Wednesday, October 23, 2002 :
Success. After about 6 months of politicking and persuading, I have finally gotten to today. Kickoff for the IT Stretegic Planning process with the Gratner Group assisting (words mispelled for a reason.....). The project team all showed up for the kickoff meeting, and all were actively listening and participating. I think the end results (finishing up next February!) will be very helpful and beneficial for IT and my "place of work." Also, my "other" project has come together and I've gotten Kudos for that one. Yippee meee. I'm heading out the door early today. I feel like I deserve it. Maybe I'll go for a walk on the beach when I get home, or maybe I'll just get on my damn video game again and waste the night away.... Any bets?
Tuesday, October 22, 2002 :
Here's a note in response to my blogger friend Todd at http://www.nakedboymoving.com/.
Todd, regarding your "Losing My Religion" blog, I would say there is nothing wrong with losing 'religion' but I hope you don't lose your faith and concern for things Spiritual. If you read my earlier blogs, you can see I've gone through a lot surrounding being gay and Christian and it took me 40 years (yes I'm old) to come to terms with being both gay (it's who I am) and being Christian (I call it being Spiritual these days). I was hard-core into the church scene, and loved it like you did for many of the same reasons. I was on the board of directors of a very large evangelical christian church on the west coast for several years - - all while in the closet, and depressed, and unhappy. I loved the spiritual life, the music, worship, but I was unhappy with who I was because I was lead to believe my lifestyle was 'wrong' or that it was a sin to be gay. Well that's just a bunch of bunk. God made us this way, and if He wanted us to change or be any different he would long ago have answered the prayers of millions of people like us who have begged God to change us into straight people. Today, like you I am less involved in church for the same reasons, but mostly because many people in church it seems to me are more lost than people not so 'religious' and churchy, and frankly, pious and hypocritical. Don't get me wrong, I am not anti Christ, but anti - religion, anti anything that is not loving or accepting of people who God loves but who happen to be different. I can't tell you how many times I've prayed to God to "bring unity between the church and the gay community" because of the damage an unforgiving and unaccpeting church has done on people who are struggling with their sexuality and trying to figure out who they are in the bigger sense of it all. The church has probably sent more people to Hell by accusing gay people of being sinners and thus turning them off entirely to church, or God, than anything else on the planet.
There are great resources out there about the subject and I'm sure one can find them on Amazon, for instance. One book that comes to mind is "What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality". That book and therapy helped me to realize that the bunk the church has been espousing for centuries is flat out wrong, and that it is not I who needs to change my homosexuality, but the church that needs to change it wrong information about people like us.
So here's to a loving God, Universe, or whatever you want to call it. Here's to tolerance world-wide for anyone who happens to be different from us. Here's to you going to church where you want and feeling welcome and loved, regardless of who you are. Here's to you my friend. :)
My how time flies. I have been so Fricken busy at work I've not had a moment to blog. I spend most all day, every day at work on the computer, and so that is when I blog. Rarely anymore do I go home and log onto the computer. Nights are mostly left these days with video games (Playstation 2), TV, DVD's, dinner/drinks with friends, or a walk on the beach. So forgive me (to all you millions of faithful fans out there who are patiently waiting to read about my ever-so-exciting life) for not blogging in several days!
One successful project completed (hey I got a note from my boss saying 'thank you' and two movie certificates!) and another one to kick off in the morning (lot's of prep work went into that one!) and the BIG BIG BIG project (can you spell t-h-r-e-e- years and $15 M-l-l-i-o-n dollars?) coming up as soon as we get the executive buy-in I need to kick it off.
Oh my date! I got my first date through this gay dating service thingy I signed up for. Let's just say sparks did not fly, and I'm looking forward to the next one. I'm supposed to give feedback so they know what I liked and did not about the person, and I did, and so hopefully next time they'll send me Mr. Right (as opposed to Mr. Right Now).
Monday, October 14, 2002 : My dad has left the apartment. Amen. After two weeks of not having my own personal space in my very small apartment, I am finally alone again. One week I was travelling on business, then the very day I arrived home I picked up my dad to 'babysit' him while my mother was out of town visiting my sister. My dad is on oxygen 24/7 and has the tendency to fall, can not make it to the bathroom without the use of a portable urinal, and pretty much needs someone to watch out for him. All in all, we got along pretty well, in fact he enjoyed staying withh me so much, he is hoping to come back again (not soon I will add). He left Saturday and I've been playing a video game I picked up since then (although I'm at work now, but back to it tonight!).
