Moving on

Found this in a letter I sent to a friend in late 2019. Felt like it belonged on here as well.

What once was, can never be again

Time lost, never to return

Stop. Listen. Take a breath

Allow your heart a moment to mourn

Then move intently

One careful step at a time toward tomorrow

In your brave new world

                            - Shane 2019

Today, as I walked from my hotel down Market St. toward my office in the Financial District of San Francisco, I was in awe. On every light pole, in so many store fronts and even banks and the US Post Office hangs a rainbow flag. The very symbol of LGBT Pride. In this city, it is a symbol that LGBT people are seen, respected, and welcomed. They hang the entire month of June, known as Pride Month. As a Midwest girl who is still shocked to see rainbow flags displayed on any business in her home state of Michigan, seeing so many of them proudly hanging as far as you can see hit me right in the gut. It’s a feeling few can understand, and I doubt I can even describe accurately, but it boils down to knowing that here, in this city, during this month of the year, my difference is celebrated not hushed or swept under the rug.

I have been a lesbian all my life. Fact. I know it’s shocking to some who meet me for the first time, but in general I fit the stereotypical image they have for lesbians in their head, except that I do not wear flannel. Well not much. My sexuality has not been a real issue in my life since my family finally came to terms with it well over 20 years ago a year or two after I was forced out of the closet my senior year of high school. Their initial reactions were typical of parents in the mid 1990’s actually. They told me they loved me but wanted to be sure I knew what I was ‘getting into’ with this ‘choice’. They were fairly quickly educated on the language and word choice issues, and eventually came to accept both the fact that I was born to love differently than societal ‘norms’ and the partner I chose to spend my life with. My father even states with pride now that he has 4 daughters. Only 3 of us are related by blood, the other is my wife Jennifer.

After leaving life in Small Town America and finding a place where I could blend in a bit more easily as an out lesbian who refused to hide in a closet and did daring things like hold my wife’s hand while walking down a public street, I also found places where there were many more ‘like us’. I shopped LGBT owned café’s and bookstores. I attended PRIDE events and felt at home in a sea of weird, oddly dressed, misfits who all had one singular thing in common. We were societal outcasts because we loved differently. But over the years as society began to accept that LGBT people were not out to convert their children to a lifestyle, or pedophiles who would infect you with AIDS and instead just wired a little differently in the area of attraction and love, those same businesses I once frequented were no longer needed. It became okay to go to dinner and a movie with my wife and not be asked to leave for no reason other than we were clearly more than just friends. I could buy books and stickers over the internet, or at the large bookstores more conveniently located near my home.  And, I no longer needed to attend a PRIDE celebration to feel like I had a community who didn’t judge me.

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Somewhere along the way, the once thriving LGBT subculture was lost as we became mainstream. I always thought this was a good thing. But today, as I walked in to the office, I realized just how much I miss that feeling of acceptance you get when shopping an LGBT targeted business, eating in a café owned and operated by a gay couple, or attending a PRIDE event filled with thousands of people from every walk of life all celebrating their one common difference. I miss feeling like I belong, and it wasn’t until I saw all those flags proudly flying that I realized how misplaced I sometimes feel at home where rainbow flags are seldom seen. Every once in a while, it’s nice to be reminded that we are here, we are queer, and we are welcomed with open arms. So, I challenge you, my friends and family, to show your support in some way. Change your profile pic, find a meme and re-share it showing your support in some way. And, if you dare, stick a rainbow flag outside your business or home this month to let every LGBT person who so often feels unwelcomed and unworthy, that you support them and their right to love differently.

Yep it is probably time I started using this thing again ...

Seriously it has been THAT long since my last blog post?
OMG!

