Jock. Yes, I was a jock and in some ways still am. No I am not one of those jocks you think of when you think of a football player, I am a jock you think of when you think of a cross country runner. I was someone who was too much of a jock to hang out with the non-jocks but not enough of a jock to hang out with the football players.
I know I have not been the most religious about posting lately and I am sorry. Unfortunately I have been dealing with a lot of stressful situations at work, but this is really not an excuse for me to neglect my blog. No, the situations at work have nothing to do with me being gay, and no I am not losing my job, but there are a lot of changes occurring.
However, these situations are seriously killing my social life. And this is causing me to become depressed and lose the motivation to blog. The major cause of this is my company has decided to close our Indianapolis office. Now this news is not as bad as it sounds as the company is not letting anyone from the office go. Instead the company is going to force us to work from home. I think this it is pretty obvious how this is killing my social life. Working from home and maintaining a social life will be difficult for me, I am not the most outgoing person. Therefore meeting enough people to keep me in contact and socializing with people most nights a week will be difficult.
Yes, I said there was more than one thing at work causing my depression. The second issue I am facing is I have only been with the company 3 months and only graduated college 4 months ago; however, on my current project I am the de facto senior developer. Yes, there are more experienced people on the project but I have become the go to guy and the person revealing all of the issues we are encountering on the project along with proposing the solutions. At my experience level this is extremely stressful as some of the issues I am encountering are deal breakers and I have to convince more senior people of the magnitude of these issues and then offer the solution. This means more hours, which mean less personal time, hence less social life.
Anyway, I don’t know why I wrote this or what point I was trying to make or why I feel the need to keep writing so I guess I just need to post this and be done with it.
Irritable. If I have not been eating well, or getting enough sleep, or have just been really stressed I get very irritable. When this happens, the only way to avoid my wrath is to stay out of my way. I know when I am like this, and I will frequently apologize immediately before or after I go off on you, but this is one trait of mine I really need to learn to control.
I have been reflecting on why every time I consider going out to a bar or another place to meet other gay guys for some reason or other I end up not going. I have realized that this is because I am not happy with myself. I do not like my looks right now and I don’t want to go out and have a miserable time because I cannot find anyone interested in dancing or chatting with me.
When I ran cross country I used to be a 6’1” 150 lb twig. Well I grew older, my metabolism slowed, and I suffered a running career ending injury. (Not that my running career was going anywhere anyway.) As a result of both of these I have put on several pounds and got out of shape. Earlier this summer the excuse I would use is I will wait until I get the cash to buy a bike and start exercising again. Well, I have a bike and am exercising again but I still don’t go out. This is because I haven’t even come close to getting where I want to be. Yes, I know I just need to say screw it and go out, and I probably will this weekend.
Well this has led me to start thinking. Most of us try to be as skinny and in shape as possible fretting over our looks. We worry about our hair, and our clothes, and well everything else about us. But why do we do this? Is it because we are worried about what other people will think about our looks?
It would seem like concern about other people’s opinions is the reason we worry about our looks. I don’t know many people who get all dressed up just to sit around the house all day, so yes this does seem like the correct answer. However, I am not so sure.
I think we worry about our looks because we are worried about living up to our own visions of ourselves. If you envision yourself as the twink you are going to fret about making yourself look like a twink, but you are going to be doing this for yourself. You won’t be doing this for others enjoyment you will be doing it because you think you are a twink. This can lead someone to be depressed or like me not have a social life because we are not happy with ourselves.
What I have realized from this is even though you have accepted that you are gay, it does not mean you have accepted yourself for who you are. You have just accepted one aspect of your life. Not until you accept your looks, your sexual orientation, your personality, etc. have you really accepted yourself for who you are.
Now to go start trying to figure out what gay bars in Indy to go to…
Honest - Well this is more true than it used to be. Mainly when I was in the closet and lying about who I am. But I will always tell you what is on my mind, and I won’t worry about being politically correct. For some reason this keeps getting me in trouble.
Photo From: ChaceofSpades on Flickr Licensed Under the Creative Commons License
Well, I finally broke down and watched it. I watched High School Musical 2, the movie a lot of the gay community has been raving about lately.
My high school was unique, and really did not follow the theme of High School Musical 2. For me, it was okay for everyone to be in the drama club. In fact about a quarter of our club were jocks, a quarter were geeks, there were bandies, and yes there were a few of the drama club queens. So in some ways, I cannot relate to the movie as someone before me made it acceptable for everyone to be in drama club.
Similar to the movie, this unity allowed my school to have one of the best theatre programs in the state of Ohio. We were basically able to take a show to the state conference for the premiere show whenever we wanted. Due to financial reasons this only happened every 3 years, but when we went the reviews were always great and there was always a lot of hype for our show. One year, people were scalping the free tickets for $50 to people unlucky and unable to get a ticket.
However, this unity in drama club, and to a point across any club/team within the school does not mean my high school didn’t have similarities. If you changed the drama club in the movie, to being a gay guy or a lesbian you then had my high school. It seemed like the two major things that could get you outcast in my high school were being gay, or being in a gang.
When one of the guys in the drama club in my high school came out of the closet, most people stopped associating with him. Before he came out there were quite a few people he hung around with, but once he came out that group dwindled to maybe 5. Everyone started avoiding him at all costs. He was still respected as a great actor, but you just weren’t his friend.
I think that is why the gay community likes High School Musical so much. The movie symbolizes the challenges we faced in high school, and the challenges we honestly still face today. Personally, I do have several problems with the movie (the gay guy that Disney doesn’t have the balls to come out and admit is gay for one) but the movie was startling successful in showing the challenges faced by everyone in trying to fit in.
The movie can best be summed up by the title of the last song in the movie “We’re All in This Together”. And we are, not just those of us that are gay, but those who still like cartoons, and those who have a different accent, and those who are divorced. Everyone is trying to fit in so they can have friends, but what we need to focus on is who we are and getting our friends to accept us for that.
