A Bit of Wit, Mk. 2

Been taking a break from most social media. Just tired of all the constant outrage and I need to recharge.

I checked Facebook and Bluesky for the first time in a week earlier today. Instantly regretted it.

If it wasn't for the fact that 95% of my friends and my entire family use Facebook and Facebook only to communicate (I so much prefer just straight text messages), I would've deleted it ages ago.

I keep waffling back and forth between keeping it and deleting it. The fear of cutting off that line of communication keeps me from doing it. But then again, I keep having to remember that I can't keep chasing connections with people who don't have time in their lives for me anymore.

Five days away from turning 40, and man, I did not expect at the end of my 30s to have my spouse de-nest from me a year after we bought a house together, lose most of my friends to parenthood, lose more friends to just becoming complete shut-ins who now apparently turn into pumpkins after 9 PM, to now find myself very directionless and lonely.

The next decade of my life is going to be profoundly different. Since the life I thought I was going to have once I became a homeowner has been completely blown to hell, I've no choice to but to find a new path forward, with new people, even though trying to make new friends and new community is so much harder at this point.

I’ve been thinking about my friends a lot lately. I miss them. I barely see the majority of them.

When I bought my house two years ago, I was thrilled at the prospect that I would now be a 1-2 hours’ drive away from most of them, and was looking forward to having them come visit. But that hasn’t come to pass.

In fact, I’ve recently had the painful realization that for all the people I call friend, there’s really just a handful of people in my life that regularly keep in touch with me, and a lot of my relationships with most of my friends are one-sided. Usually it’s me doing the outreach, the checking in, the planning. Not so much the other way around.

Furthermore, when Ethan made the decision to move to Buffalo last year, I chose not to follow him for two reasons: one, we had just bought the house only a year prior, and I was not going to move again. And two, I didn’t want to abandon everyone. I didn’t want to leave the majority of my friends behind and move to a place where I know no one and know nothing about. I didn’t want to start from nothing AGAIN.

But, as time’s gone on, it’s becoming more and more evident that my second reason for staying here is getting flimsier by the day. With most of my friends now parents, the idea of them visiting me, even just an hour away, seems to be an insurmountable problem. And I get it, it’s a lot of logistics and effort to bundle little ones in a car for a drive, even an hour away. Many also have no energy for anything else. And some have made parenting their whole identity and are presently losing what made them a person, like they’re not allowed to have any other interests outside of being a parent, so something as small as a day trip to visit (with or without the kids) comes with a monumental side of guilt.

For me, though, as someone without kids, and will never have kids, losing most of my friends to parenthood makes me feel sad. They simply have no time for me. It’s not really a coincidence that the friends that I still keep in frequent contact with are ones who are also not parents, but also the ones who are 3+ hours away. It’s pretty telling that in the last 2 years I’ve spent more time with people who live multiple hours away (or even a whole country away) than those who live within 90 minutes of me.

It also makes me feel a bit resentful. I lost my 20s largely due to Crohn’s disease; I had to miss a lot of social gatherings and time with friends because I was constantly in pain with flare-ups, in and out of doctor’s offices, hospitals, and bedridden for weeks or months at a stretch. While my friends were enjoying their after-college life, I couldn’t participate. And by the time I finally was healed, put into remission, and graduated college (I was nearly 30), my friends all got married and started settling down, and began getting to the business of starting families. While I was sick, they moved on with their own lives. When I was finally able to party, so to speak, they got it all out of their system. And while I don’t blame my friends for going about their own lives without me, it’s not fucking fair.

I’ve spent my 30s trying to make up for lost time, trying to chase my 20s. And I’ve largely failed at it. I’m not getting that decade of my life back. My friends have moved on, and I must resign myself to do the same. I simply can’t wait until all those kids turn 18 and my friends have their lives back, as it were.

There’s no one to blame, really. I’m not mad at my friends for following their own paths. I can’t expect them to wait up for me. It simply means that I must go my own way and stop chasing a time that I can’t get back, even if one of those potential paths forward means I leave the place where I’ve spent the last two decades of my life behind and start all over again.

I’m trying to find the motivation to get back to my art. I haven’t picked up my cameras at all in 2025. Haven’t done a photo shoot since last fall. Haven’t touched my piano in two and a half months. Recent major life changes (namely, my spouse no longer living with me full-time so he can be closer to his other partner and her kids) and the fresh new horrors served daily that comprise our political shitshow have landed a significant blow to my desire to create. Re-learning how to live and support myself and spending much of my days in an empty house sort of has me thinking, well, what’s the point?

