12.30.2010

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

This is me.  Others may see me differently because they want to or because I show them someone else, but this is me.  I apologize for none of it.

1)  I like to swear.  Specifically, I like to say the word "fuck."  I say it a lot.  I notice that I keep it under control (mostly) at work, but at home or when I'm with friends, it's my favorite word.  I really should tone it down a little bit because sometimes I say it just for the sake of saying it.  Should.  Probably won't.

2) I'm easily defeated.  I hate that about me.  For example, my feet are killing me again and it's keeping me from my gym routine.  I need to see the doctor sooner rather than later about it.  But until I do, I find myself wallowing in self pity about it.  I find myself saying "Why does everything bad always have to happen to me?" to myself a lot.  I know how ridiculous it can be, but when I get caught up in the middle of a pity party, it's hard to see straight.

3) I am obsessed with toys.  The obsession comes and goes (like all things), but right now it's here and it's pretty strong.  Over the Christmas holiday, I made quite a few trips out tracking down certain toys that I wanted for my collection.  Today was no different.  I'm starting to run out of room for all the stuff I want and that's not good.  My collection of toys is housed in my comics room, which is nearly 1/2 the size of the first floor of my house.  In the last house, my comics room was a smallish room that was, I believe, 12' x 12'.  That room could fit in this room many times over, yet I fit everything in there without a problem.  

4) I try to be true to myself, but I'm not sure I always am.  It's a fine line between trying to expand your horizons and trying to please others.  I find that I do a lot of things that I'm not comfortable with under the guise of "expanding my horizons" when in fact it's not.  It's more doing it to please others.  Sometimes it's easier because if you know anything about me, it's that I'm a very non-confrontational person.  I'd almost rather do something I don't want to than to argue about it.  I try to work on this aspect of myself all the time, but it's hard.  I want to do the right things, but for the right reasons.  

5) People often talk about how they get caught in a YouTube hole.  It's when they go to YouTube to look at a video of something and that leads them to another and then another and before you know it,  you've spent two hours doing nothing but looking at videos.  I don't have this problem.  After three or four videos, I'm usually done.  My problem, however, is Wikipedia.  That place is dangerous for me, because I'll go to look one little thing up and before I know it, the entire evening is gone.  I love it, though.  I fill up on so much useless knowledge reading pages there.  

6) I'm pretty bad relationship material.  I really am.  I like spending lots of time by myself.  Lots of time.  I sometimes look at my single friends and feel a little bit of jealousy because they have all the time in the world to themselves if they want it, but at the same time, I'm sure many of them look at me and think just the opposite.  Back when I worked in retail, things were much different.  Ken and I worked different schedules (him the standard 9 to 5, me working a lot of nights) and so we developed certain patterns.  I had a lot more solo time back then.  I would sleep until he left for work, get up and do my own thing until it was time for me to go to work.  I'd get home late and we'd spend a little time together before bedtime.  I had Thursdays off and I loved it.  We'd only ever get one day off a week together and we'd do things together then.  When I left retail and started my office job, our schedules lined up and suddenly we were both home together at the same time all the time.  I lost my solitude and it affected me more than I thought it would.  Five years later and we're still trying to figure things out.  Every once in a while I take a day off from work just to have some "me" time.  It almost always fails on me.  The last time I did it, Ken called and called and called and called all day long.  It kind of drove me batty.  So I left the house and went out to lunch, something I never, ever do.  I wanted to treat myself.  It was only Panera, but still.  Just as I got my lunch, my phone rang.  I spent my entire lunch on the phone and it kind of bothered me.  It's pure selfishness on my part.  I acknowledge that fully.  But still.  When I want some "me" time, I want some "me" time.  That means JUST ME.  Ken deserves better.

7)  I may be a bad gay.  As a gay man, I could probably be more supportive of my community.  But as a man, I don't give enough of a shit.  There are more than enough gays out there who do nothing but listen to gay singers and watch gay movies and eat at gay owned restaurants and wear clothes made by gay designers to balance me out.  It just seems too ghettoizing to live my life like that.  Sure, I'm gay, but being gay is only one small part of me.  I'm also blue-eyed.  I'm not going to buy a book by a writer just because he has blue eyes.  I have epilepsy.  I'm not going to buy a cd by a new singer/songwriter just because she has a seizure condition.  I'm going to do these things because I hear they're good and might appeal to me.  Ken likes to watch Logo.  I'll be in the living room with him when he's watching sometimes and some of the shit they show on that channel embarrasses the hell out of me.  Just because it's gay doesn't mean it's good.  

8) On a related subject, I fail to find the appeal of (most) drag queens.  Sure, I love RuPaul.  Love everything about her, but in general, I just don't like drag queens.  I don't find them entertaining.  I find them kind of embarrassing, actually.  

9)  When it comes to showtunes, I'm very schizophrenic.  I really don't like Broadway musicals at all.  But I do like an old movie musical.  Showtunes are fine depending on who is performing them.  I love listening to old recordings of them from the 40s and 50s.  There's something about those old recordings that speak to me.  Current Broadway tunes I find very cheesy and unappealing and uninspired.  It's all personal opinion and taste, so if you're a big Broadway fan, good for you.

10) I love my friends.  I really do.  I have some of the most amazing friends a man could ever hope to have.  I don't think I tell any of them enough how important they are to me.  I think it's all in part a big defense mechanism I spent years building while growing up.   We moved around a lot when I was growing up.  There were many years when I would go to two or sometimes three different schools all in the same year because we would move.  It seemed like just as I was starting to make friends and connect with people, we'd move and I'd lose those people.  As time went on, I think I started holding back more and more.  Why bother to get close to anyone if I was only going to lose them.  I think these "coping skills" are the basis of my social anxieties, too.  I would put good money down that this is where my social awkwardness began.  Anyway, as I was saying, I have the greatest bunch of people in my life right now and I need to work harder on showing my appreciation to them all.  

11) I'm so happy the holidays are winding down.  I really don't like this time of the year.  It's been a really long time since I've really, truly enjoyed the holidays.  One thing overshadows the holidays for me and that's obligation.  There are so many things you're obliged to do during this time of the year that it takes all the joy out of it for me.  Obligation is probably my single least favorite word in the entire English language.  It's a word that comes with a heavy ball and chain attached.  A very heavy ball and chain.

12) There isn't a day that goes by that I don't freak out a little bit about money.  I don't know why I'm convinced I'm going to die homeless and penniless, but I am.  It's gotten worse since we bought the new house.  Our mortgage went up considerably and that drove my anxiety up with it.  We don't have any problems keeping up with bills.  We have accrued a little bit of debt since buying the house, but that was to be expected.  And it's not like we've never had any debt before.  We were swimming in it for years before we got things in order.  I think what scares me a little bit is we spent the last two or three years wiping out all of our credit card debt.  We succeeded in ridding ourselves of it last year.  And then it was time to sell the old house.  In order to do that, we had to do quite a bit of work to get it in the condition we wanted it to be to get the price we wanted.  Work isn't free and we ran up a little bit of debt.  But that was wiped clean again.  Once we moved into this place, the expenses to get the place where we wanted it started to pile up. We have a little bit of debt again, but it's debt that we can easily make go away again.  Until the next batch of expenses pop up, that is.