I woke up this morning to have this conversation…

This from a person who had graduated high school before I even started high school. So the fact that they would be reading the school newspaper to being with is baffling. The fact that they are reading it 13 years later is baffling. The fact that I apparently wrote something so riveting that having to search out the rest of it become necessary is also quite baffling.

I’m just so confused by this. Something I wrote when I was 17 is about to come back and haunt me.

Nothing too drastic. Just a bit of a tweak. There are still some things from the old version missing, but it’s a big process to redo everything, so things will reappear over the next few days.

But I kinda like the change. It was time.

If I’m evolving, there’s no reason the design of this blog shouldn’t evolve a little bit too, right?

But damn, it’s time like this when I wish I was sleeping with a web designer who could just do all of this for me.

Any volunteers?

And does it ever.

A few months ago I was certain that I was on the cusp of this whole new awakening and evolution into a greater and grander version of myself. And as it turns out, I was completely wrong. Or maybe I wasn’t wrong, but just had my timing off.

Because the past few weeks have been the exact opposite of that. I don’t want to go so far as to say that I hit rock bottom, but I did fall into a bit of a slump that kinda took the wind out of my sails and left me feeling lost.

There were no gigantic disasters or serious setbacks that pulled the rug out from underneath me. Instead, it’s just been a string of small hurdles that kept coming and each one compiling on top of the others to eventually break me down.

As I started to think about it and reflect on it, I realized that this has been a longer series of hurdles than I had even realized. The last really good thing that happened to me was over five months ago. It was successfully completing The Goofy Challenge down in Orlando in January. That was a goal I had spent almost five years working toward, and once I had done it, I guess I didn’t have any other specific goals in mind to work for, and I just kind of started drifting with the current and lost focus on anything.

And then the bad things started happening. Nothing serious. An illness here, a problem at work there, a fight with a friend there, this and that here, some more of that over that. And it seemed like before one was completely solved and gone, the next one started, so I never had a moment of calm.

Just in the past month since my last blog entry, for example:

I had surgery. A minor surgery for a non-life threatening condition, but a surgery nonetheless. Because of that I was unable to use the gym for about a month, which not only threw my daily routine completely out of whack, but I no longer had my daily stress reliever to work though all the daily problems the way I normally would. And now I have a scar. And I realize that everyone has a scar somewhere, but this is my first one and I’m still dealing with the way it makes me feel to know that I have this permanent mark on my body now that makes me uncomfortable.

Side note: I’m trying to come up with an amazing story to make the scar much sexier than it really is. I’m thinking of going toward the stabbed in the mugging angle. Perhaps saving an elderly woman and her baby kitten from some purse snatching thug.

Anyway, as the surgery and recovery period was beginning to near completion, I found out that I was losing one of the most important people in my life. He has been a daily fixture, and has become something of a big brother to me. The male figure in my life that my father was never present to become, and that due to the eleven year age difference between my biological brother and myself, he was also never able to be. I saw him everyday, and would now be losing that connection to him, and to be honest, I felt like I was being tossed aside and abandoned. I was certain, and still fearful that our friendship will now consist of occasional text messages and hanging out once or twice sporadically before dissolving into nothing more than occasionally commenting on a Facebook status.

The my phone crashed and I lost over 300 pictures that were unable to be recovered.

Then I had tried to rise above and take my life into my own hands and make strides to better myself at my job. That didn’t work out the way I had hoped, and made me feel as if I had spent the last eight years of my life wasting my time and feeling like I had allowed myself to get stuck and trapped in my current spot and started to panic that I will never make anything of myself and never rise above the financial threshold between poverty and getting by.

The day I was told that the job situation didn’t go my way, I woke up with a severe case of pink eye. I spent four days with a scratchy eye that leaked goo and would be dried shut every morning. I felt and looked awful, but couldn’t stay home from work because I needed the money.

The morning after my pink eye cleared up, I woke up to find that it migrated to the other eye. Thankfully that one only lasted one day, but the following day I woke up with a severe sore throat that lasted another four or five days.

All that was only this past month. It’s been going on like this consistently for the past five or so months. And it finally took its toll.

