FEBRUARY 2007 (LIVEJOURNAL)

2007-02-25 19:55:00
2007-02-26 02:22:01
So it's been a while...
And things haven't changed a whole hell of a lot. I went over to myspace for a while, which is an okay site, but it's complicated and not a very easy site to add photos or do much with. It's more of a 'be seen' site, which is fun because I did connect with some friends from way back. But I like the ability to customize livejournal and I have more history with this site. So I think I will stick with this and update myspace every so often. The real truth is life had been really boring. My sister came back to Duluth in September and basically ruined my family's life since; Missy at 41 is still Missy at 21...she still lies, she still sets us up, makes stories up about my parents to try to drive a wedge between me, my other sister and my parents, she now tells lies to my nephews about our family to get them to dislike us. After 20 years of my sister's insanity, I have decided that I need to cut my ties with her completely. She is unhealthy and seeks to destroy anything that comes in her way, anyone who is happy, she seeks to make their lives miserable with lies and deceit. I guess the straw that broke the camel's back was that this time, she brought her 4-year-old son up here for us to become attached to, then she pulled her classic scheme: get us close and bonded with her son, then when she doesn't get her way, she takes off with him and doesn't allow us to see him. I've decided that, unfortunately, because she is such an emotional danger to us, I can not have the kind of relationship with my nephews so long as she is their mother. She uses her sons as manipulation towards us, then pulls them away once she feels angry or needs to feel power. I have decided to take the power back from her and have nothing to do with her or the kids until they are 18. I've basically decided that she is no longer my sister after witnessing how much she has hurt my family, and the scale of damage she has done this last time around. Anyone who hurts my parents the way she has is not a family member. Since there is no reasoning with her (she lies her way out of everything)...I do not see a reconciliation with her. The sad thing is, when she came back up here from Illinois in September, we were ready to open our home to her and her son; she needed to start over, and she needed to come home. That was fine, I supported her 100% and even helped her find a job and took care of my nephew while she was at work. But then the truth came out: the real story was that she fell in love with a ten-time convicted felon from Chicago who had beaten her up last summer and was on parole and living in a halfway house there, she was stealing things here, pawning them and sending him the money. All the while giving us this sob story about how she was this battered woman, etc...what she has become is the same kind of con artist that these men that she has been sleeping with over the past 25 years have taught her to become. My parents and I have been just taken aback at where this woman comes from - none of us have been taught or believe in these things that she does. So as depressing as that is, I have been very angry about how she has treated my family. She pulled the ultimate 'fuck you' with us and it does no good to get in contact with her because she doesn't care. She only cares about where her next sexual encounter is coming from and when this man (who has convictions of robbery, armed robbery, battery, cocaine dealing back to 1982!) gets off parole. My guess is he will not be allowed to leave Illinois and come to Minnesota, so she is most likely going to have to move back there. So it's been a tough winter managing my depression. I also found out that while I completed my degree at UMD last May, my GPA wasn't high enough to get into the Master's in Social Work program for this coming fall. So since I already completed the degree, there really isn't much I can do to improve my GPA. So ultimately I feel like...I don't know what to do next. I had my heart set on continuing on with school, and an undergraduate degree in psychology is basically useless. Again, I'm pissed off because I know of people who got into that program with a lower GPA than mine, of course the admissions folks won't disclose any of that to me. So another door shut. And then of course the reality that it's now been 11 years since I've had any kind of boyfriend or even romantic interest in my life doesn't help either. The longer this goes on the worse I feel sometimes: I looked at this gorgeous apartment downtown a while ago, which would have been a nice arrangement for me but then it dawned on me...after moving everything in, sitting down and realizing that I'm in an empty apartment, really alone, how is that going to make me feel any better? Sometimes I don't like living at home with my family, but they are here, we get along, and they are important to me. Sitting alone in an apartment would not help things in my life; it would just reinforce that gnawing feeling that as a gay man, I have basically no options in meeting anyone here or anywhere else, the longer I can put off that reality of living by myself the better. It hit me last week that the only thing that doesn't bring up feelings of resentment or depression is my working out and running. I am planning on running Grandma's Marathon in June and have been training for it. It's the only thing I can get excited about right now. Exercise is the only thing that keeps me going...it's something that I do for me, that I accomplish, that I know is a positive in my life. It cancels out my anger about my sister, or school, or no romantic options...it gets my mind off of 'what am I going to do with my life' although I have plenty of people here to remind me of that. Maybe that's why I've isolated myself from people somewhat because that's a conversation I just don't feel like having right now. Somedays I just want to be left alone...other days I feel like if I'm in a crowd I'm going to have a panic attack; then I have days where I feel so talkative and comfortable with everybody that I don't want to come home. It's this up and down thing that I hate...
