Goodbye 2012, Hello 2013!

Wow, 2013 already...craaaaazzyyy.

Anyway, the holidays were alright all things considered. I spent Christmas Eve with my mom's family, which is always a laugh and a half. Little disappointing since my cousin and her kids were out of town, which meant there were no actual kids around excited to open gifts and have toys to play with (my sister and I were the last "kids" in the family). Christmas Day was a little different this year, since it's usually spent with my dad's side of the family, but my parents, sister and I had a pretty normal Christmas morning watching movies we had gotten and having a nice breakfast. Later, we went to go keep my grandmother company for a bit, then off to my uncle's for dinner. Because of all the planning for the funeral and missing Christmas together, I ended up spending a lot of time with my dad's side of the family between Christmas and New Years. They're family, and I love them, but that was more than enough time with them, and I'm glad the dust has settled and everything is getting somewhat back to normal.

Egoboosts and Other Random Stuff

Quick halfway-through-the-weekend update:

Rock climbing was alright. It wasn’t so much a class as much as it was a group of gay guys getting together to try out climbing for the first time. It was a little chaotic, since there was both our group and another large group in the gym at the same time, so it made it a little difficult to socialize. People were coming in late, and being split off into groups, so with the amount of people there, it was hard to tell who was with what group and what was going on. I think a good half of our group left for dinner part way through and the rest of us didn’t even notice, which was a little disappointing, since it would have been nice to get to know some of them. Despite that, I did get to chat a bit and flex those social skills with the guy I was paired up with and a few others who stuck around. My arms are killing me though...

I also went for coffee with Nate and Brian tonight, pretty tame stuff until we got on to the topic of gay bars and getting hit on. Apparently Nate’s close cousin, who is gay, is planning to head out to a local gay club for his birthday in a couple weeks. Nate, being a good cousin, agreed to go along, but as a straight guy, he isn’t really comfortable going to a gay club with a bunch of people he doesn’t know. His plan is to take his girlfriend with him, but he jokingly asked Brian and I if we’d go. Well, it was jokingly until Brian and Nate started discussing their curiosities about being hit on. They’re tired of making all the advances and for an egoboost, they’re semi-willing to give the gay club a go. Their suggested plan is this: the three of us stand at a table. Two of us throw our arms around each other and pretend like we’re a couple, and see how much attention the third gets. They call it a “social experiment”, I call it them being a bunch of attention whores, but whatever. I have my doubts that we’ll even go, but I might be down for the opportunity to try and pick up dudes.

As for tomorrow (today I guess now), I’m heading out on a hike with Nate, his girlfriend and her twin sister as part of a New Year’s resolution pact we made to do a hike every week. They were part of that group of girls Danny tried to set us up with back in October, which I guess had mixed success, but regardless the four of us have become pretty close friends. So I’m making it my goal to try and come out to the twins tomorrow, before they try to set me up with a girl (which it sounds like they’re planning to) or there’s any more awkward conversations (“So, Matt, what’s your pickup line for getting the ladies?” Uhhhhhh...). Keeping my fingers crossed. :)

Still Kicking!

A lot can happen in three and a half weeks, so I’m going to try and condense this down the best I can, but I can tell you now that it’s still going to be a novel.

I’ll start with an explanation of what happened at that fateful counselling session. Liz and I came to the conclusion that I lead my life by following what people want or expect from me (or at least what I assume those things are). Where a lot of my stress originated from was forcing myself to do things I don’t necessarily enjoy, but since it’s what people expected me to, I did it anyway. So the solution we discussed was to find something that genuinely made me happy, not anybody else, as to boost my confidence and focus on something other than worrying about pleasing other people. I ended up misinterpreting that to mean that I was on my own to find what made me happy and that no one else could be around me since they could potentially influence what I decide to do, and the ruminating snowballed from there. And that’s what brought me to my last post.

"Great having a chance to talk, dude"

This week I’ve spent some time mending relationships by hanging out with The Guys and chatting with them on Skype during the week. It’s not that I’ve really had any bad blood between any of them, but I’ve pulled back from them in recent years. Part of it is because I’m sort of intimidated by them, they’re all pretty masculine guys who are into sports and other stereotypical “guy” things that I’m not really into, so I hold back since I don’t want to sound wimpy or stupid. Maybe I’m slowly getting better, but I realized that there’s more to them than just talking about sports and video games and put my thoughts aside and took the effort to reconnect with them.