So a ton has happened in life and clearly I decided to just stop writing in this thing long ago. Maybe I should change that now ... but to what degree? I mean it is public and for most things personal but allowed in the public (never dies ever) category I use Facebook. I mean who doesn't use Facebook these days to share far more than they probably should with the world? For other things I have an old school leather bound paper journal. That is the good stuff of course, stuff that would NEVER be posted here without serious editing and likely in the form of something purely fictional to the regular passers by. And then there is the writing projects, of which I am int he midst of trying to finish my second novel (far too many years in the works by now) and occasionally do a little work on a "tween novel" that was also started years ago and sort of put down and picked up half a dozen times already. I work on that one when I inspiration strikes me but suspect it will never really be finished for publication. Sad truth, most of the writing I have done over the last 5 years has been in code, as in web development languages like JavaScript, HTML, AngularJs, and now React. It happens to the best of us I guess ... but maybe I can find time to get back here and type up entries once in a while that are not geared toward fellow web developers who might find my latest creation useful.

Personal Journal ... Why do I need one of those?

My 10 year old nephew, a kid now stuck in the middle of what will certainly be a messy divorce, has been asked to keep a journal. I’m not certain if he asked for one first or if it is the result of him being asked to remember what he does and where he goes when spending time with each parent. These things will of course be requested of him when custody arrangements are considered eventually. But in any case it has occurred to me that simply giving him a bound journal-type notebook and telling him to start keeping a journal isn’t really enough information. Does he understand what a journal is? Has he ever kept one in the past for personal or school reasons? How exactly do you explain to a 10 year old boy what he should be writing and how often it should be done? The obvious purpose in is his parent’s eyes would be to have a log of his activities while they are not with him, but there is far more to it than that. Journaling is more about recording how you feel about things, but not in a literal sense. Now how do you explain THAT to a 10 year old?

I was probably about 11 or 12 when I was first asked by a friend to start keeping a journal. (Thanks Stacey!) I had no idea why, and quite honestly hated doing it much of the time in the beginning. Eventually my nightly routine of scratching out a few sentences about what I had done that day grew into a few paragraphs and eventually into multiple pages over time. Those pages were filled with little things about where I had gone, who I had been with, and how I felt about events. At the time, writing in a journal seemed silly but looking back on it now it is one of the best habits I ever picked up. Writing is a release for everyone who does it; even those who claim to hate it and not be any good at it. Writing is like everything else in life, with practice comes greater ease of doing and a journal can be quite beneficial to improving one’s ability to write. For those who keep hand written journals, it also helps to maintain and improve handwriting skills. I use to benefit from this, until blogger arrived on scene and I began to type journal entries rather than hand write them. My handwriting has suffered greatly at the loss of those journal entries as well! :-(

Having kept a personal journal off and on for most of my life now I guess you could say that I am partial to the belief that everyone should keep one at some point in their life. For those who claim they are “dumb” or “pointless” I would challenge them to recall what they did on January 1 the year they turned 14. For those who keep journals, that answer could be found by flipping through the pages of an old journal on the book shelf. Even if they did not record an entry on that specific date, reading through the entries just before and after the date in question will often trigger memories we have long since forgotten. Trust me on this; old journals can shed a lot of light on fuzzy memories and help us to more accurately remember important times in our lives.

Sure many of the entries found in an adolescent journal will be filled with rants about how unfair it is that we had to spend the day cleaning our room, or why we can’t go over to a friend’s house, but even those entries serve a purpose. At the time we write them, they help to release the anger we are feeling and move past the petty nature of the issue. When we are older and reading through those old entries, it might help us to remember what it was like being a kid again with no control over many things in our lives and feeling picked on because we were asked to do certain chores. This can be an invaluable tool in dealing with our own children who will undoubtedly feel the same anger and resentment toward us when we ask them to clean their room and tell them they cannot do something they have asked permission for. The benefits of keeping a journal are two fold, one for releasing our feelings while we are having them so that we can move past them, and two for remembering what happened to us and how we reacted to the everyday events of our past life.

With that said how do you begin to write a journal if you never have before? What do you write about, how much do you write, and how do you know if you have written too much? Here’s a few simple rules everyone, no matter the age, should follow when writing a personal journal.

1) It is YOUR journal, nobody else. That means you write whatever you want, about anything you want, and as much as you want. A general rule of thumb is to start by listing something you did that day, in detail, and how you felt about doing it. The rest will begin to flow naturally from your brain to your paper.

