the may update

May was a good month.

Bet you weren't expecting THAT to come out of my mouth!  By all accounts it was, however, and that is so refreshing that I just don't know what else to say about it.  It really wasn't going to be hard to top the months preceding but sometimes that's just the way it is.

Like Bruce Hornsby sang.

Typically I wait until the day of to post these monthly updates and for the most part it's always fine to do so, but then there are days like today where I am struggling to find something to write about.  Seeing as nothing too huge happened in my life this month (that I can freely share to the masses) I am going to start by telling you about something I am grateful for this month.  I go through old pins on my Pinterest account before I write blogs to see if anything jumps off the screen at me and tonight it was this one:

I'm so thankful that I know who I am.  What I am, too.  A good friend of mine is going through some hard times when it comes to fairly big life choices and it's left me with a lot of time to think about the same choices I made years ago.  I think it's most often a pretty easy thing to forget what you went through at certain points in time and when it has been years since, you treat it like it was the easiest thing in the world.  Of course I'm referring to "coming out" but this isn't going to drag on by any means.

I remember coming out officially the summer after senior year and how absolutely terrifying an experience it was.  There were a lot of friends that supported me, my siblings included, so telling my parents (the scariest part of it) meant I had complete back-up from a great support group.  The interesting part of the experience came when I started working at Express.  It was pretty soon after the "event" and I was proud of myself, but at the same time I didn't know how to let new people know.

You don't just walk up to co-workers you've never met before and say "Hey, I'm Sean.  Oh and I'm gay, LOLZ!!!(c;"

That stuck with me for several years.  How do you mention organically through conversation one of the things you consider to be a defining characteristic of yourself without sounding desperate for people to know?  I suppose at the time I really did think it was the only interesting thing about me.  Keep in mind this was 9 years ago and since then, the gay community has made pretty huge leaps and bounds into the lexicon of society.  So back then, while it was "mostly" ok, it wasn't as acceptable as it is today.  Even though it's not THAT acceptable today, it's also not THAT big of a deal anymore.

It was a few years later when I started achieving things and doing things that set me apart from other people that I realized being gay is just a small part of who I am.  If people know then they know, big deal!  I wish I'd known back then what I know now, but maybe coming out to every single person I met just made it easier on me in the long run.  The thing I hate is when sometimes you meet people who think being gay means you have to wear a big huge hat that says "FLAMER!" and walk around in a pride parade because you're guilty by association.

Let me get off my soapbox before I start rambling.

In the end I need to be patient, others need to suck it up, and we all need to smile.  I'm already smiling, of course, because that's what I do.  I have the wrinkles to prove it.  Moving on.

The only thing big in May I feel privileged to share is that I finally punched out a video blog.  It was cutting it close to the wire but I did it!  There were a bunch of reasons it took so long, mostly due to me not knowing what format I wanted to take the blog into and all that.  Finally I realized that who better to talk about than the other parts of my schizo personality, the multiples?  First they needed names!

I use the same three every year in my Christmas thank you cards.  One with glasses, one with aviators, and one that messes the picture up.  When creating other "multiple" pictures I end up using random quantities so I've officially decided to narrow it down to just the three of them.  Each represents a certain part of my personality so it seemed only appropriate to develop those parts into "full" personalities.

First you've got Lane, the leader.  He's also the mean one.  You'll always know it's him because he'll be wearing reading glasses.  He's a perfectionist, he doesn't fail at anything he does, and he points out the obvious flaws all. The.  Time.

Then there's Chip, self-promoter extraordinaire and the "popular" one.  Modeled after my best @markstyleme, Chip is loud and fun, over the top and always the life of the event.

And of course we have Calvin, the innocent one.  And admittedly not the sharpest tool in the shed.  Always sweet, believes in the positive, and loves to smile.

The format is still evolving but I felt to jump right into things I just needed to get the introductions out of the way and show the world a glimpse of what is coming.  So, here's the first vlog:

Otherwise it was a pretty quiet month.  A good month, but a quiet one.  

So what else happened in May?  I did a lot more kissin', emptied out my storage unit once-and-for-all (and got my full security deposit back today, natch), was told to turn down my music by that bitch in apartment #5 and then subsequently told her to stick it a few days later during a second altercation.  Powered my way through three seasons of three different tv shows, cut my hair off, realized why I don't EVER want electronic bill-pay ever again, had my first hotdog of the summer, and burned the FUCK out of myself by not paying attention to a wonderful thing called "solar radiation."  The peeling reminds me.

Aside from that, I'm spent.  Hope this wasn't a waste of time; I'm sure June will be ever more thrilling.  Ciao for now!

on being mean

I used to be really mean.  I get a certain pang in my chest as I write that, because I've been trying to think of something to post about all day long and that's what I settle on an hour before midnight.