Part of the reason I’ve been brought back together with The Guys is because of this group of girls we met a few weeks back through Danny and his girlfriend. They’re really awesome, down to earth girls who aren’t really the partying, hard drinking type, but would rather go explore the city and go on an adventure, just like us. Out of this group, there is a set of twins that our other friends are trying to set Nate and myself up with. I appreciate the gesture from my friends, but I just feel like I’m being put in that awkward position of lying and telling half-truths to pretend I’m interested in them. Well, not to say I’m not into them, but I’m just not into them in THAT way. They make really cool friends, which is great, but I’m not sure if they want me in that group as something more. Nate’s been seeing his twin, and I’m not sure if the two of them keep inviting me out with them to set me up with the other twin/as a double date or whether they just like me as a friend whose personality and values match theirs. I mean, the four of us did go out Saturday night with a bunch of our friends to a bar, but then today it was just the twins, Nate and I going kayaking (??). It’s just a little unsettling for me because I don’t want to lead anybody on, but I really don’t know what to do to figure out my role in the group, other than to come out to them, which isn’t going to happen just yet.

Trying to move out of the comfort zone

Just a quick couple of things that have happened recently:

I had a conversation with Lindsay last week that made me come to the realization that I should probably go see a counsellor. I need to talk to someone who can be non-judgemental and who can give me objective advice in identifying and dealing with my problems. I’m still a little apprehensive about it; I got to thinking about what counselling says about me and what the outcomes of it will be. My biggest fear is that I end up being diagnosed with depression or GAD or something. I had one friend who I was very close with that had depression and it was very taxing on me and my friends that knew her. I made a huge mistake letting that relationship lapse, but that’s another story. I’m worried that being diagnosed with depression or the like is just going to stir up bad memories for my friends and I don’t want to have to put them through what I went through dealing with my friend. I’m also a little stressed out at having to lie about seeing a counsellor to my parents. I’m not usually out on weekday nights after work, so it might seem a little suspicious if I start going out all of a sudden. And if even if I tell them I’m going to go see a counsellor, they’ll want to know why, which will be tricky to handle. Despite all these worries, I think I’m going to go ahead and do it anyway. For one, I just keep reminding myself that if I feel this doesn’t work, I don’t have to keep going. I’m not being forced to do this, but I’m choosing to do this because I’m finding myself making a lot of assumptions on what people are thinking, and it’s not usually positive, so I need some help changing those thought processes. I’m planning to make an appointment this week, so I’ll keep you updated on that.

In other news, I spent this weekend trying to impress girls. No, really...my buddy Danny’s been seeing this one girl, so they both invited a bunch of their friends (his friends mostly single guys, hers single girls...hmmm...) out to a pub for some live music Friday. The music kind of sucked, so a bunch of us ended up just talking and we all really hit it off as a group. So much so, we ended up going hiking as a group today, and Danny, Nate and I took it as an opportunity to show off our feathers and be all gentlemen-ly (“Hey, do you want me to carry your bag up the mountain?! It’s not a problem...). I’m totally lost as to why I went along with this, maybe it was machismo speaking and I wanted to one-up my buddies,  or maybe it was a way to be more open and expressive about myself in an appropriate situation (how else are you supposed to impress girls without talking about yourself?!). Regardless, they’re a pretty chill bunch of people and it was a fun weekend, so there are plans in the works to hang out again next weekend. Not sure what I’m looking to get out of this, but at the very least I’ll get some cool new friends out of it.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I haven’t had any random car content for a while, and I'm sad the Mazda RX-8's going out of production, so...

Good Company

Part of the reason I decided to try and keep this blog going was because I really don’t have any other outlet to get all these thoughts and feelings out without out-ing myself to my friends. I’m not comfortable enough doing that just yet, plus I’m just not convinced that they would be able to comprehend the fears, neurosis and insecurities. Again, maybe I’m not giving them the benefit of the doubt, but at least this way, I know I can get thoughts about being confused off my chest without being judged or having to deal with the consequences (talking about it, losing their friendship, etc) of my friends knowing my secret. Brave of me, I know.  

I wish I had that courage though. The closest gay friend I have is Derek, who I met through Brian back in high school. He’s an awesome guy to be around, I love how he’s so optimistic and cheerful about everything and likes to dream big. Anyway, he’s been out for a few years now (since the end of high school?) and I would say he leans towards the feminine side of the scale. Part of me is sort of eager to talk to him all about what I’ve been going through, what’s in my head, what’s on this blog, hell even just having someone to talk guys with would be cool!

Take Two

Hey guys,

I took a little break from blogging just to reevaluate what I wanted to do here. A lot of the time I wasn't sure what to put here, or how it was going to help me. I've realized that I've got this irrational idea in my head that talking about myself makes me conceited and that my problems and thoughts aren't important, so I keep things to myself. Crazy, right? It's ridiculous, but even with the anonymity of the internet, I kind of cared what I was putting out there and how that might be interpreted, so I found myself censoring some of what I wrote. It might be in part because I was worried about somebody finding me out or maybe it's just because in my crazy mind I didn't want to come off as egotistical. But anyway, with that being said, I'm going to keep at it and give it another shot.

So what's been going on the last month with me?