Today we’d like to introduce you to Matthew London.
Hi Matthew, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I have always been an overachiever. Whether it was spending my teen years traveling around the country training to make the Olympic team in Tae Kwon Do (Plot twist: I didn’t make it) or spending a majority of my twenties stockpiling college degrees (I have three and working on a fourth). My background has been one of gaining experiences and learning. While I have had an overachieving mentality in my professional life, that achievement has not translated into my personal life. Especially in the romance department. I have had a string of relationships that did not go as intended. So I have spent more time dating and being single than I thought I would at this point in my life.
What I have found is that dating in today’s world is a tragic and comical experience. Connections are generally transactional and real soulful interactions are rare. It has been a fun but exhaustive experience. So, as most people do, I shared my experiences with my close friends in group chats. My friends recommended that I take some of my wild stories and put them on a podcast. I was able to connect with a close friend who brought the female perspective into what dating was like. Since we both were actively dating in the Dallas area, it made perfect sense for us to move our group chat stories to a platform where other people could hear them. Thus, Dallas Dating Diaries was born. What we found was that our experiences were not unique. Multiple people (who we call the “squad”) had dating experiences that were wilder than what we had even imagined or personally endured. So giving a platform for other to share their stories made perfect sense.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The irony is that having challenges is the fuel for the show. If dating and relationships went as smoothly for me as other areas of my life, I’d be living in a nice house in prosper with a wife and ordering take out from Olive Garden. As for challenges with the show, in the beginning, I had never been apart, produced or starred in a podcast. So I was having to learn everything on the fly. What I quickly found out was that I was ill-prepared to produce and publish a podcast. This led to outsourcing a lot of the work to a great partner in Dallas and his business Podcastsuites.com. This partnership quickly set Dallas Dating Diaries up in a professional way that brought credibility to the show instantly. Other areas of challenge involve content. My co-host and I can only share so much about our experiences before it moves from funny to a troupe of cliches. So we are constantly listening to our listeners and adding and subtracting from the show.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I have multiple jobs. IT professional by day or a college professor by night, I like to keep busy. The pandemic really opened up my schedule due to working from home more. So this extra time gave me the opportunity to launch Dallas Dating Diaries with my co-host Ashley Mohan. I had previously worked in Radio after college with CBS Radio. So I had some familiarity with editing and publishing content on a medium like a podcast. However, I did not know how to be the talent, producer, marketer and content manager for everything. That has been the most challenging and fun aspect to this endeavor. I am able to do something that I personally think is fun, but also learn and sharpen skills I didn’t realize I had or needed. The secret sauce to Dallas Dating Diaries is that we are creating a forum where people within Dallas can come on, share their dating stories and bring entertainment to a topic that is comical and real. As I often say on our show, there are no games with Dallas Dating Diaries. Ashley (Ashmo) and I speak about relevant topics with a cheeky approach. We are adaptable and hear our listeners. There is only one Dallas Dating Diaries and we are unique because we are who we are.
Have you learned any interesting or important lessons due to the Covid-19 Crisis?
Personally, dating and developing relationships has been very challenging. The fear, anxiety and all the insane events that have transpired during the crisis are all obstacles to meaningful connections. This crisis (which I personally believe is directed by Jerry Bruckheimer) has taken its toll on almost everyone. That despair and cabin fever was a major driver to creating Dallas Dating Diaries. We have seen multiple memes stating what amazing things were done during previous pandemics. I’d like to think Dallas Dating Diaries will be called upon as a crowning achievement in human history in the future, but if not, the lesson of pushing yourself in a time of crisis to create something still holds true. So I have learned that there is never a good time to start something you have always wanted to start. The best time to ever do anything is now.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @dallasdatingdiaries
- Twitter: @dallas_diaries
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/show/0lDxsfQ2YYOQUfXOjfL2vk
Image Credits
Ashley Mohan
