Lawd, yall, this shit is going to read like one of Supa’s threads.

I've been offered a job. It's making about as much as I was making before, and with the same benefits.

It's with the same company that laid me off. The hilarity of the situation is that it's doing something I'm an expert in doing--application scripting and network systems management.
Anyways, to make a long story short, I turned it down this morning, despite not having worked in months.


You see, I think I'm going through a mid-life crisis. I was unhappy in my job and company prior to being laid off. And what's the point in going back to something you're not happy with? Although financially, it would be a blessing for me to just slip back into work in a company I’m familiar with, doing something I am very good at--spiritually, it would be going back to doing the same old same old, wouldn’t it?

I am not the same person I was last year. Indeed I am not even the same person I was a couple of months ago. Everything has changed. I am completely uninterested in this position. The house, the cars, the goddamned kayak---nothing. Just a bunch of shit I finance… and for what?

In the past few months, since last fall, so many doors have closed on me. So many roads dead ended. So many things I thought were potentially materializing ended up being illusory in nature. Week after week of letdowns, month after month of bad news, and half a year of soul destroying revelations can leave you quite jaded. I do not pretend to be Job tested by an angry and jealous God. Nor do I think I’m unusual or unique in my circumstances. Hell, I don’t even think they’re remarkable in the bigger scheme of things.
But I’m a sensitive person. A man-child. A boy going through the motions of being grown up. My professional life has always been a struggle. I have always had to work harder than the ‘other’ guy to get where I needed to go. I have never had anything just handed to me. So being laid off, despite having a perfect track record and nothing but praise from my colleagues and clients….well, that really hurt.

I slept less than a combined 12 hours the first week after the layoff. Then I ate myself into an unhealthy state. I punished myself for feeling punished .
I poured myself into a cup and let the devil sip it at his leisure. There is a loneliness in trying to fix a broken life that I can not even begin to describe. I’m a clumsy, jealous, foolish man, and can barely handle dealing with a bad week, let alone a collapse in my professional or personal life.

Prince [FAM alert] said when things were dark he withdrew into ‘self’. Well, I withdrew into self too. But Prince had a vision. He had drive. He worked his ass off to perfect his craft. Me? I just fell apart and let the pieces fall where they did. And I felt that I could share this with nobody.
The worst thing about hating your life but loving others is that you don’t want them to feel or bare any of your burden. It’s like tainting those around you. But there I was for the first time in years asking myself, “Dan, what is the point of all this? Why is every week the same as the one before it? And why are all my friends going through their business so happy and content to live their lives the way they are?”

I was not meant to live a mundane life. I was not meant to walk down local streets that I know like the back of my hand, reminiscing on past adventures I had in this or that local haunt. I was not meant to grow old before my eyes and watch my friends marry off and raise families while I sat idly by trying to sound interested about their newly enlightened lives. Too straight to be a ‘scene queen’ and sufficiently gay enough to never conform to a whole domesticated straight life, I simply wasn’t meant for anything prepackaged--no, my life is ala cart.
For a long time, I felt this nagging tug in my gut that the party would come to an end. But in reality the party was over years ago. When the guest have all turned to vapor and withdrawn into their own little smokey lives, will I be the only face left at the bar? That guy that everyone feels sorry for? The ‘local’ face drained of youth and beauty with no interesting story to tell except some lurid sexual conquests that ultimately left me feeling little more than used and disgusted with men and women?

My dear friend Karen told me recently something that hangs in my mind. She said, “Dan--do you understand your own worth? You’re universe is much larger than most can imagine it to be. And yet you box yourself in. You don’t love yourself for the wonderful person you are. ”.

And I realize now that I lived the life that I’ve lived for years and years because it is true. I do NOT love myself they way I should. If I loved myself, I would not be stuck in a job I hated. If I loved myself, I would not have let my body go. If I loved myself, I would not feel the need to live my life as according to some mundane, socially acceptable script.

If I loved myself, I would not take the job. And I didn’t.
I don’t want to go back there. I don’t want to be that person again.
I don’t want to go back to relationships, professional or otherwise, that hurt me. That make me something I know I’m not supposed to be.

So, I turned it down. And I’m going far far away.
I think I’ll start that book I keep talking about during my travels…




ANYBODY GONE THROUGH MIDLIFE CRISIS OF YOUR OWN? I’D LOVE TO HEAR IT AND COMPARE NOTES.

Lawd, yall, this shit is going to read like one of Supa’s threads.

I've been offered a job. It's making about as much as I was making before, and with the same benefits.

It's with the same company that laid me off. The hilarity of the situation is that it's doing something I'm an expert in doing--application scripting and network systems management.
Anyways, to make a long story short, I turned it down this morning, despite not having worked in months.


You see, I think I'm going through a mid-life crisis. I was unhappy in my job and company prior to being laid off. And what's the point in going back to something you're not happy with? Although financially, it would be a blessing for me to just slip back into work in a company I’m familiar with, doing something I am very good at--spiritually, it would be going back to doing the same old same old, wouldn’t it?

I am not the same person I was last year. Indeed I am not even the same person I was a couple of months ago. Everything has changed. I am completely uninterested in this position. The house, the cars, the goddamned kayak---nothing. Just a bunch of shit I finance… and for what?

In the past few months, since last fall, so many doors have closed on me. So many roads dead ended. So many things I thought were potentially materializing ended up being illusory in nature. Week after week of letdowns, month after month of bad news, and half a year of soul destroying revelations can leave you quite jaded. I do not pretend to be Job tested by an angry and jealous God. Nor do I think I’m unusual or unique in my circumstances. Hell, I don’t even think they’re remarkable in the bigger scheme of things.
But I’m a sensitive person. A man-child. A boy going through the motions of being grown up. My professional life has always been a struggle. I have always had to work harder than the ‘other’ guy to get where I needed to go. I have never had anything just handed to me. So being laid off, despite having a perfect track record and nothing but praise from my colleagues and clients….well, that really hurt.

I slept less than a combined 12 hours the first week after the layoff. Then I ate myself into an unhealthy state. I punished myself for feeling punished .
I poured myself into a cup and let the devil sip it at his leisure. There is a loneliness in trying to fix a broken life that I can not even begin to describe. I’m a clumsy, jealous, foolish man, and can barely handle dealing with a bad week, let alone a collapse in my professional or personal life.

Prince [FAM alert] said when things were dark he withdrew into ‘self’. Well, I withdrew into self too. But Prince had a vision. He had drive. He worked his ass off to perfect his craft. Me? I just fell apart and let the pieces fall where they did. And I felt that I could share this with nobody.
The worst thing about hating your life but loving others is that you don’t want them to feel or bare any of your burden. It’s like tainting those around you. But there I was for the first time in years asking myself, “Dan, what is the point of all this? Why is every week the same as the one before it? And why are all my friends going through their business so happy and content to live their lives the way they are?”

I was not meant to live a mundane life. I was not meant to walk down local streets that I know like the back of my hand, reminiscing on past adventures I had in this or that local haunt. I was not meant to grow old before my eyes and watch my friends marry off and raise families while I sat idly by trying to sound interested about their newly enlightened lives. Too straight to be a ‘scene queen’ and sufficiently gay enough to never conform to a whole domesticated straight life, I simply wasn’t meant for anything prepackaged--no, my life is ala cart.
For a long time, I felt this nagging tug in my gut that the party would come to an end. But in reality the party was over years ago. When the guest have all turned to vapor and withdrawn into their own little smokey lives, will I be the only face left at the bar? That guy that everyone feels sorry for? The ‘local’ face drained of youth and beauty with no interesting story to tell except some lurid sexual conquests that ultimately left me feeling little more than used and disgusted with men and women?

My dear friend Karen told me recently something that hangs in my mind. She said, “Dan--do you understand your own worth? You’re universe is much larger than most can imagine it to be. And yet you box yourself in. You don’t love yourself for the wonderful person you are. ”.

And I realize now that I lived the life that I’ve lived for years and years because it is true. I do NOT love myself they way I should. If I loved myself, I would not be stuck in a job I hated. If I loved myself, I would not have let my body go. If I loved myself, I would not feel the need to live my life as according to some mundane, socially acceptable script.

If I loved myself, I would not take the job. And I didn’t.
I don’t want to go back there. I don’t want to be that person again.
I don’t want to go back to relationships, professional or otherwise, that hurt me. That make me something I know I’m not supposed to be.

So, I turned it down. And I’m going far far away.
I think I’ll start that book I keep talking about during my travels…




ANYBODY GONE THROUGH MIDLIFE CRISIS OF YOUR OWN? I’D LOVE TO HEAR IT AND COMPARE NOTES.

