I’ve just come back from a walk in the snow, and it was quiet and wonderful – good – and a bit of a gift.

Just past midnight I left, trenchcoat and newsie cap donned, to make fresh tracks. The teensy pieces of sleet now falling are too small to bother, and the inch or so of powder gives firm footing.

“Slippery?” a smoker asks from covered porch, leaning forward. “Not yet.” You turn a corner and immediately slip a bit and you smile. It’s not cold, you wear no gloves, the gentle pitter of ice marks time as you cross the pocking expanse.

In the distance an electric motor hums – wisps lift from chimneys of finer houses in the middle of the square. You close your eyes for a few paces, open them to brilliant light, a glowing landscape. You smile again, slip up the stairs, and settle down to gaze out the window and listen to the near-empty highway below.

This night is a gift since you almost didn’t have it. You’d a date scheduled – a first, with a lady you’d barely spoken with for a week – but she wrote, and apologized, and explained that she’d unexpectedly found a match and it wouldn’t feel right going out now.

Although a little disappointed, you know this is right, and she’s done you a favor. She could have stood you up. She could have gone, let you pay for all (as you’ll usually offer), uninterested the whole time, already decided on her target elsewhere.

You feel the slightest pang, as who knows? this could have been love – but that’s unlikely, and pretty much impossible in this case, and that’s why she gave you the gift of the evening.

And it was a great evening. “Snowed in,” you make three-cheese tortellini with alfredo, take your vitamins, write and read and play Madden online with a friend across town and walk in winter.

Your hands are a little full anyway, with other ladies, and there’s certainly no use in worrying about one you’ve never met. Better to enjoy the snow.

Rule #8: Manage Expectations.

We’re all of us dating, many meeting multiple people each week, if you’ve got beauty or wit. Some will fall in love just before you see them. It happens more often than you’d think – or at the least makes a fine excuse for cold feet. Take anything personally, and you’ll become one of those threatening creeps who scare all away before a seed can develop.

And you’ll miss the world. Don’t care so much. Remember all aspects of life, don’t lose yourself in this one. Force, and you lose. Lean back, enjoy, it will come.