The hunt and other assorted diversions of the mind

Well this IS getting interesting.

The Dearborn gig is lucrative but it means I will have to leave Atlanta, leave Kristen. Which is something I was prepared for at one point but I'm not sure it's worth it now.

The Atlanta leads are promising but we will see. I need to take my time and move for what I think will enhance my career, not just allow me to be out. That part is paramount but, I still need to think about the future.

I can take off for a few years now without a problem but I think eventually I might drive myself crazy. There is the thought of maybe starting my own business - but I have too many ideas right now to filter them down into anything real. The consulting gig is cool but I would still have to deal with the same issues with being professionally out. I've thought about funding a medical practice - anti-aging, plastic surgery, bariatrics. I have the jack and background for it but finding/hiring the right doctor(s) for it and such will be a pain. My personal doc and I have talked about it and she might be up for it. Her practice now is so terribly managed and could use a business mind.
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Anyway.

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Still shooting for a bit of travel this year. I'm taking a trip to Alaska June 3 - 17 to help my dad pack up, sell, and move. He does not travel/fly well so I'm being the dutiful son. Other than the first week I'll be available to do whatever while I'm there. Burning Man is still on the docket. It begins on my birthday so with that being free I'm set to make the festival.
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Hoping to make another big ride soon. May shoot for this weekend unless I'm helping someone move. Which is a possibility. But if not I have to hit the road early as it's already started to pop 90 + degrees here.
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Seriously considering some night life in MidTown this week so if there are any of my local friends who want to go hang out IM me. I need to fill the void or something like that.

A few more thoughts

A friend of mine recently lamented in a post about the love found in a relationship and how it's possible, even likely, that the pursuit of physical, nearly anonymous intimacy is our way of trying to fill the void we have in our lives when we are without that love. Recently I've begun to agree.

I tried to fill that void this weekend, the void I've most recently fallen into.

I think the way someone is intimately is a direct representation of who they are personally - it's a direct image of a person's true nature. Some are givers in bed, always wanting to give to their lovers. Others are caring nurturers more concerned with growing the experience. And others are takers concerned only with how they get off. I believe these traits to be windows into who a person is. The giver, the nurturer, the taker.
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So with all that this past week has seen I need to put some things out into the bit-stream.
This past Saturday would have been Brian and my 3-month and we were going to spend it like a lot of couples, anniversary style I guess. Dinner at a nice place, ya know.

The last real hurdle for me in coming out has been and is being "out" professionally. In the industry my software consulting practice serves (manufacturers) there is very little chance that being out could work. It is a very blue collar environment and even if lip-service were given to me being Gay, I feel certain that consulting projects would be withheld or perhaps not even offered for bid due to it. I am responsible for generating the project business for over 35 people. 35 different families depend on me doing my job. Being out carried too much risk of impacting those families.

So last Saturday the plan at dinner was to surprise Brian and tell him about something I've been doing about it. He knows some of it but not all so, here it goes. I've begun to interview with several firms for various though similar executive positions. 4 firms at present. Three in Atlanta whom I was connected to through the The Atlanta Executive Network and one in Detroit. I've had calls with all of them and a second deeper discussion that included money-talk with the firm in Dearborn.

I know how important it is for me and my partner, assuming that to be my fate, to be out and open in all facets of my life. It was a small contention for both Brian and I individually and as a couple. So I was working to correct that for us and now, for myself and whatever the future may hold for me.
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So I reinstated my Yahoo Personals profile. It's been a bit nuts. Looks like a few possibilities, as some 20 yr olds again. I'm not sure I can go there right off - I'm not sure if I'm ready for any of it.
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Peace.

Single

I spent most of the night sitting 3 feet away from the railroad tracks contemplating the futility of it all. I had never loved before this, that is so very obvious now. 8 trains blew past and the power of it over came my despair.

I just came home from the longest ride (cycle) I've done since I competed in college. 5 hours and about 80 miles. From here to past-Winder and back. I was essentially shaking my fist at God, daring him to strike me down; abusing my body, burning the pain from my mind. I think I may need to go get pumped full of fluids again but it's all good. I feel better and God and I had a long long discussion about all the bullshit - most of it on my part, maybe all of it.

I feel cleansed. I'm not sure if I'm moving on or just in denial but either way I'm not where I was. Like I said last night before I died, I'm not sure what tomorrow has in store for me, no less what the next hour may bring. One thing is certain, I'll be there until the last second.

Thank you all for your words and support - I've been a mess recently and time off from the dating thing might be best. I'm not going to go looking for a relationship.

I pray that Brian can find happiness on the path he's chosen. I can't guarantee my heart will still be around. I love him deeply still and would likely consider being together with him again but either way I'll always try to be there for him as a friend.