Because of the new living situation, finances are now much tighter, which means my ability to travel and see friends has been significantly curtailed, and I don’t see that situation changing anytime soon barring a significant increase in my salary and re-building up my vacation time. Most of my friends are parents, which means they’re running on negative spoons and therefore unable to be social. Most of my friends are also at least an hour away, which only intensifies my feelings of isolation.

I’m hoping that changes next month – right now, I’m taking care of my spouse as he recovers from major surgery, but the second he’s able to drive again, he’s hightailing it back to Buffalo. Choir and bowling wrap up soon, so I’ll have a couple of weeknights back for several months. That’ll hopefully give me the opportunity to get out and be social, expand my circle and make new friends locally, queer friends, non-parent friends.

For now, I feel like I’m just treading water just trying to get through one day and to the next.

A new chapter in my life began this past weekend.

My spouse moved to Buffalo. More specifically, he will be splitting his time between here in Albany and Buffalo. Having two partners, myself and Rosemary, he, understandably and fairly, wants to spend his time more equitably between us. Not to mention that he’s a major part of her kids’ lives, essentially family to them, and he wants to spend more time with them and see them grow.

Living on his own is also an experience he’s wanted to have for YEARS. He’s never done it before. He’s always shared living space his entire life, be it at home, college, and then me. (His wandering foot has also been part of the reason that we’ve moved house 8 times in 20 years XD).

So how this is going to work is that he’s going to spend a couple weeks here, a couple weeks there, give or take, keeping his job and working out of both Albany and Buffalo.

It’s a new experience for me as well. For the first time in my life, I too am more or less living on my own. I’ve never had the experience of living the sort of single bachelor life, as I’ve also shared living space with someone my whole life. It’s going to be a whole new thing coming home from work to a (mostly) empty house, cooking and cleaning for one, sleeping alone, and maintaining upkeep of a home for one. I’m a colossal extrovert, so I don’t expect to keep to myself and be a hermit.

I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’m experiencing an entire range of emotions. On the one hand, I’m thrilled and excited for him to have this experience. He’s got my full support. Ethan prioritizing and advocating for himself is incredibly important to me, as is his relationship with Rosemary. We are both much different people than we were even just a couple of years ago, even beyond the obvious, and I’m curious to see how this will make us grow as people. As out and proud queer and polyamorous individuals, the path ahead is full of potential.

On the other, this is eating me up so much. Change is big and scary and full of uncertainty. Old childhood fears of abandonment have resurfaced. The old security blankets of perceived monogamy and passing as a straight couple are gone. Add the anti-trans bullshit our government's engaging in for good measure. There is a part of my brain that’s absolutely convinced I’ll never see Ethan again, which is categorically untrue (for fuck’s sake, he’s going to be here the next few weekends), but I’m going to let my brain have its tantrum and get it out of my system. Repression will do me no good.

And before you ask: our marriage is fine. In fact, it’s gotten stronger these past couple of years. Thank therapy, oh my fucking god. I wish I started seeing a therapist years ago. Better late than never, I suppose.
A new adventure awaits. Such is life. The only way is onward.

So, 7 years and 3 weeks since I last posted here? Guess I have some cobwebs and rodent nests to clear out.

Did I miss anything?

An interesting position I've been put into at work: I've gone on two interviews for internal positions, both promotional opportunities. I've been informed that there is a very high interest in hiring me for either of these positions--one of them told me on no uncertain terms that they are ready to make me a formal offer. However, they have not yet made said offer to me because the head of my unit has somehow suggested to the other units to hold off because now a job opportunity, a promotion that practically has my name on it, has opened up in my unit, and my unit does NOT want me to leave.

The job posting in my unit is written in such a way where I already do 90-95% of the duties listed. It is very obviously meant to get my attention. They know I've been going on interviews because I aced the Professional Career Opportunities civil service exam. One huge problem--that posting in my unit is for a non-union-represented State position, whereas the other two are. So now I'm looking at a situation where there's a promotion opportunity that has my name all over it but I'd have to sacrifice union protections and some sick leave, which, for someone with my health, is a big deal-breaker.

