If You Ask Me...

Looking at my Facebook feed tells me it’s been a big news week for the worlds that overlap the ven diagram of things that appeal to LGBT people. Some LGBTs focus on politics, some on celebrities, some on LGBT issues, some on sex, most follow the big world news and some love zombies. In the last six or seven days, we were one attack of the undead on a major metropolis from hitting the LGBT news superlotto.

Seven Ridiculous Things I'm Worried About Today

Tonight is the presentation for our final projects for the master's program at USC. I never wanted a master's degree before last year. Now I don't think I've ever wanted to accomplish anything more than I want this.

I've practiced for this presentation. I'm totally prepared. We've been working on it all semester. All evidence points to it going fine. But my stupid brain likes to concoct all sorts of scenarios where I self-destruct. And none of the scenarios is really likely (except maybe the last two). Since my degree is in digital strategy and social media, I'll give you a Buzzfeed-style post about what's going through my head today. Here are all the ridiculous things I'm worried will happen tonight:

METHodology

I stumbled across a journal tonight with a story in it that I wrote five or six years ago. I will probably tell that story here in the next day or so, but tonight I want to write about the journals I kept back then. First off, that story I came across ends in the middle of a sentence. I'm not kidding. There are five and a half pages and then it just stops mid-thought. I have no idea why I stopped writing the story. I don't even know exactly when I wrote it because it's not dated. It's handwritten in a book that I was using in the last months of my addiction and first several months of sobriety.

SBS*

If you don't count one semester at the University of Tampa when I was 17 and two months in Monterrey when I was 21, I've lived in four cities in my life – two of them two separate times. I was in Philadelphia the first 23 years of my life, San Diego for the next nine, Philadelphia for five more, New York for seven and a half (two years in Manhattan, two in Astoria, one in Manhattan and two and a half in Brooklyn), back to San Diego for almost three and now in Los Angeles since January. If nothing else, I am good at moving. You'd have an easier time keeping track of someone in witness protection than of knowing my whereabouts from one year to the next.

Witches

I was scrolling through the stats of my blog today. Recently I've begun looking occasionally to see which posts have gotten the most attention. I used to only look at the five or six that were on the screen when I posted the new one, but since I've been in grad school studying digital and social media strategy, I've tried to be more aware of what engages y'all and what doesn't. Of course, internet metrics are tricky. Sometimes weird things cause can cause glitches in the stats. For instance, according to the blog stats, on July 29 my blog had over 1700 pageviews. That would be awesome, if there were any real chance it were true. I question it because all the days since (when there have been new posts) have averaged between 75 and 150 pageviews (there aren't a lot of you reading this thing). So it's always risky trying to draw any conclusions from the data. But what the hell? I don't have anything better to do today.

Boi-cott!

I've taken some heat recently (and in the past) because of my belief that boycotts, while having their place in society, are now the lazy man's tool of political action. I've stated several times that I feel like in most cases boycotts are all for show, a way for us to feel and look like we care about civil rights causes without actually doing anything about it. I'm doubling down on that statement now. I now think boycotts are becoming detrimental to social and political change movements.

Tweenybopper

So the first four days of the month I was trying this “one-word title” gimmick. But I'm having trouble condensing the idea for tonight's post – Five Songs I Love that I'm Pretty Sure I'm Supposed to Hate – into one word. I'll think on it while I'm writing. If I do come up with a one-word title, I'll leave this paragraph here so at least you'll know what the hell this is supposed to be about.

Crazy

There are two (at least) reasons I like to write every day in August. One reason is that I tend to get a little crazy at this time every year. Not only is my sobriety date in August, but my father's birthday is this month as well. The combination seems to knock me off kilter just a bit. The good news is that now I know it's coming. As I approached my first sober anniversary in 2008, I was a madman and I had no idea what the hell was going on (I suppose for those of you that insist it is wrong to end a sentence with a preposition I had no idea on what the hell was going).I was just filled with anxiety and had a knot in my stomach almost constantly.

Doctor Smiley Surferdude

After almost 1500 words last night, how about a shorty tonight. I've had a ridiculous headache all night and apparently the cortisone shot that the doctor gave me in my elbow yesterday caused something called cortisone flare. We'll get to that in a moment or two.

First off, friggin' ADD strikes again. I had this whole plan laid out that I would wait until the middle of September to go to the doctor because I knew when I went I was going to have to stop working out for at least a couple of weeks (turns out it's longer). I have a couple of trips coming up and being a gay man, I certainly didn't want to have to stop working out until after all my gay travel was done.

COPS! Part 3

The one nice thing about writing every day is that it's easier to just write the Part 3 to a blog post trilogy the day after Part 2 instead of waiting three months like I did between parts 1 and 2. This was my final attempt to “turn myself in”.

[About the song: I always thought it was more than coincidental that Addicted was on the album

 she released when my drug use was escalating and Sober was on the album 

she released the summer I got sober. But it was ironic that I used to play this song over and over 

on my iPod and not have any idea I could have written it.]

What Was I Just Doing?