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81504
2007-02-26 19:34:00
2007-02-27 01:56:32
Back to our great weather...
We got 13 inches of snow over the weekend. I saw a car spinning out coming down 6th Avenue East this morning; we were at the stoplight - thank God - and avoided getting hit by this much. After months of 'nah - we're not going to get any snow this winter', we got socked on Saturday night with a lot of snow. Which is a good thing, I guess, because we are in a drought and the grass fire hazards here are very real come spring. I would rather get the precipitation in the form of snow, now, rather than have a crappy, rainy spring and summer like 2004. The past two summers were unforgettable - I think I was out running or walking every evening, and just getting away from the house for a while got me involved in things I wouldn't have ever done on my own. So I hope this summer is a good one as well. I've been kind of anxious lately concerning what I want to do with my life...I know, I go on about this all the time, especially when I just get done reading the young professionals stories in the newspaper or any gay magazine that always seems to highlight those with unreachable status in the gay community (but somehow it's expected that you are as successful...not only must you be a sex object, but you have to be a success object as well. Straight people have no idea how high the bar is raised for gay men to compete, to be worthy, to accumulate wealth, to achieve status; all this just so we can stand up at some 5-mintue dating thing and say why we are worth loving. It's bullshit, I hate myself for buying into it, but it seems exhausting to come up with 'some other way'. It's like with the universities...in my opinion, colleges and universities are bigger scam artists than cell phone companies. They give you this whole song and dance while you're in admissions about how great their school is and here, here's all this extra money and loans, then if you graduate you discover that having a college degree today is about as prestigious as having a driver's license. Everyone else has one too. So, the degree no longer gives you the edge that it used to. Now it's expected that you have it. With all the debt that we have after graduating, then having to figure out how to navigate graduate school (which I didn't get into)...it makes me think that college is going to be out of reach for many people in the next decade. Whether it's not affordable, not worth it or the fact that some people are just not cut out for it, there has to be some other way of carving out a future for yourself besides signing up for 30 years of student loan repayments for a degree that probably didn't get you very far to begin with. I'm not against education. Don't get me wrong. I am against the whole reality today that a degree is now the ONLY way to advance oneself. Before, there were other options. Apprenticeships. Techinical schools that would teach a trade in six months. Or simply going out and finding a job that paid a decent wage and provided for a future. When I look at UMD, it appears that high school kids today have been told to bypass all those things and head straight for a 4 year university. And that's understandable. Most of those community and techinical colleges that offer 6 month or 2 year certificates aren't worth anything because you're stuck being an Occupational Therapy Assistant, for example, with no chance of advancement. With a four year degree, you have a bit more you can do, and you're not stuck with one job option (someone's assistant). Unfortunately, the bad part is that since everyone now has a four year degree, the market has been watered down, and the value of that degree is about the same as a high school diploma. My head hurts from thinking about it. I hope the weather clears up a little bit. Today I went for a long walk from here to downtown, which is about four miles, just to see how other parts of the city were dealing with the snow. It was a mess...sidewalks weren't cleared, I had to walk in the street and dodge cars (lots of fun)...the good news is in a couple weeks, since daylight savings comes early this year, it will be light out until 6:30 now, which will be great. Hopefully spring will come a little earlier this year.
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81856
2007-02-26 20:43:00
2007-02-27 02:43:43
Jimmy Kimmel George Takei on Tim Hardaway homophobic rant
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA20dKc3kK8
This was SO clever
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