Well here Ilis something unsettling. After all this tall about this, I was semi cyber stalked this past evening.

I went to an artist networking event to promote my consulting business. I had friends this man through Facebook who was also a volunteer with the animal shelter that I'm a volunteer with, and, considering that we had some friends in common, I didn't think that much about it.

So anyways, while I'm networking, this man comes up to me and introduces himself. He starts talking to me about animal rescue, and I'm trying to be polite but I'm there to network for my business, not socialize. So he's telling me about how he got divorced about a year ago and is trying to socialize and get out more. I'm still going, what the hell are you talking about, internally.

Then he mentions that were FB friends, and I go, oh right, yes, I've seen your posts about fostering animals. Then he starts to bring up some of my posts about ptsd and depression, and I'm super uncomfortable at this point.

The whole time he's staring at my chest (and I wasn't wearing a low cut shirt), he never makes eye contact. I am trying to steer the conversation to networking so I ask him if he's an artist (which is the only reason he'd come to this event) and he says no, he is just trying to get out to socialize more. And I'm thinking, this is not a socializing type of event. This is a networking event where artists are trying to talk to curators and other professionals to promote their work...

So I ask him how he heard about the event, and he doesn't really answer. He finishes up our discussion by saying he might drop me a message via FB and see if I want to go out for a drink sometime, no pressure.

I just say, oh, sure I'll think about it. Then he leaves. Doesn't talk to anyone else. If he's there to meet people, why only talk to me?

I was super uncomfortable and irritated with the whole thing. Irritated because it took time out from me being able to network with potential clients.

Then it dawns on me. This guy saw that I responded to the group's Facebook event as "going" and decided to come to this event to find me and talk to me. Holy ****, that's some stalker behavior.

I feel bad but I blocked him on Facebook after that. I don't like being tailed to a professional event, someone bringing up my mental illness in a group full of potential clients, and staring at my chest the whole time.

It was super creepy. I'm sure he's harmless, and perhaps just lacks social skills to understand that it's not acceptable to tail someone to a professional event in order to socialize with them.

I don't know how other people would see that. I mean, it's not like he dropped me a line via FB saying, hey I'm coming tonight too, see you there! Which would have been totally appropriate. It was just super fishy to me that he came out to socialize, only talked to me and then left, and isnt involved in the arts in any way.

I need to cull my friends list again. I so want to be trusting of people I meet through other friends, but I realized tonight that's my friends may not even know who their friends are.

Seesaw