Last week, I completely shut down. Emotionally and online. I turned off my twitter. I deactivated my facebook. I disappeared. I’m not sure why or what it was supposed to solve. I was just tired of seeing everyone else talk about (honestly or fabricated) how amazing their lives were while I never seemed to have anything but “Well, this crappy thing happened now” to talk about. So, I mostly just wanted to turn the volume down on them and focus more on myself.

And you know what, I didn’t miss facebook at all. It actually felt kind of nice to be away for awhile. And when a few people noticed I was missing and reached out to me, it felt good to know that some people actually missed me and wanted to make sure I was ok.

After about a week, I was starting to feel a little better about things and started to realize that I can’t use what other people are doing and saying to determine how I’m feeling. Easier said than done, obviously, but ultimately my feelings are mine and I’m the only one in control of them. So, I cautiously reactivated my facebook and started using twitter again. I’m still seeing the same old “my life is fabulous” and “my friends and I have the most amazing times being awesome” and “look how epic my life is” crap, but whatever. There’s always going to be those people who pose and preen in public, I guess. I’m just gonna be me, and if it’s not good enough, it’s not good enough.

I’m still far from being 100% ok, but I’m trying to remain confident that I will be. If I may be so nerdy as to borrow an analogy from the television show Felicity that I will most certainly bastardize with my paraphrasing…

I’m like a pinata. I’m a beautiful creation, and life is smacking me around a lot lately, but the payoff will be delicious!

Isn’t that what they say?

I just didn’t realize He could do it all in the same week. Mere two days apart.

On Tuesday two friends of mine welcomed their first child into the world. I personally have no desire to have children and can’t really fathom why anyone else would, but this is their life, not mine. And they did want one, so the fact that they popped one out this week is a thing to celebrate.

Who will he grow up to be? What will he do with his life? Where will he go? Will he marry someday? Will he have children and ruin his life too?

Sorry, there I go projecting my personal feelings onto other people again.

But a birth is an exciting event. It’s a completely clean slate of a human being. Anything and everything is possible. Every single choice we make in raising a child either continues him on the path to perfection or pushes him just slightly off course more and more.

Too much pressure in raising a child. Too much responsibility. Too much expense. It’s just not for me. But I’m glad there are people out there who do want that job, and enjoy doing it.

I’m very happy for my friends that they are now parents and wish them all the best in this nightmare of a life they’ve chosen.

I’m sorry! I just don’t get it! I’m trying!

Anyway…

Two days after a new life entered my circle of friends, another life was taken.

My friend’s father passed away.

They were kind of expecting it due to recent medical issues, but I doubt that made it any easier or bearable. I can’t imagine the emptiness that comes with losing a parent. And I honestly don’t even want to try to imagine it. It just scares me way too much. I don’t know how my friend isn’t in hysterical fits right now, because I think that’s all I would be able to manage were I in his shoes.

I don’t know what to say to him. I don’t know what to do for him. I want to be a good friend and do and say the right things, but… what are the right things? What can a person say or do that will erase the hurt caused by the loss of a parent?

I sent flowers, which seems like such a trite and pointless thing to do. They don’t help in any way whatsoever. And after a couple days, they just die too. It’s like adding insult to injury.

What’s that? One of your loved ones just died? Then here, take these beautiful flowers and watch them die too.

But, what else do you do when someone dies? You send flowers. That’s what you do. That’s what people do.

People do weird things when you stop to think about them sometimes.

I’ve been thinking about death a lot lately, and naturally this turn of events didn’t help. But I won’t get into those thoughts right now. I don’t think I could wrap them up nicely in a few coherent paragraphs right now anyway. Nor do I want to mentally go back to that place right now.

Right now I just keep wondering why life was given and taken all at the same time? Seems like a cruel prank to play.

That’s not at all true. I’m really not that busy. Not any more busy than I have been all along, really. I just haven’t really had much of anything to say. I’m not foolish enough to be one of those people who thinks every little thing I say or do warrants being saved until the end of time in a journal form for anyone and everyone to read. Especially considering I’m in no way well known or cared about by the masses, and I don’t even really think anyone reads this blog. Maybe one or two of you? Hello, are you out there? Have any of you stuck around all this time?

Anyway…

I’ve been feeling lately like I’m going through a bit of an evolution lately. Nothing major or remarkable, just a sort of shift.

I’ve been allowing myself to experience some new things. I’ve lifted the ban on some things that I, for some naive reason, I had always dismissed as being of no interest or value. I’ve been opening up and doing things that, up until now, would have made me self conscious and/or uncomfortable.