2) Not every journal entry has to talk about your feelings or what tasks you did during the day. I often write about things that stir up my emotions, good or bad, but have nothing to do with my own personal life. It is fun to go back through old journals from high school and read about my take on a political or news event and why I agreed or disagreed with it. Even some book and song reviews found their way into my journal entries over the years. Apparently I was never really a New Kids on the Block fan though I had just about every cassette tape they released and knew all the words. I pretended to like then just so I could keep up with my friends at school … who knew?

3) Write like no one is reading! It is your journal of your personal thoughts and feelings. You should write like nobody but you will ever read it, don’t worry about the spelling or grammar mistakes you may make, just write. It is however important to keep in mind that if not protected your journal may well find its way into the hands of someone who will read it. Make sure you don’t exaggerate the truth in your entries; you may one day have to defend them!

4) Write every day! The best way to make journaling a habit is simply to write every day, even when you think you have nothing to write about. If you sit down to write and nothing comes, turn on the radio or TV for a few minutes and write a few paragraphs about the song that is playing or the show that is on. Often times beginning with some sort of a journal prompt will lead you to write about things you didn’t even know you had in you. That is how I managed to note in an old journal my feelings toward NKOTB. By the end of that journal entry I had written something far more profound about how we tend to do things we don’t really like just to fit in at school. I was 13 and didn’t realize what I was writing at the time. However, as an adult looking back with a new perspective it is clear that I was very anti-crowd-following even back in junior high but knew some times we must hide behind a mask to protect ourselves from ridicule.

5) Have fun with it! Write about things that make you happy, and sad, and mad, and feel guilty. Write a song or book review, draw a beautiful picture of something stuck on your mind, or just doodle a carton about your silly brother/sister. Write about what you enjoyed about your day, and what you hated about it. What you are doing is logging where you have been, what you have done, and how you felt along your journey. It will help you to release those feelings before they fester into a larger issue, and it will be fun to look back on in your adult life and remember what you loved and hated about your childhood!

I HATE FALL !

Here we are again, summer sunlight slowly fading into cooler fall days and taking with it that positive summer energy. Summer is not yet over, but it is clearly fading fast as the days get shorter and the nights cooler. The calendar flips to September tomorrow and those who have not yet will return to school early next week. Not far off are the familiar sights and sounds of fall, changing colors of the trees, apples and cider, pumpkins, and football games. I hate the fall!

“Why?” you ask. It is a valid question many before you have pondered, and it probably does deserve an answer. That will come later.

I don’t know what it is about the changing of seasons from summer to fall that triggers it, but every year without fail I find myself here. My mind drifts off to days gone by, remembering school days, friends, and social events of my youth. Some of the memories are pleasant, not all of my childhood is a bad memory, but in general I am reminded of how happy I am that those days are now behind me! There isn’t much coincidence that it was September when I began to write a novel that has many parallels to my past experiences and that of many friends when they were in high school. And there isn’t much coincidence that it was September when I finally got my courage up to face the demons I left locked in the closet when I walked out of LC and never looked back. There probably isn’t much coincidence that it was in the fall two years ago now that I finally faced the remaining demons head on and laid to rest all of that unfinished business. All of it was triggered by memories from my youth, and of time spent with friends whom I still miss today. These events have become some of the more positive outcomes of fall for me, but it is still one of my least favorite seasons!

For me, fall signals the end of many things. It is of course the end of sunshine and warm days, of bike rides and days at the beach. It is the end of freedom as children return to classrooms and staff to their jobs. The end of camping trips, vacations, and lazy walks under the star lit sky. But it’s more than that for me. It seems to be true in my family that with the fall weather, arrives another kind of end. From as far back as I can recall there are incidents, many of them life ending, that happened or at least began in the fall. From the death of a friend in a house fire decades ago to the news or progression of a terminal diagnosis far too recent to write about here, there is a definite pattern of things ending along with the summer season. Maybe they have all been unlucky coincidences occurring in the days between the end of August and the beginning of January. Maybe it is nature’s way of reminding us what fall really is, the beginning of the end for many things. Let’s face it, things die in the fall. The trees lose their leaves and look dead for months on end. The grass turns first yellow and eventually brown as it dies off. The flowers that once thrived in the summer sun wilt away, many never to return. Fall is death. So maybe it is not the time of year I dislike but rather the constant reminder that to everything, including our own human lives, there is a season. One day each of us will face the fall season of our loved ones lives, and of our own. Maybe that is the only reason why I HATE FALL!