Well, it took this long but we've finally come to the night where I just don't have anything to say or any excuse to not say it. What does that even mean? In other words, I have no good reason to not write a blog post tonight (like being at Disneyland for 16 hours) but really I have very little to say.

That's not completely true. There are some things that I could probably write about if I wanted to stay up for two more hours and really work on something. But I'm exhausted, it's been a pretty long day and I have a ridiculous headache. So, staying up until two in the morning isn't really an option right now.

Psquared Can't Be Still

Over the last couple years (if you've read my blog that long) you've probably learned a lot about me. I guess the first thing is that I'm willing to reveal a lot (not all) about myself pretty easily. But a couple other things you might know about me by now are that I have ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) that is more than just a little bit difficult for me to manage and that I just forgot what the second thing was. Hold on. I'll read the first two sentences and it will come to me. Oh, right. I have a Facebook obsession. Come to think of it, you might only know that if you're my friend on Facebook. Now I'm not completely sure I've ever made that clear on my blog. Whatever. Let's move on.

Right Back At Ya Makayla

I saw this picture at the zoo over the weekend and the first thing I thought was, "He looks just like Makayla." It wasn't till I got home that I realized his name was Silver. How awesome is that?

Silver appears as unimpressed with Makaya as she was with Silver.

This doesn't count as today's post. I just wanted to put it on my blog.

Moments of Clarity

People in recovery often talk about their moment of clarity – that moment when they knew it was over and they couldn't keep going on the way they were going. I had one final moment of clarity the morning of August 27, 2007 and it was pretty simple, almost mundane. It was something along the lines of “OK. If this wasn't fun on Sunday night, how the hell is it ever going to be fun on Monday morning.” And with that, I took my stuff and headed off to my outpatient program to really start trying to be sober.

But that was just the final moment. I had several other moments along the way – both small and large – that culminated in that moment. And they were things that may or may not seem like they would have been significant, but I held on to them. And I continued to think about them as I spiraled downward. These moments I believe were the universe laying the groundwork for what was to come. The way I always describe it in meetings is, “God speaks to us where we are, in the language we understand.”

COPS! Part 1

(Note: I planned on telling three stories here but, as usual, the first one was so long that I decided to break it up into more than one part. I'll try to write part 2 next week.)


As always, italics are the words of the voices in my head


The hardest part of writing about things that happened while I was on meth is coming to grips with the foolish and embarrassing things I did that involved people that weren't using meth. You might think that's crazy or doesn't make a lot of sense. It probably doesn't, but for whatever reason copping to the things that went on in my head or with other people just as high as I was seems kind of zany and wacky. My behavior and antics when there were sober people around seem humiliating and depressing. Actually, that's only partially true. I can usually tell these stories in a room full of other addicts without much problem. For reasons that aren't completely clear to me, sharing them in this forum leaves me feeling extraordinarily exposed. (I know there are several people who will read this and want to explain these reasons to me. Trust me when I tell you that you don't know why it bothers me any better than I do AND, even if you do, I don't think I'm ready to know.)

Smurf Kills

This morning I got to sit in a room and listen to representatives from five different branches of law enforcement talk about the meth problem in San Diego and what is being done to solve it. I have no idea if blood can in fact boil inside your body, but if so then I’m sure mine was close. Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that police and other LEOs (that’s law enforcement officer – I learned that from NCIS) shouldn’t be out doing what they are paid to do – protecting and serving. It was just really difficult to sit and listen to people epitomize the saying, “If all you have is a hammer, then every problem is a nail.”

The Spirit of the Yankees Saves New York

I really need to get to writing the US Open preview posts, but here’s a little bonus for Friday afternoon. Here’s a story a NY Yankee fan will someday tell his grandchildren.


Come on over here kids. I want to tell you about how the Yankees saved New York – AGAIN – in the summer of 2011. It was a terrible, dark and stormy night. New York was under attack from the forces of evil.

Remedial Therapy

I had physical therapy today for a problem I’m having with my shoulder. Interestingly, I’ve had three sports injuries in the past four years and three different therapists have diagnosed each discrete problem the exact same way. Apparently I have a habit of building up the large muscle groups in my body while managing to completely ignore the little supporting muscles. I had a problem with my neck that was resolved by doing exercises with 5-pound dumbbells for about two months. Same thing with my back issue. Those situations occurred in NYC. Now I’m in San Diego and it’s a different problem – shoulder pain – with the same solution. I believe the expression that’s needed here is, “I never learn.”

Rush Hour

Short post today because all I can think about right now is how tired I am after the air travel experience from Camden (Hell doesn’t even begin to describe how annoying it was). Rather than bore you with the details of that, I’m just going to jot down a few observations about driving to and getting around LA (in car and on foot).

Insomno-maniac

I’m feeling incredibly sleep deprived this week. Just about every morning this week I’ve been up at 4 am – from one side of the day or the other. I think I’ve averaged about four hours of sleep a night. Sometimes this happens because of a mini-manic episode. I’ll have a week or two where I just have a ton of energy and don’t need much sleep. This is not what’s going on this week.