Basically, a behind-the-scenes turf war between 3 units has broken out for me. On the one hand, I'm glad I'm wanted. On the other, I'm gonna have to make a decision VERY soon that I only partially don't want to make. I'm pretty certain I'm not going to apply for the position in my unit--I'm 99% sure that they clearly mean to put me into it if I apply, but I don't want to be in a job where I'm at the mercy of the Governor without any recourse. I like my current job and unit, yes, but not enough to give up union protections and nearly 40% of the sick time I currently earn.

All I hope is that when I do accept a position in another unit and break the news to my supervisors, they don't start bawling like at my last two jobs. That's the only downside to making the decision; in nearly every job I've had, handing in my resignation has the effect on management as if I just ran over a puppy. UGH.

Since the election, I've felt like I've gone through the various stages of grief repeatedly. It's very easy to fall into despair when the rest of your world has been flipped on its head.

I'm still struggling on occasion to come to grips with the fact that my faith in humanity is pretty much shattered, when the hatred of society towards anyone not white, heterosexual, cisgendered, and Christian is on full display for all to see.

Being social or putting myself into creative modes by making new photography or podcasts have helped to alleviate the pain, but leave it to my wife as ever to snap me out of such a funk, a trait she's excelled at for nearly 13 years. I feel now that while the world still sucks, and there's still a daily deluge of diarrhea in the news, it does not cause me to sink quite so much into despair. There's not so much a resignation or giving up, but more like acceptance--not of the terrible that's going on and the harm being done, but accepting that while there is nothing I can do as to the clusterfuck in Washington, there is still good that can be done in spite of it. There are still loved ones I can offer anything they need to. I need to take care of me and mine.

With that cloud lifted for now, I only managed to enjoy a short while of clarity when reality hit me in the face while doing taxes--for the first time in years, I can no longer claim the fact that I was in college, so all those years of getting a nice refund from the IRS were over. April and I got hit with a hefty bill, a bill that we can pay, but there was a benefit to this cold slap of reality. It forced us to take a good, long, hard look at our finances, and we realized that we waste a ton of money each month paying for conveniences and laziness and buying stuff that we don't particularly need. So much so that if we pretended that we were poor and living on a shoestring budget, we could tackle the giant Debt Kraken that is the biggest obstacle towards our starting a family.

I am not bringing a child into this world saddled with over $100K of debt (most of that in the form of my student loans and credit card debt), no fucking way. With the realization that we can make serious headway over the next couple of years and wipe out a big chunk of this to a point where we'd feel comfortable trying for a family and not go broke, that's what we plan to do.

In other news, PAX East 2017 is coming up this weekend, so I and my brother-in-law will be in Boston, MA for the 3-day convention. It'll be my 6th, and it's the only con I go to, so I don't mind the expense. Three full days of video gaming, tabletop gaming, panels, and concerts. I am so excited to see what this year's Indie Megabooth has in store.

After that, I have an art show opening on St. Patrick's Day in downtown Albany: the 39th annual Photography Regional, which rotates between several galleries in the Capital District. This year, it's the Albany Center Gallery's turn to host the event. One of the three pieces I've submitted to this year's show was selected for display, and that always makes me happy. Also that weekend, we get a visit from Rosemary. She's a lovely person, and seeing her and April together makes me such joy. The final weekend of March so far will have me getting back to running a D&D campaign with one group of friends. Been looking forward to it--we took a break for the holidays, and we're picking it up again after a 4-month hiatus.

Thinking about the week ahead. It'll be a short week because PAX, but I'm not looking forward to Tuesday...my first test as a new supervisor is to reprimand the person whom I supervise regarding his habitual lateness and leaving early. Apparently this has been a problem for some years, his arriving to work 15 minutes late every day and leaving 15 minutes early. His previous supervisor (who has since retired) was always of the opinion that since he's worked for the State for over 30 years, and is close to retirement, that there was no point in calling him out on his lateness and leaving early because he already has one foot out the door, as it were. Now that supervisor is gone and upper management wants this to be fixed pronto...they're throwing me at him, who has never officially been in a position of authority, to formally reprimand this person who's at least 25-30 years my senior. We'll see how it goes.

So that's where I'm at for now. Immersed in the world of Hyrule for the new Switch I picked up, immersed in my art, and in a few, immersed in sleep.