The fact that I used to be really mean.

I guess in some ways I still am really mean.  Certainly I wasn't always this way... in fact I know I wasn't.  Growing up I was an incredibly sweet kid.  And that's not me boasting, it's just a fact.  I'm sure family members can attest to it.  My teachers used to say the nicest things about me, about how sweet of a boy I was with my blond hair and cute dimples.

When do things change for us in a way that is subtle to our noticing but so overarching that they eventually encompass who we are?  I can't pin it to anything in particular, and of course I can't pin it down, either, in terms of where it starts and stops in my life.  Sometimes... a lot of times... I'm out for myself and no one else.  Maybe that's how we all are to some extent or another, driving toward our own best interests.  There are worse things in the world.  At other times I'm just a vindictive person.  Last year a former "best" of mine told me I was the most passive aggressive person she had ever met.  Of course I scoffed at the remark and turned to those around me for validation that I wasn't, but now when it is nine months later I see that she was probably right.

Eventually you become so good at doing something that you no longer even realize when you are doing it.  Like someone who tells the same lie so many times that they themselves start believing it, I can't help but feel that way about my passive aggressiveness.  And in the same vein, being particularly loquacious with my words tends to be a downfall when texting people.  People that know me, at least.  Because anything other than a fully articulated response tends to reveal my emotions and set the ball rolling on the passive aggressive nature that tends to make others nervous.

When "K" means it's not okay, "alright" means think again, and "fine." means run and duck for cover, you need to sort your shit out because you're getting too good and that's not fair.

I came out to my parents in August of 2004, a few months after high school was over and a few years after I had started coming out to my friends.  I'm sure back in the early days of coming out I was still that innocent boy the teachers and parents liked so much (above.)  But as time wore on and the circumstances in my life had to continuously be hidden from the people I loved, it started to change me (below.)  You start changing behind the scenes, so to speak, continuing your life as what you were instead of gradually allowing the world to watch you develop into what you are.  Then you have this "coming out" moment and in my case, you're more than just coming out as gay.  You're coming out as a completely different person.

None of that is to say I'm ashamed of myself for anything or that the people around me wouldn't have helped me had I let them.  It is what it is.  In the months that followed I started working at Express and started developing my "new" personality.  Maybe I was always supposed to turn into the me that I am, maybe I wasn't.  It'd be interesting to see me now if I had chosen to go away to college and actually stick with school.  Who would I be now?  I'll never know, I just get to know about the downside of the "new" personality and that being the venom that came with it.

In order to remain socially relevant in the wonderful gay culture of 2006, one needed a certain amount of nastiness in the way they treated others.  Maybe it's still like that?  I don't know.  I tend to get the shit bugged out of me by "baby gays" more than anything else so my knowledge of the teen gay world is minimal, at best.  My calling card at the time became the fact that I picked out three things I didn't like about people.  All people.  As I've gotten older that has made me cringe more than I ever thought I would; every now and then it gets brought up by individuals who got a kick out of it, as if to say I still do it.  And I don't.  And it sucks that it is how I'm remembered.

I started to pride myself on being judgmental, and in a large way I'm still judgmental.  I judge everyone, for everything, all the damn time.  Sometimes I share my thoughts, sometimes I keep it silent.  This is the only nasty part of my personality that I will defend rigorously until the end of my life (unless it goes away (it won't.))  It's very easy for people to say they aren't judgmental but we ALL know that is a crock of poop.  Don't like that top?  Judging.  Don't like that person's hair?  Judging.  Didn't like that display at Pottery Barn, thought the gap in his teeth was annoying, chuckled at the acne that kid had, wondered why no one ever cleans the mirrors in those fitting rooms, got annoyed by the slow cashier at Wal-Mart?  Judging.

We do it all the time, we never stop.  I just say what everyone else is thinking.  I've since learned how to use a filter.  Just saying.

I don't know why I felt the need to write this tonight.  I don't know what made me feel compelled to share something about myself I don't really like sharing.  Sometimes I'm afraid everyone is in on the joke and I'm at the ass-end of it, always the last to find out.  Sometimes I feel like people put too much stock into me and my opinions when really I just speak loudly and carry a big stick.  It'd be nice to go back in time to meet myself at age 16, shake my hand, and tell myself to just relax and never lose sight of myself.

I'm sure there was a teacher or a movie that taught that same lesson at some point but I didn't listen.  What teenager ever listens anyway, they know everything already.  I guess I'm just glad I can see some of the errors of my ways, even if I don't know how to necessarily correct them.  For now I'm just me, day to day, and always looking forward.  And in the end, I'm not that much of a bitch anymore.