And so … I vote we skip fall this year and move directly to Winter! Anyone else with me?

In reality, it will be a few more months yet before the snow arrives for me to play in and while I wait for it I will have to suffer with the wet cool days and nights known as fall. Spring is my least favorite season because of allergies and the inevitable slow melting of snow resulting in a muddy wet world. Fall isn’t much better. Rather than the melting of snow to create the mud, we now just get rain, and more rain, and quite often, even more rain. Dark grey clouds replace the sunny summer skies, the sun begins to hide itself from us, and it is not uncommon to have days where you never really see it at all. I will spend the next few weeks riding the motorcycle as much as is possible before it has to be parked for the winter, and we’ll try to get all those outdoor projects completed that we talked about doing back in May and June. We won’t succeed, we never do!

Meanwhile, I wait for the arrival of truly cold temperatures, those cold enough to turn the rain into snow and dump feet rather than inches to coat my world white. The snowboards are at the ready, the rack takes only minutes to attach to the car top, and our gear can easily be found and loaded for that first winter adventure. I am not yet ready for the snow, but give me two more weeks of these grey skies and chilly nights and I will soon be there!

The heck with it, skip Fall and just BRING ON WINTER! … I’m over all the reminders of death already!

Why I stopped Writing ...

I’ve heard it said
That people come into our lives for a reason
Bringing with them something we must learn
And we are led
To those who help us most to grow
If we let them
And we help them in return.

Well I don’t know if I believe that’s true
But I know I’m who I am today
Because I knew you!

Some time back in 2009 I lost my drive to write, or more accurately my passion for writing. It happened gradually over time, first with the slowing of written posts on this blog, then eventually with the abrupt lack of any posting of any kind here. I used the excuse that I was working on a new writing project at first. Then that I was posting things on Facebook instead of keeping in contact via this blog. In reality, though I was working on a new writing project and I was posting on Facebook more and more, they were just excuses both to you and to me. So what really happened?

I finished Unconditional during the winter of 2009, all but the final formatting revisions and minor tweaks had been completed and turned over to the one person who I needed to “approve” of the changes. I was biding my time by beginning a new project, still unfinished to date, and searching for a new direction to take that project in. I’m not certain when exactly, but shortly after getting the approval to publish my changes to Unconditional my writing began to taper off significantly. First this blog suffered, then the project I was working on, and eventually even those posts on Facebook became fewer and farther between. My drive was fading fast and by the fall of 2010, it was gone all together.

As most of you know, in September of 2009 my family got word of a late stage cancer diagnosis. In light of that news, and because the project I was working on involves “The Big C”, I stopped working on it completely. With that, I stopped writing. I haven’t written much of anything since then, not even those lengthy e-mails I have become famous for among my friends and family. Sure there have been a few of them over the last year or so, but very few. It would seem that when I needed an outlet for my emotions the most, I stopped writing completely, something I have always used for that much needed release.

I’ll be honest, I never really understood why I stopped writing, just figured I wasn’t interested and would eventually find the time and pick it up again. I was wrong. Something else happened that fall, something far more significant to my mental state and previous need to use writing as a means of emotional release. Part of my writing Unconditional and the conversations it sparked between me and my friends and family were based solely on my need to work through some baggage I have carried with me since high school. Who knew that writing could become the best form of therapy for me?

The rekindling of a friendship with Jack, the common ground that was found with my own family and that of my spouses, the loss of my maternal grandfather, and the news that my mother-in-law has terminal breast cancer all slammed into my world in just two short years. It created a world wind of emotions to deal with and, for the first time in as long as I can remember, those emotions were dealt with in a positive way that did not result in me retreating from my long held beliefs and simply hiding from the world. Instead, I faced them head on, with some help of course, and worked through what needed to be worked through. The stuff that didn’t matter as much was forgotten and moved past and I learned more about myself and my friendships in a few short months than I did in the previous 20 some years combined. And I did it all without writing! No blogs, no long winded e-mails venting to a friend, not even a significant journal entry. Yes I do still keep a hand written journal. I know, how archaic of me.

