Transparency

or why I can't solely write about pop music even though I love it

Souce: https://spicnspaningham.com.au/packaging/alfoil-cling-wrap-baking-paper/

I’ve been sitting here this morning on my day off, casually drinking coffee and listening to music (specifically a Spotify playlist full of songs from the HBO series Looking.) I’ve known that I wanted to write this morning but I was feeling kind of stressed about what I should write about. This is not an altogether unfamiliar feeling in my less than successful attempts to start writing again. I remember when I blogged so religiously in the 2000s and 2010s. Topics just showed up for me to blog about and I felt like my writing was really good and that I had a lot to say. Now I feel like anything I have to say is just not as important, my writing sucks, and sometimes I’d rather just randomly surf between five different web sites and perpetually reload last.fm as if that is somehow doing something productive.

There are an unlimited number of things I could write about from the pop music/culture standpoint. I have a lot to say about things, for instance, once I’m done with Looking I plan to do a post on just how much that show makes me FEEL - everything from happy to sad to cringey and everything in between. It truly is a wonderful, well done show and as one of my friends pointed out, I feel like it’s my alt gay life in San Francisco, although I’m sure I’d be Patrick because I am the ultimate boyfailure.

But there’s a lot going on in my head these days. As someone who came out late in life, I have so much processing to do. I’ve done a lot of that in therapy. I feel like I have hit kind of a plateau with therapy and in a way that’s good as my therapist is moving to Portland, OR this summer. I think I’ve gotten to the point where I need less therapy and more community. Less thinking about what I should do and more doing it. Being inside my head is so distracting because no matter how hard I try, I can’t stop overthinking my life.

The thing is, I’m scared to write about it. Part of it is that this is not really anonymous and if I tried to write about some of the really sticky stuff in my life, I fear that I would be exposed by people that know me but have not been let into every aspect of my life, i.e., they don’t know I’m gay. I don’t really make it a secret but I also don’t really advertise either. Let me put it this way - if someone asked, I wouldn’t deny it but I don’t volunteer it to people I don’t think have a need to know.

There are so many things about being a gay man who came out late in life in my relatively unique situation I want to write about but it boils down to the fact that blogs (or Substacks or whatever you want to call this thing I’m attempting) and journals are not the same things. It also doesn’t only involve me, it involves my partner of nearly 30 years and I would not want to write anything that they would consider a violation of their privacy. Processing some of the parts of my life that I have not really shared before is a scary prospect, but as my dad always says, ask yourself “what would you do if you weren’t afraid…and then do it.” I just want to be more transparent than I have been during most of my life - a life spent being scared of, as I like to refer to it, my own gay shadow. And writing and being transparent about it I feel is only going to help me. It’s just finding the balance that’s tricky.

That said, if any of my small group of readers have ideas for topics they’d like me to explore, I’m all ears. Just hit me up in the comments or message me direcctly. I feel like I had to write this post to get it out of the way, because it was holding me back from writing at all. I still feel like I’m working on getting my sea legs as far as writing goes, but we’re getting there.