t h e . w r o n g . s t o r y

In honor of four years of nickynax.com, I decided maybe it was time for a bit of a facelift around here

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?

Someone once said something along the lines of “Pride cometh before the fall.”

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!

The Lord Giveth and He taketh away.

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.

Oh, hello there, blog. It’s been awhile since we last talked. Sorry about that, but as a wise man once said… Between working, working it and working out… I’m just so busy.

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!