raymond Stone in Chocolate on 05-02-2016

I am kicking off the Chocolate section with an overview of Dandelion Chocolate because this brand is about as close to pure as chocolate gets. In fact, they have a 100% bar!

Unwanted

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