At least I've still got the dimples.

G'night gang (c:

roaring camp

Just a random little story (c:

I was unpacking some boxes today that I pulled out of storage (because it's high-time I stopped paying for that damn thing and just cleaned it out) and started coming across artwork from when I was in elementary school.  None of it was from the post-California era, but instead all came from my time at Crafton Elementary when we lived back in good 'ol Redlands.  There were a lot of pictures I drew of dinosaurs, some odd ones of me I had drawn in yellow marker depicting me at the beach with black nipples for contrast, and of course a wonderfully composed poem about death.

Such a happy child!

I was suddenly reminded of visiting a place called "Roaring Camp" that we went to a couple times while visiting my grandma Natalie in northern California.  I don't really remember how often we visited her... whether it was twice a year or just once a year; at that point I was a little too young to pay attention.  She lived in the mountains in a place called Pine Grove, and I'll always remember that her house was on Mt. Zion road.  Just one of those things you don't forget.

A couple of times we went to "Roaring Camp," which was this kind of tour/dinner thing for tourists in the area to do in a place that was otherwise pretty strapped for ideas that could involve kids.  Or so I still believe unless you like hiking.  And snakes.  You'd start at this building where everyone paid for tickets (I just googled the place, glad to find it still exists, and saw it costs $50 a head now.  Sheesh!)  Once you paid you had to climb into the backs of these huge pickup trucks that had rails on the sides to sit against while on the built-in benches.  Then you started the looooong (probably 15 minute (I know, just crazy!)) drive down theses steep canyon trails through the mountain.

At one point you'd stop by this waterfall and I think you could drink from it but I don't remember too sharp on that.  The visit in particular I am thinking of I was with my siblings, mom and grandma.  So you keep drivingdrivingdriving and eventually you're at the bottom of this huge ravine that has a campground of some sort set up and then some TP's and such.  There was also a great big outdoor kitchen where the powers-that-be would be making dinner.  I remember everyone got a drink token (it was a wooden nickel) and then you could either go on the tour of one of the caves where they used to mine for gold or you could go down to the river and PAN for gold.

The tour of the cave was boring, you couldn't go inside because it was roped off and at that age (probably 6 or 7) if you couldn't see the goods then it might as well not exist.

I mean really!

So we went down to the water and grabbed these big plastic/resin dishes and started panning for gold.  Who knows how long it took but I did find a piece of gold in that damn river, and the big old man that ran the joint came with a little glass tube and black cap, filled it with water, and dropped the gold inside for me to take home.  After that we were bored and dinner wouldn't be for a while longer so my brother started skipping stones across the water down by where everyone was still panning.

Somewhere out at Parker manor we've actually got this bit on video: Josh skipping rocks like a pro, little white-haired Sean trying to skip them as well, Megan standing off to the side playing with her hair and mom running the camera.  Sean flings a rock and it SLAMS into some guy panning for gold, and then proceeds to move to hide behind mom before the man figures out who did it.  I think the best part is that, ever so coolly, you hear mom say "Maybe you shouldn't do that anymore."

For dinner they made gigantic steaks that I remember being just... gigantic.  That's a good word.  There was of course corn and potatoes and I'm sure some kind of hardy vegetable that I didn't eat, but the BEST part was the fried bread.  Words cannot describe how good the friend bread was, and you could have as much as you wanted!  And what skinny little kid WOULDN'T go after that shit with reckless abandon?  Certainly not a pre-fatty like Seanny Parker!

Making the glorious bread.

After dinner they played music and maybe told stories but I can't remember that much.  Eventually it was time to file back into the trucks and make the excruciatingly long (...) trip back up the canyon roads .  On the way back my grandma Natalie was putting on lipstick in the dark but from the light of the amber-colored bulb, it looked almost black.  I told her she looked like a witch and never lived it down.

You might be asking yourself why I remember this.  Tonight when I was going through boxes I came across a small metal container that at one point had held a wallet I purchased from Khol's and for some God-knows-why reason, I kept it.  Before I could throw it out I realized there was something tinkling inside.  So of course I opened it (I've been going through EVERYTHING and tossing the useless shit out.)  There were a bunch of pieces of broken glass inside and the black plastic lid that at one point held water inside.  There was something else too.

It isn't always a bad thing to be the kind of person that keeps everything.  While some things are pointless to hold on to, there are others that you should keep forever.  I know I have big hands but that piece of gold is actually very tiny.  It's amazing how something so small and seemingly insignificant can spark such a memory from 20 years ago.

That's all I have to say about that.  Toodles gang (c: