May 9, 2017

The Want of Journalism

For the past nine months I have been consumed by producing my school’s newspaper the Renegade Rip. As my teacher likes to share, is that it’s a tradition of almost 100 years and we were the next to carry the torch.  With them I followed ledes, wrote stories, photographed events, and for one semester was the Photo Editor.

Now, my time is coming to an end with the paper and I feel so unbelievably lost. It’s weird the little habits that become all too familiar until they’re no longer there. I would bitch about the chaos and consuming nature I had allowed it to play on my life (because I like to complain as it gives my misery purpose) but in reality I loved it. Without it… Well, I will go on, because I survived without it in my life before. It is just that after having experienced it has made me crave something I never knew that I wanted or needed.

During these months the two things I held as my own was a column I wrote each issue called “The Gay Agenda” and the calendar. The second was not as glamorous, but the first won me an award. I won 3rd place for my first column that recounted my two times coming out to my mother. The columns that beat me out for first and second place were both about goddamn Colin Kapaernik which gives me a reason to join the conservative masses that dislike him. Except he has personally affected my life as opposed to just “offending” me.

One of my fellow editors says that we are a unique fraternity that no other will understand what it was like to be an editor. I truly agree with him. My biggest worry in regards to my frat brothers is that we will drift apart. I’m sure we will, that’s kind of the nature of college life when you don’t have the same classes and are at varying degrees in the life of higher education. I will try to keep in touch but… Life gets in the way.

This Wednesday will officially be the last day of class. It will be bitter-sweet. I imagine the two people in my life who will be more than enthused are my boss and my husband who both dislike the all-consuming nature the class has played on my personal and business life. Whatever. It is definitely an experience I will not soon forget.

April 8, 2017

Literary Stretches

Even though I have been writing a column for my school newspaper every other week I have noticed my writing seems to be rusty. Especially this last week. I could not think of a topic to write about. And when I attempted one I ended up not liking it because it didn’t flow or sound as good as I wanted it to. In the end, for this one assignment I wrote 4 columns. One might say “at least you’re prepared for the next issue,” but they were all crap. The thing is, I KNOW I can do better. Like I said before I’m just rusty. 

It seems that most of my blogs are about how I’m not writing enough or that I’m not good enough. The first one is very true. The second… I have come to believe and understand that like any athlete or musician it takes practice to keep myself in tip-top writing shape. I further confirm this with my need to start and restart any piece I write. I used the example as of trying to start a lawnmower to my husband. The first couple pulls didn’t get the motor running, but i finally got the engine to turn and start humming away. 

One of the biggest traps I fall into is that I get halfway through something and either lose interest or tell myself, “who cares?” I’m curious where that idea began. When I was younger I didn’t care and just wrote. Maybe it was my own inflated sense of self as a teenager that kept me going. It would seem strange to reverse myself as an adult and become even more insecure. 

I did this workshop called the landmark forum. I’m convinced it’s a weird cult. However, it helped a lot. It definitely gave me more confidence than I had held before. And I’ve definitely learned to accept my faults. I think even this blog post is a result of that class. Before I would have said I’m a shit writer, I’m not very good, why do I try… Now I just know that it’s practice I am severely lacking. 

November 10, 2016

A man of no land

Today I am no longer an American. The ideals of the president elect do not reflect how I feel is the American ideal. He and his ilk represent the selfish bigotry of the dark side of humanity. I hate everyone that voted for him and I despise any person who voted for a third party and are upset with the results. You brought this on yourself.  

I have resigned to the fact that I am here because I was born on the wrong continent. I have no attachment to the people or place that I am. It is not my home nor will it ever be again. The very site of the American flag disgusts me. It represents hyprocrisy and lies. I piss on it. I spit on it. Fuck that fucking flag. 

This is truly a turning point in my life. I have so much anger and hatred in my heart that I will never be the same. At one point I felt love for my fellow man and now not a speck remains. 

I will be told I’m a poor loser and I don’t care. I truly don’t. I have sat through 8 years of these people bitching about Obama and the bull shit republicans have pulled only to pass the entire government into their hands. Of course the government was broken because they threw the fucking wrench into the gears. They broke it. They were why nothing got done and the things that they did were in spite of them. They were nothing but obstructions. They should be hanged for their crimes against the government. 

I have resigned to never stand for the pledge or anthem, nor will I applaud or show any semblance of respect for the armed forces. Fuck them. They’re nothing but a bunch of uneducated hicks that had no other options available to them BUT to go into the army. 

I will forever refer to any and all that voted for orange face douche bag as racist misogynists because that is what they are. 

I know without little doubt I will once again be demoted to a second class citizen being a gay man. The ideals asshat sold on the campaign trail was more devisiveness and derision. It did not speak of community and togetherness. It spoke of white male christian privilege. 

I cannot wait for the day when they are no longer the majority. And imagine how obnoxious they’ll be as a minority. It’ll be the temper tantrum antics from the last eight years. 

Sure call what I’m doing now a temper tantrum. It is. But it’s also resigning myself to being nothing and realizing I hate everyone and everything. I have no respect for authority or my elders. I no longer show respect to those I do not feel have earned it. 

My American dream ended this election. My very Americanness has ceased to be. I am no longer a citizen of this ridiculous country. I hope this truly is the beginning of the end. And I hope it all goes in a blaze of glory. I don’t want to limp away from the wreckage. 

August 23, 2016

Wealth

Wealth disgusts and enrages me. Some might say it is just because I don’t have it and I am green with envy, which is truthfully not the case. It sounds silly but when I do see it, and see it at its douchiest, I get sick. None of it makes any sense to me.  I suppose my parents somehow instilled in me the idea that it’s not the possessions you have that make a great person, but who you are and whom you surround yourself with. Or I may have learned that from the countless movies I watched as a kid.  Who knows?  Either way, when I see a 7,000 sq.ft. home within a gated community, equipped with a fucking safe (larger than my living room) for guns it wrenches my gut and makes me incensed.

I have two reports I am working on, both proposed new construction, and located within gated communities. They are the most sickeningly opulent and over the top abodes I have yet seen in my profession. (I’m an appraiser, by the way.)  Three car garages, built-in bars, giant rec rooms, safes, pools, gates… All of it meaningless in the big scheme of things.

Today I went to do a visual inspection of the site of one of the homes my boss and I are appraising and couldn’t even do that because this particular home is proposed to be constructed in a gated community within a gated community.  It’s not enough to sit behind one set of gates, they have to be behind another, ultra-exclusivity.  I mean, why bother being behind one set? Those homes aren’t cool enough.  They’re trash, really.

What I fail to understand is why do they need such monstrous houses? Do they have a family of 12 inside there? Probably not because they wouldn’t be able to afford such a huge house. Kids are fucking expensive and they would get in the way of having such trappings that give the illusion of wealth and success. That is the real thing I can’t quite understand.  None of that shit matters. Build your ivory tower higher and higher, but once you lose the wealth, and they will, everyone will see that all this while you were just a piece of worthless matter that has no real semblance of humanity.

I swore to myself that if I ever got a modicum of wealth I would not flaunt it in such a manner. I want to live in the same house with the same shit. I would have it go toward bettering the lives of others. I don’t want thanks I just want to make a better life for everyone. I suppose I’m very socialist that way.

The only problem with my pledge is that my husband will not agree in the slightest. Already he’s bitching about our house being too small. He wants bigger and better. He wants the trappings and baubles that make one look like a winner. (A winner at life? Everyone loses in the end.) He wants the huge house behind a pair of gates, he wants a huge, expensive automobile, he wants to have the expensive, tailor-made clothing.  WHY?! IT MEANS NOTHING! NO ONE GIVES A SHIT! In reality, it makes one think less of that person.  (Example: me. Right now.)

I don’t know if I gained this worldview before or after the Landmark Forum. I am fairly certain that it was a perspective that existed prior to the event, all the seminar did was solidify it in my mind. For whatever reason money has no meaning to me. Just as long as I have enough to keep living comfortably I am fine. There is no drive to have more. At a certain point it is just a number sitting in an account, more than likely, gaining interest to accumulate more wealth that will do nothing for no one.  It’s just a superficial “score” that no one cares about but the holder of the title himself.