Brandon’s an only child. He tells me he’s the kind of kid who kept to himself. “I didn’t break out of my shell until late in high school. I’m still kind of introverted, but an outgoing introvert, if that makes sense.”
“How’d you break out in high school?” I ask. “I just started doing things to get more confidence in myself. I didn’t want to be a nerd, for example. I wasn’t comfortable with that.”
He decided to own up to his strengths. “I got into programming, code … that whole world.” He joined the robotics team.
“I also got into photography. I got my first DSLR (digital single-lens reflex) camera and started playing with it and got really good at it. I learned Photoshop, and I learned that I liked Photoshop more than I liked taking pictures. And that turned into someone asking me to build a Web site. It wasn’t easy at all, but I did it. Things I couldn’t do, I hired people to do for me. One turned into two. Two turned into four. And now I have developed over 200 Web sites.
“[In college] I went from having no Jewish friends to having mostly Jewish friends. I realized their personality was similar to mine. The way I think about things, the way I approach things, and the way I think about family.”
He’d love to meet a Jewish girl. “I want someone who’s very driven. I like someone that’s as busy as I am but always makes time to see me. Someone who cares about her appearance. Someone who understands that friends and family are more important than career. Education’s important. I like someone who’s healthy — who goes to the gym on a regular basis. Someone who tries as hard for me as I try for them. I think it should be 60/60 rather than 50/50. Each person should put in more toward the relationship than the other person is.”
Last summer, Brandon, 22, needed surgery. “There’s three scars on my shoulder — it’s pretty cool. I started going to physical therapy, and then I got a personal trainer. It ended up with me gaining about 20 pounds of muscle in about four months, and it completely changed my body. … All of a sudden, my arms were twice as big, and my shoulder was never stronger.”
He’s into self-improvement — if he doesn’t like something about himself, he fixes it. “I try too hard to be perfect, which is the best and worst attribute about me.”
When it comes to work, he’s extremely confident. “When I was younger it was very difficult for me to say good things about myself. Society tells you people will think you’re cocky. But why shouldn’t you be able to say, ‘I’m good at this; I’m the best Web developer you’ll find.’? I’m not saying I’m better than you. I’m saying I’m better than you at building a Web site. That’s my thing. That’s what I do. So I might as well be the best at it.”
In high school, when he was still shy, he read the book “The Game.” “It changed my life.” He learned a lot from it. “I wouldn’t date someone I was attracted to, because I didn’t feel I was good enough, and that’s absurd. I was good enough — I just didn’t have the confidence to tell them I was good enough. If you’re not proud of who you are, why would someone else be? If you wouldn’t date yourself, why would a girl date you?”
If you’re interested in anyone you see on My Single Peeps, send an e-mail and a picture, including the person’s name in the subject line, to mysinglepeeps@jewishjournal.com, and we’ll forward it to your favorite peep.
Seth Menachem is an actor and writer living in Los Angeles with his wife and two children. You can see more of his work on his Web site, sethmenachem.com, and meet even more single peeps at mysinglepeeps.com.