Instead, I took a new outlook on life, the freedom from baggage that I didn’t even know had been weighing me down for more than a decade, and used it to help form the support system my family needed. I stood strong to anchor them during the loss of my grandfather, and in the wake of the cancer diagnosis. I held tight to my firm belief that everything in life, the good, the bad, and the seemingly insignificant all happens for a distinct reason. I am not one who believes that every little detail of life has been pre-planned by some almighty deity, but there are some elements to that theory I believe hold water. It is far too coincidental that certain people seem to come into my life at just the right moments or that I cross paths with someone for only a moment and feel like I have known them my entire life. My faith in what many call a “higher power” does not follow the rules of any single organized religion, in fact I am in general opposed to most if not all organized religions because of their great propensity to promote nothing but hypocrisy. However, I have learned over time that certain events and people I have met along my path thus far have in fact been for a reason far greater than my immediate understanding at the time. It is my job to discover what their reasons may be so that I can learn from each what I need to know and integrate it into the remainder of my journey.

This outlook has made it easier to deal with the ups and downs of life, especially over the last three years in my immediate and extended families. It has allowed me to see that much can be learned and good can come from tragedies. Had I not lost people in my life previously, or gone through the pain of separation from close friends and family I would not be where I am physically today, nor would I be there mentally. Even through the pain of watching a loved one slowly fade away to a disease that cannot be cured and barely controlled most days, there are lessons to be learned for all. The strength it takes me to rise from bed each day is miniscule compared to that of a person who takes great effort simply in lifting their tired bones from the bed each morning. To them, seeing another day, no matter how filled with discomfort or lack of energy is a gift not a burden. They willingly rise each morning eager to take in every experience that life has left to offer them, and crawl back into bed each night wanting to repeat the process again the next day. We can all learn a bit from those who view each day, no matter what may happen to them along the way, as a gift. And I, having now witnessed this first hand through my mother-in-law’s struggle with cancer have been given a gift that no money could buy. She inspires me to wake each day and learn something new. To experience life until there is nothing left to experience. To roll with the punches and all that will be thrown my way. And to always remember that in life, everything both good and bad happens to us for a reason!

So how does this relate to my passion for writing and why I have not done much of it in the last three years? I lost my passion when I rid myself of the baggage I was carrying in my relationship with Jack. My drive to write in the past was tied to those emotions left raw and hidden from view. When I finally managed to stand up and face them, to admit that I was wrong about some things and clear up some misunderstandings between us, I no longer felt the need to express myself with written words, verbal was suddenly an option for me. It is fair to say that Unconditional was the first and last book I wrote because I needed to. I needed to write back in 2007 and what became of it was Unconditional. After finishing it I began a new project, the one dealing with “The Big C” that still remains unfinished and very much untouched since mid-year 2010. I will one day resume work on that project, but for now it has been shelved in favor of a new story, one that is being written not because I NEED to write it, but more because I WANT to.

I have once again found my passion for writing, my inspiration if you will, and it is still very much linked to my relationship with Jack. However, I now realize it is because he inspires me to do many things in life and his encouragement of my writing is just one of those.

The Race

It was inevitable
This test, this result
Another battle has begun
In a race that won't be won
Another reminder of how little they really know
Of how fragile life has grown
And how far we have yet to go
In this race against time

This is the point where some give in
Let time win
And simply wait for it to end
But lucky for us, that's just not your style
Instead, you'll get up again
Brush the dust from your smile
And head down the path laid out before you
Ready to fight your way to the end

Though we can’t win this race for you
Or even join in on the fight
We’ll never be far from your side
Ready to catch you when you fall
To help you get up again

With friends and family near
Your support system all in place
This is a battle you just might win
Another chance to prolong the race