Empathy

“Fuck your feelings.”

That was a phrase bandied about a few years ago from one group to put down others. They were happy, therefore, who cares how anyone else feels? I have seen this repeatedly since then, in words less harsh but ultimately meaning just the same thing. Of course, the vast majority of these people are white, heterosexual people.

As someone who is part of a mostly invisible minority, I know what it was like to have all popular culture for my early life be about people who weren’t really quite like me. Gay people were the punchline (figuratively and sometimes literally). They were people to be mocked, smacked down, or (at best) pushed to the side and ignored. That’s all I saw for a long, long time. At a high school reunion, I told a classmate that going through school was living in constant terror, that at any moment someone would figure it out and I’d be thrown into the garbage.

It wasn’t a hard leap of logic to make. In 9th grade, almost every single one of my friends dropped me like a hot potato. (There were some notable exceptions, but they really were the exceptions.) They might not have known why exactly, but as one of them point-blank told me back then, I was “different” from them. Even good friends could not entirely be trusted because at any given moment a “fag joke” would slip out of someone’s lips. Why wouldn’t it? Because that’s what everyone saw in books, in movies, in television. It must be all right.

I’m almost at the point in my life where I’ve been fully out of the closet longer than not. I still always expect friends to drop me. I regularly hear a chorus in my head of, “I don’t fit in / I don’t belong.” I know all too well where these trust issues come from, even as I struggle to not let them take hold. I say all of this as someone with a genuinely wonderful family and great friends. More importantly, as someone who is at the end of the day, a white male.

So imagine what it must be like to grow up as a minority who can’t pass as looking like the majority. To read children’s books and be regularly slandered. Encountering casual (and not-so-casual) racism and growing up with the world trying to teach you that you are simply not as good. Imagine reading The Secret Garden and getting to the part where one of the main characters declares that Blacks are “not people.” Getting to the point in Dr. Doolittle where a Black character asks to be “cured” of his skin color. What sort of damage are you doing?

“It didn’t bother me,” says the white straight person. Of course it didn’t. But is it too much to ask for a little empathy? To even try what it must be like to be the perpetual outsider?

There are a lot of physically damaging things that aren’t available any more. I joke about how it is a minor miracle that my sisters and I didn’t put out an eye playing lawn darts at my grandparents’ house, especially every time we would try and shake one out of a tree. Not all damage is physical.

It’s all right to let some things stay in the past.

Sword of Damocles

You know that feeling when there’s something hovering over your head ready to drop, something really bad? And you don’t want it to actually drop and hit you—you keep hoping that somehow things will get fixed and it will no longer be a worry—but at the same time, waiting for it to drop feels almost as bad as the actual impact?

It’s like that.

(I’m hoping history doesn’t repeat itself. I fear it’s about to.)

Posted in Me

Five Things That Make Me Happy (part 20)

Kinfolk Magazine
Kinfolk_Vol7_CoverOne of the things I like to buy at the store down the street (Trohv) is Kinfolk magazine, a slick squarebound quarterly publication. It’s about entertaining, about art, about photography, about cooking… It’s not really quite like anything else out there. I love reading their essays, as much for things that inspire me as things that are completely outside of my own personal wheelhouse. Even if the subject isn’t grabbing me in one particular piece, there’s almost always a great photograph that goes alongside it that makes it all work quite nicely. The latest issue had an ice cream theme, and it was slightly mouth-watering at times. Not that I minded to much, because…

Cinnamon Vanilla Ice Cream
One of the pieces in the latest issue was an interview with two ice-cream makers. When asked for their favorite flavors, one that both of them mentioned was cinnamon vanilla ice cream. “Hmmm,” I thought to myself, “I bet I could make that.” And so, I did.

Cinnamon Vanilla Ice Cream

As it turns out, adding cinnamon to my vanilla ice cream recipe is a big hit. I love the vanilla ice cream recipe (thanks Alton Brown!) but the touch of cinnamon makes it that much more amazing. I’ll be trying some new flavors of ice cream this summer, but I think this is one I’ll be keeping in my back pocket in general. Homemade ice cream in general is such a pleasure; over the winter I barely made any (which my waistline thanks me for, at least) but I’m going to try and break out the ice cream maker a bit more this year.

Ticket to Ride
Ticket to Ride is one of those board games that I’ve been seeing for years, now. I first encountered it at my friends Trevor and Matt’s house, when I saw some people playing it. It looks deceptively simple—collect colored trains to form connections between cities to earn points—but it’s the sort of game that clearly requires a lot of strategy and wits. I’ve held off on buying it (another huge box to store!) but I recently discovered that the game company also released a version for the iPad. Having now played it for a few days… it’s wonderfully addicting. Evilly so, in fact. And I haven’t even played it against other people (either online or locally), just against the computer. Absolutely loving it. Board or electronic game, this one is clearly a winner.