Um, you know? I can totally relate. My world came crashing down a year and a half ago, partly due to my own doing, and partly not. I ran back to what was comfortable and remote, which was my owld part-dime field work job in Hawaii, just to have somewhere to go and something to do to keep me busy and AWAY.

I was there for 7 months and it turned into a full time position that's half-desk job back in my ome town where I had worked at it before. I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, it pays well, I know the work pretty well, I love my boss, it's close to "home"... on the other hand, I've been doing this job since I was 14. I'm 32 years now. I've spent over half of my life doing this job that I absolutely hated when I was 14 but somewhere along the way, realized that I actually kind of love. Or at least find tolerable. I get to be outside. My boss is a dream come true. He's one of my best friends. But there are times when I think "Maybe you ought to show some ambition and do something else with your life..." You know, maybe something even tangentially related to that degree that I'm still paying off and took me two tries to get through.

I'm currently living at my parents house and in July, we'll be coming up on a year. In some ways, I've stagnated and don't want to move forward. In other ways, I'm dying to get the fuck out of here and just do what I want to do, which is sit in a room that I can call my own and do nothing.

In the last year, I've been through a whole lot. Coming to terms with the fact that it's just not ever going to work out between "us." Tons of random, anonymous, cruisy sex with men of all types. Finding a regular gay friend to go to the bar with and get drunk 4 or 5 nights a week at the white trash bars in my hometown. I've got about 3 different wardrobes as I try to find my style again after years of going without pretty much anything you could call "possessions." I've bought a TON of cool, new shit and I spend money like nobody's business to keep fill some kind of void. Or just to catch up on the last several years when, as I said, had very few possessions because of the nature of my lifestyle.

And now... I just want to be left alone. Sit in a room. Play on the internet or listen to music or read comics or books or masturbate or call over somebody to fuck when I feel like it.

Sometimes I want to stay exactly where I'm at for awhile. And sometimes I'm screaming "I'M A CELEBRITY, GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!!!"

I'm not sure if I've moved forward or not.

I suppose you could call it a mid-life crisis. But I feel somewhat relaxed and mostly happy for the first time in a long time. So I guess that's progress.

Um, you know? I can totally relate. My world came crashing down a year and a half ago, partly due to my own doing, and partly not. I ran back to what was comfortable and remote, which was my owld part-dime field work job in Hawaii, just to have somewhere to go and something to do to keep me busy and AWAY.

I was there for 7 months and it turned into a full time position that's half-desk job back in my ome town where I had worked at it before. I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, it pays well, I know the work pretty well, I love my boss, it's close to "home"... on the other hand, I've been doing this job since I was 14. I'm 32 years now. I've spent over half of my life doing this job that I absolutely hated when I was 14 but somewhere along the way, realized that I actually kind of love. Or at least find tolerable. I get to be outside. My boss is a dream come true. He's one of my best friends. But there are times when I think "Maybe you ought to show some ambition and do something else with your life..." You know, maybe something even tangentially related to that degree that I'm still paying off and took me two tries to get through.

I'm currently living at my parents house and in July, we'll be coming up on a year. In some ways, I've stagnated and don't want to move forward. In other ways, I'm dying to get the fuck out of here and just do what I want to do, which is sit in a room that I can call my own and do nothing.

In the last year, I've been through a whole lot. Coming to terms with the fact that it's just not ever going to work out between "us." Tons of random, anonymous, cruisy sex with men of all types. Finding a regular gay friend to go to the bar with and get drunk 4 or 5 nights a week at the white trash bars in my hometown. I've got about 3 different wardrobes as I try to find my style again after years of going without pretty much anything you could call "possessions." I've bought a TON of cool, new shit and I spend money like nobody's business to keep fill some kind of void. Or just to catch up on the last several years when, as I said, had very few possessions because of the nature of my lifestyle.

And now... I just want to be left alone. Sit in a room. Play on the internet or listen to music or read comics or books or masturbate or call over somebody to fuck when I feel like it.

Sometimes I want to stay exactly where I'm at for awhile. And sometimes I'm screaming "I'M A CELEBRITY, GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!!!"

I'm not sure if I've moved forward or not.

I suppose you could call it a mid-life crisis. But I feel somewhat relaxed and mostly happy for the first time in a long time. So I guess that's progress.