And wonder of wonders, I’m having a fantastic time!

In a way it’s sort of making me feel bad. I try not to have regrets in life, but if I’m being honest, I am kind of regretting that it took me until I was thirty years old (Yes. I’m a gay male who is not afraid to admit his age begins with a three) to allow myself to…well, live. I feel like I wasted a decade of my life not having any fun or enjoying life to the extent that I now know is potentially there. I was a giant, effing stick in the mud while everyone else was out having a fantastic time.

And now I worry that maybe I’m too late? Are all of my peers now to the point in their lives where they are leaving the “fun” behind and settling down into the life that I just spent a decade in?

Have I been living in reverse? Have I been reading the book from the last page forward? Have I been listening to the songs backward and hearing the negative messages while everyone else has been dancing to the song and actually enjoying life?

Have I gotten a little too melodramatic for one blog entry?

I may be late. I may be the last one to show up to the dinner party only to find there’s nothing left to eat.

But, by golly, at least I’ve finally made it. And I’m gonna savor this after dinner mint for as long as it will last.

What a ridiculous metaphor.

I’m gonna shut myself up before this gets any more outlandish.

Just in case you are interested in a little more of me in your life and my sporadic blogging schedule isn’t cutting the mustard for you, I encourage you to follow me on twitter for my brilliance there. And as of January 1, I’ve been using dailybooth to post one picture of myself per day (and so far I’ve actually kept to that schedule). Look for me on both services under the username: nickynax

And now…back to evolving. I may actually stand on two feet by the end of the week!

In recent years, I gave up making resolutions for new years. If there was something I wanted to do, I did it then. I didn’t wait for a change of the calendar to dictate when I tried to improve my life.

I decided to start training for endurance races in a March. I went Vegan in an August. I decided to finally straighten my teeth in a February.

But, I’m just in the mood to make some resolutions this time around. Kinda. Nothing fancy, just small things.

I’d like to take more pictures/videos of my life.

I’d like to read more. I was doing better there for a month or so this autumn, but fell back out of habit again.

And I’d like to work on letting go of who I think I should be in order to be who I really am.

See, just small things.

Happy New Year!

This photo was taken from my bedroom window when I was just wanting to test out some new features and apps on my iPhone. Perhaps I overdid it with the processing of the picture, but I still think it looks kind of interesting.

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That’s right, lovers! In 36 hours I’m hopping on a plane and heading to the Left Coast to spend nine glorious days experiencing the magic and splendor of Los Angeles and Disneyland.

Of COURSE I’m going to Disneyland. Had you any doubt?

I’m using the Half Marathon as my excuse though, even though we all know I never need an actual excuse to visit a Disney Theme Park.

I’ll consider posting a blog entry or two while I’m there, but chances are I may be just too damn into the trip to take the time. But it’s possible.

As always, the best way to stay on top of my whereabouts and happenings is on my Twitter, so if you’re not following me yet, you’re missing all the fun. @nickynax

I’ll miss you all while I’m gone, and see your bright and shining faces upon my return after Labor Day.

Until then, I’m getting into the LA vibe and I’ll have my people call your people.

]]> http://www.nickynax.com/blog/2010/08/27/hey-la-im-comin-your-way/feed/ 0 http://www.nickynax.com/blog/2010/08/18/thirty/ http://www.nickynax.com/blog/2010/08/18/thirty/#comments Wed, 18 Aug 2010 16:00:27 +0000 Nick http://www.nickynax.com/blog/2010/08/18/thirty/ Continue reading →]]> This morning, I woke up in a completely different decade than I was in last night.

This morning, I woke up thirty.

To be honest, I’m not entirely sure how I feel about that.

It seems that everyone who came before me has expressed how miserable they were when they turned 30. So, naturally I was expecting to wake up this morning feeling miserable as well; as if I was on Death’s door and needing to make sure all of my affairs were in order before my imminent death.

But I didn’t feel like that.

In the gay community, it seems as if turning 30 isn’t just considered getting older, but completely expiring and becoming a complete waste of time to all the “young” and “worthwhile” gays. You’re just tossed aside like that yogurt you found in the back of the refrigerator that has long expired.

But I don’t feel obsolete.

I don’t really know how to express in words what it is that I’m feeling, but it’s neither of those things.