Many of you are shaking your head at me having been through relationships that didn't work, that hurt. But you all know my story or should by now. Laurie and I were together since I was 17. She was the last girlfriend I had in a line of constant girlfriends dating back to when I was 11. So I've never felt pain. Even my divorce and coming out, while painful in many ways, doesn't nearly compare to this. So I understand a bit better why people would occasionally cyber-bitch-slap me at times.

This has hardened me. Like so many of you seem to have been hardened, jaded. My sorrow is really now for the next person in my life. I hope I can love as deeply; that I can dive in so blindly. Before I was like a child who didn't know the fear of playing with matches. Now that I'm good and burned I have a much greater respect, and maybe fear, of the whole idea. I'll apologize now to the next guy for that.

Peace friends.

Pet Skin Purses

It never ceases to amaze me how some people are. I took this picture this morning while on my ride. The shop owner was quite indignant when I asked if I could get an extra-large chihuahua purse made... Go figure.

Not that I'm a purse carrying man-bag kind of guy but I mean, you tell me; what would you think this sign means?

Hot Love in the Prague Airport

Yes that's right. A whole week away from my boyfriend and I had to resort to buying some Hot Love in, of all places, the airport in Prague. Not only that but as kinky as this sounds Stacy (my co-worker) actually shared in some of my Hot Love - right there in the middle of the airport. I'm not very proud of it. But I do have to admit the Hot Love for sale in the Prague airport is well, orgasmic.

So alas, I broke down. But I think most would forgive me ;)

ATL Thrashers Hockey Game tonight

Work today was a mess - so many things piled up waiting for me after almost 2 weeks having been gone. So yeah, that sucked. But Chad, one of the consultants in my division called and invited me to go to the Thrashers game tonight against the Islanders. Which was excellent.

While we were there though we noticed just above and to the right behind us in one of the box sections sat the Rock band Nickelback along with a couple of the members of Trapt. We struck up a conversation with Chad Kroeger and he invitede us to come up to his box to hang out. It was neat that nobody else around us recognized them and I think that's one reason he invited us up.

I'm not typically star struck but it's was amazing. I've been mesmerized by the drum fill at the beginning of "Follow You Home" for quite a while and to hang out and talk with Danny Adair about what he's doing was amazing.

So anyway, here are some pics of Chad and I with Kroeger - as usual, terrible pic of me. I need to smile more I guess but Chad caught me by surprise.

The Meanest Season

The meanest season

Michael was beautiful. Blond, tall, lean like the surfer he was. That’s where we met, surfing. He lived in Seagate, a neighborhood I walked through on my way to the beach to surf. I guess my board caught his eye. While I had seen him often on the break we had never talked – I was too afraid – he was too beautiful. But he yelled out to me one day as I was heading towards the beach. This dark tan kid in flip-flops and a white puka-shell necklace; how glad I was that he did, asking me my name and automatically friending me. We were 15 then. He went to Naples high and me, just two blocks away went to Barron. But walking to the beach together with our boards in hand seemed like my biggest dream come true, because in my closeted existence he was the object of my crush. The water was flat that day, like many in Naples. We really only got good waves when a hurricane blew past or maybe in the winter when a front would pass through the area but that never stopped us from walking to the beach every day in hopes of something ridable.

That summer we ended up fishing more than surfing, an unusually quiet hurricane season. But a season for cementing friendships; a mean season perhaps. That friendship wasn’t an everyday friendship, the different schools we went to insured that. And we weren’t connected like we are now; cell phones, IM, email, Myspace, the Internet in general. But for the few times the winter waves were up and for those next two summers we were inseparable.

Looking back across those years the attraction, the love we had for each other was overwhelming. But it was a different time, and I was so frightened of this person I was, the real person inside.

Eventually that attraction won over; it was a shared fear, a shared secret we had both had for those few years. I think I may have broken Michaels’ heart, like I seem to do with those I love, when I turned away and hid in my ready-made family.

I can’t help but feel that I caused Mike to (my God I haven’t called him that since we were last together, or actually since the night I cried when I heard he had died)… to turn down the path he did. He oft told me about it, wanted me to give it a try.

Michael’s death in 1985 was one of those “fork stuck in the road” moments. The path I had taken was for sure different than his back in 83, and his death a few years later allowed me to look at myself and make other choices, turn down the road I’m on. It sounds odd but I thank Michael for that. And Michael (Mike), I am so sorry. Things could have been so different.

I wish I had told him just one last time that I loved him. I wish he knew right now.

You never know when the last time you’ll see someone, talk to some, say you love them is.

The summer of 1980 was the meanest season –