Today has been a stressful day already at work. Three big projects all have deadlines falling on today. And a meeting with my V.P. went very differently than I anticipated. She's wanting to change things with a vendor we have already signed a contract with and she has had plenty of opportunity to review the work plan and question things prior to us kicking off the project! Frustration
That's it for now, back to the business. One of these days I need to learn how to add links, etc., to this page... but that's another day.
Tuesday, October 08, 2002 : Let the stars and the heavens teach us something about the truth of reality. Okay, with that heavy intro, let me explain what I'm getting at. When you gaze up at the stars at night, the light you see is perhaps many millions of years old. Focus on any one star, and quite possibly that star no longer exists, and died or exploded thousands or millions of years ago, but the light from the event or explosion or whatever won't reach our planet for potentially millions of years. Take it a step further, and there could have been some cosmic event that wiped out every galaxy and star in the universe (except ours) and we would not know it until the light from all those stars reached us. So what's my point? What you see is not reality, but old news. We look into the night sky and see stars and think we see them as they exist today, but in reality we are looking back into the past millions of years because of the time it takes for light to travel those vast distances. And so when you look at anything from now on, realize that what you see is made possible by the light reflecting off that object or person and it (the light) travels to your retina and you process what you are seeing. It's a stretch I know, but realize that everything we see is distorted by interpretation, light, and time.
Along the same lines, I was thinking the other day that if we wanted to see our own Earth as it was millions of years ago (say the dinosaur age, or the formation of the planet itself) "all" we'd have to do is place really large mirrors at various distances (say 5 million light years, 10 million, etc.) and point a really big telescope at the mirror to see the Earth as it was. Of course there is the problem of getting those mirrors in outer space in the first place. Any suggestions?
One other similar example of how time and light distort reality is this scenario. Imagine that you and a partner are on different planets that are say 1 light year away from each other, and that you had telescopes powerful enough to focus down to a person standing on a street. If both of you were able to communicate with each other in real time (no delay, like on the telephone) and point both your telescopes at each other, you would not see each other because you would both be seeing the location as it was one year ago. Again, in reality you are both looking at each other's location but you won't see each other due to the time it takes light to travel between the two planets.
One day we need to figure out how to travel through space and time at the speed of thought. How do we get "outside" of time so as to eliminate the distortion of reality? Somehow I think the answers may lie with our untapped mental capacities, maybe telepathy or astral travel, or something like that. I find these concepts fascinating.
Monday, October 07, 2002 :
I've not been able to make any entries here because last week I was in Atlanta for a business conference all week and did not have easy access to the web. The conference was really quite productive in that I was able to meet with many companies that I will be evaluating for a project I am managing for my employer. I even had the head of a company try to recruit me for a job.... How nice to be in such demand. :)
My ex Ricardo watched my place and "Kitty" while I was out and we had a couple days before I left and a day after I got back to get caught up. We were both very nice to each other and we found that we can be friends and not try killing each other. I like that, as I believe it is always best to keep peace with people and to forgive. It makes me feel a lot better about myself and the world, and I don't need to go through life looking over my shoulder. Life is way too short to hold grudges or stay angry at someone.
Ricardo left Saturday, and the same day I picked up my dad to 'babysit' him while my mother is out of town visiting my sister and her family. My dad is old, senile, has emphasema, a heart condition, is on oxygen 24/7 and he is staying with me in my little apartment all week. We've already had our "moments" but I think it will be okay in the end (thank God I am at work all day). Again, my dad will probably not be around much longer, so I am trying desperately to keep my cool and not let him "get to me" like he can do. I left the house this morning and he was still asleep. When he wakes up, he calls my office and leaves a message and also my cell, to urgently call him at the house. But because I did not supposedly tell him it was okay to answer the phone, he let it ring and ring! I finally called the apartment office and asked them to have security check on him in case he had fallen or something. Jeez. He was okay, but just was not answering the phone.
Formerly "A Day in the life of a Gay Guy", I've changed the name to reflect more of how I'm thinking. Being Gay is not the focal point of my life. I'm a guy with interests like everyone else, I just happen to be Gay.
