This is the only city I know of where being new is treated as slightly suspicious. Everybody on the platforms here has an archive: years of writing, people who will vouch, an account older than some marriages. I have none of it, because eight months ago I was a married man in a suburb who had never said any of this out loud, and I have already been asked twice, politely, what I was doing before.
Forty five, south east, divorced this year for reasons entirely unconnected to any of this. Two children who are fine, mentioned only so that nobody thinks I am concealing a life.
I understand the caution. I have read enough to know why people check, and I would check too. It does mean that the first thing a beginner runs into here is a request for credentials, which is a strange way to start something you have by definition never done.
I think I want to submit. I am not certain and I am not going to manufacture certainty for the sake of a tidy advert. What I want first is to talk to somebody for a few weeks with no plan attached to it.
Not looking for a crash course. Not looking for anybody who is bored and wants a project. And not looking to be told that at my age I ought to know what I want, because until this year I had nowhere to find out.