A wet, cold, rainy morning, I got up and began making white bean, sausage, mushroom, and leek soup. I felt like I needed some comfort food this morning and am feeling very isolated and alone. Worked turned into I-phone nightmare hell yesterday as we had to follow and provide documentation of every single delivery and had to make multiple attempts until they were all delivered beyond all reasonable effort. I then managed to come home and completely disable the log in and all access to the new site. I was up half the night with Julian trying to regain entry. This morning I am cold, tired and very despondent so making soup seems to be giving me some comfort. I love to cook and am very creative when it comes to the kitchen. I learned to cook from my grandmother out on the ranch. She was very good cook and actually spent several years cooking for the schools. My grandmother Cyr was a genius when it came to blending foods. It always seemed so simple. She and I would always cook up a storm. My mother on the other hand could not cook at all, but then again she didn’t like food and didn’t like to eat. My mother once made chocolate chip cookies so hard that we couldn’t even eat them. My dad and I went down to the river and began skipping them across the water and they skipped too. She caught us doing it and became so furious she never made cookies again.
When I became a freshman in high school in the late 70’s, about the time Star Wars the original movie was released, I wanted to take home economics. I was already a great cook and doing most of the family meals. But, back then it was a very unmanly thing to do. I was the only boy in the entire history of the school to want to take such a class. But I was adamant and persistent and probably could have taught the class as we learned to make cream puffs and Jell-O salads with fruit of course. Hello, why wasn’t my gay bell going off then? Looking back I was totally gay. Why was it that everyone saw it but me? DENIAL!!!!!!!!! Had no idea, I , what it really meant or that a man could actually have sex or even a relationship with another man. Damn, how naive could I be? I became the manager for the school wrestling team and I remember lust and desire growing out of the locker room, but still nothing. A world of perfection designed for a kid like me and yet no ding, ding, ding. DENIAL!!!!!!!! Just a lot of spoiling the sheets and alone time in the last stall in the bathroom when no one was around. I just needed a role model and not just sneaking off to find my mother’s Playgirl Magazines hidden under her side of the mattress, and I don’t even know how I knew that???? It’s funny and how curious times in our lives become, for something that is so organic and obvious that we just can’t see within ourselves. And people still don’t think we are born this way. Hello, as a kid it doesn’t seem to be an option by choice, but a struggle for resistance. I drove my brother, a year younger out into the country, to get laid for this first time, and waited in the car all the two minutes it took to happen, but for me there was nothing? Damn, DENIAL!!!!!! I cured the fact that I just could not be normal. More time spent alone in the shed behind the house thinking about what I desired and wanted, fearful, lusting, loathing, longing, desperately trying to discover the missing link. At least this has cheered me up this morning and I can laugh thinking back and I get up to stir my big pot of soup.
I am caught in the frustration of technology, banging my head against the wall, unable to move forward or backwards. I keep wondering what I have I gotten myself into and why can’t I seem to gain control of it. Why is it, our worlds are beginning to exist and rely so heavily on technology? When a few minor changes can affect your whole mode of operation and shut you down for days. For most of us it’s beyond our comprehension as to how it functions and we don’t even know how to approach the solution. Granted, it gets better each day, but still the simplest things can become major roadblocks that seem insurmountable and can consume hours and days of your time. I have a great respect and diligently try to understand the world that surrounds me and within which I exist. I have been learning this Joomla program for 6 weeks now working on this new site. It’s brilliant the way it functions and the concept of how you interact with it. It very simple, this is why I have chose it. It looks incredible. We have been building the galleries and are beginning to fine tune it. I now know this program inside and out, and can make the navigation through it quickly but for some reason, things have been reset beyond our perimeters and have suddenly brought the whole project to a halt and have made it non functional today. It doesn’t seem to be the site at all or within the site, but the server or person who controls the server who is making adjustments or changes that impact its functionality. Do I try to find a new server and begin again? We have about 800 pages built, is it possible to transfer all the work we have done? Do we have to just chalk up what we have done to a bad learning experience and move on? Or do we just try to muddle our way through the process and see if it can somehow become resolved? Yes, I know it’s time to take a deep breath, put the gun down and step away from it. It’s all just a matter of wading our way through the process. Looking back, I began this year the very first week of this project with a hard drive meltdown on my laptop and I cursed the techno gods, then there was the midyear crisis of being deactivated from Facebook for a week. I did overcome it. As I know I will overcome this too, but damn it’s sure frustrating being helpless in a vast world that rules our existence.
Last night I had dinner with an old friend that I have known for years. He is a young kid, originally from California who came to Montana to go to the University. He is a very successful independent business man at the age of 35 who has always been a role model and inspiration to me. About twelve years ago, when I was first getting into photography, we and a few other people started a venture together, to build a stronger gay community in our small city of Missoula. It seemed the time was ripe and I had been a part of creating a men’s focus group to identify and build a stronger healthier way to look at ourselves using federal prevention money from the Ryan White Act. Coming out of this group I saw a need for unity and to somehow obliterate the isolation and lack of communication that kept us hidden and closeted.
Last night at work one of the young kids with whom I co-manage at the UPS center, bought me one of those energy drinks, which he seems to be addicted to because he seems to consume them like water. Much to my surprise it was a greater boost than I imagined and I was wide awake working into the wee hours of the morning feeling like I had somehow defied gravity and was floating along into the night on a miraculous high. When I finally did go to bed, completely exhausted, I crashed and had a hard time getting up this morning. I had a family portrait scheduled fairly early, so I knew I had to get up and get things cleaned up and set up for the shoot, hence the tardiness of today’s posting. The wonder of it all was that somehow, I am not sure if it was the drink or just something kicked in, but I was having a blast last night back to working on photography. There was something utterly peaceful and productive working into the middle of the night, completely undisturbed.
Woke up this morning not wanting to get out of bed at all, feeling a bit discouraged and beaten down. I am afraid this Naked Man Project is getting the best of me. Taking the break from the weekend only seems to have made it worse, because I have lost the momentum and it’s one of those projects that have so many facets that weave in and out of itself, that it is becoming hard to tell exactly where you are at times. I have been writing so much for the site and then to write for the blog, my fingers often feel like jelly as I make so many mistakes. I am working afternoons at UPS this week, which totally prevents me from getting much done. There was guy sick last night so it was like banging my head against the wall and I had to work late. I get home and Bob, one of my kitties is having such an asthma attack I think he’s going to fall over. I know the inevitable is coming for him, that his lungs will eventually collapse and we will have to put him to sleep, so it just ripped my heart out to see him going through this. Writing a daily blog also takes its toll, and sometimes a lot more energy than you would imagine, especially for us non-writer types.