I guess I’ve never really felt like a part of the “norm.” In junior high and high school I didn’t feel like I belonged. I was the gay kid pretending not to be gay even though everyone else (except my mother, somehow) knew. In college I was never the kind to go out to bars and clubs and drink or do drugs like everyone else was doing. And now in adulthood, that trend continues and I often feel as if I’m doing that proverbial march to my own drummer and not falling in step with what everyone else is saying, doing, feeling, etc.

I don’t feel old. I still feel like a 12-year-old at heart. And I don’t see that leaving me any time soon. I’ve long subscribed to the philosophy that we don’t stop playing because we get old; we get old because we stop playing. I’m never going to stop playing. It would be dishonest to whom I am.

I don’t feel feeble or weak. In fact, just the opposite. I feel as if I am in the best shape of my life. I’m at the gym or out running at least five days a week. Sometimes six. My diet is still improving as time goes on, and after four years my commitment to Veganism is deeper and stronger every day. Somehow, I’ve found a love – no, a tolerance – for running. I think the reason I’m starting to tolerate the running more than I was before is that I’ve discovered it’s a great way to be alone for a little bit and focus on myself. Both physically and emotionally. While I run, I find I get inside my head and as an introvert, that’s where I often feel the most comfortable.

I don’t feel like I’m obsolete to the gay community. In fact, I’m starting to feel as if I’m just now finally ready for the gay community. I learned a lot from my relationship with Kevin. And the past year and a half since that relationship ended has allowed me plenty of time to work through any issues that came along with that experience and to make sense of what happened. What went right. What went wrong. And what needs to happen in the future to be a part of a successful and emotionally fulfilling relationship with another person.

I’m still terrified as hell when it comes to dating. But even with age some things will never change.

This pep talk of a blog isn’t all sunshine and rainbows though. It’s at milestone birthdays like this that it’s only natural to reflect and take stock of your life. And I’m no different.

I think back to when I was in high school and we had to write a paper about what our lives would be like in five years. In ten years. And while I don’t remember exactly what Future Nick was doing according to those papers, I do know that it was all a lot different than what Present Day Nick is currently doing. Present Day Nick is, to put it nicely, a huge downgrade from what Future Nick was supposed to be. Future Nick had a job he could only dream of, recognition that very few receive in life, and more success and happiness than any one person really deserves.

Present Day Nick has a job he likes with coworkers he likes, but it’s nothing like what he ever would have imagined he would be doing. Present Day Nick sometimes feels as if the only recognition he gets is a bit of eye contact from his cat after he brushes her. Present Day Nick often feels very unsuccessful and sometimes as if happiness is just out of grasp.

But I guess we all feel like that sometimes, don’t we.

I guess I’m not so different from everyone else after all.

Ever since I moved to New York, there’s been a Sondheim lyric that’s seems to put into words the way I’ve felt. It’s from Into the Woods and it goes “This is ridiculous. What am I doing here? I’m in the wrong story.”

I think it perfectly describes my feelings. Especially when you take into consideration that story I wrote so long ago about Future Nick and how somewhere along the way I took a wrong turn or two and I’ve ended up in a completely different story.

All I can do as I enter this new decade of my life is to continue writing this story that I’ve written thus far, and work on writing a plot that gets me as close as possible to something resembling that original draft I wrote in high school. I will never get it to match exactly, and it would be foolish to even try. All I can do is work toward the same final chapter. The chapter where Nick is happy with his life. He has a job he loves, financial stability, health, well traveled, friends he cares deeply for who care just as deeply for him, and someone with whom to share that life.

I’m confident I’ll get there. Life is a work in progress with no hard and fast rules as to when certain things have to be achieved by. Just like when I run marathons, I spend most of the race watching a lot of people pass me. I trudge on at my own pace. Step by step. And even when it hurts and I want to stop I just remind myself that each step I take gets me one step closer to the goal. And it doesn’t matter if I come in first or last place. We all get the same medal.

So, today, I welcome this new decade as an opportunity to begin writing the next chapter of my story. While I may not be where I thought I would be, I’ve still got plenty of things in my life about which to be happy. And while I may not be where my peers are, I’ve learned that the race is only with myself.

Plus, I’m 30, and I can still put both of my feet behind my head. I’d say that makes me a winner!

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