No More Amy Pond
Non-Doctor Who fans can just skip along to the next item. But I am genuinely happy that when Doctor Who returns in a couple of days, it will be without Karen Gillan, the actress who played the character of Amy Pond for the past two and a half years. I really didn’t like the character, but the bigger problem wasn’t the writing for Amy Pond but Gillan’s acting. She just wasn’t up to the level needed for such a major role, and she pulled down the show a great deal. So knowing that there are eight episodes ahead without Gillan? Well, I’m delighted. (Sadly her co-star Arthur Darvill is also gone, but it’s a fair trade.) Her replacement, played by Jenna-Louise Coleman, already feels like a real improvement.

A Great 40th Birthday
Cannoli CakeToday I finally hit the big 4-0, it’s true. And in celebrating it this year, the thing that’s struck me the most was that I’m really lucky to have so many great friends that it was actually difficult to make a guest list because I wanted to invite everyone I knew. I ended up having a medium-sized party over the weekend at the tavern on the ground floor of our building, and as much as I would’ve loved to double the guest list, my gut feeling on how many the facility could hold was more or less dead-on accurate. I had a great time talking with my friends, and the food and cake were both excellent, and at the very end the manager provided us with a nice champagne toast. Then today, two co-workers (and good friends) took me out to lunch and provided cake in the afternoon (with a cannoli on top!), followed by getting a massage in the evening.

Add in the over 200 birthday greetings on Facebook (no, seriously, we’ve crossed the 200 mark), and it’s been a very pleasant way to enter the new decade. Fortunately, I’m not one to get freaked out over those milestone ages, but still, a good way to do so. (Now ask me again when I turn 70 and that might be another story entirely…)

40th birthday toast

Where Is My Motivation?

No, really. Did I leave it at your house? Maybe under the seat of the Metro? Part of me is blaming it on the season and part of me thinks that it is something bigger.

Forget personal assistants, trainers, or life coaches, I think what I really need is someone to walk around when I get home and poke me in the back and say, “Get that done. Get that done. Get that done. Get that done.”

(I am also seeing a new career being born.)

Posted in Me

Forgetful

I think I’ve mentioned here earlier that I am finding myself increasingly forgetful. I say “I think” because of course, I’m not sure if I have or not. I am afraid that I hit a new low today, though.

The worst part wasn’t forgetting to swap out the shorts in my gym back for pants, meaning after I went swimming this morning I spent the rest of the day a little cold because it was soooo not shorts weather. (I left for the gym in my swim trunks already.)

The worst part wasn’t discovering when I got into the car that I’d had a birthday card sitting on the front seat of my car since yesterday, when I went to a friend’s for dinner and forgot to give it to him. Whoops. (Fortunately, the wine and the bar of bacon-chocolate did make it inside.)

No, the worst part was that yesterday I’d bought a huge rice krispy treat half dipped in chocolate, half dipped in the white icing that this bakery uses for its black and white cookies, saved said treat to be eaten at work today… and then I forgot to eat it. I realized five minutes after I left the office that it was still sitting, hidden, in my office. (I hid it yesterday so I would not be tempted to eat it.)

Argh. Oh well. I guess I know what half of lunch tomorrow is, right? Provided I remember.

25 Things About Greg

  1. I hate almost all memes, unless they require you to actually be creative. Quizzes explaining which member of the Monkees you are (or any sort of similar silliness) set my teeth on edge.
  2. I learned how to read when I was 2 1/2 years old, and that was the beginning of the end, so to speak. I used to take three books in the car with me when we would drive to church—all of one mile away.
  3. I have become fairly obsessed with Goodreads.com, which lets you log books you’ve read, are reading, or planning to read. I’ve decided to try and enter into my personal database all the books I own, which is a bit daunting (to put it mildly). So far I’ve almost finished two bookshelves. My “to-read” shelf is already depressingly large.
  4. I’ve actually forbidden myself from buying books that I can get from the library these days. This has cut back the influx greatly.
  5. As much as I dislike winter, I think I would miss the seasons were I to move somewhere sunny and warm year round.
  6. Last year I made a concerted effort to cut all high fructose corn syrup out of my house. It was surprisingly easy. That said, I forgot to check the last time I was at the grocery store and an impulse buy of some yogurt resulted in me purchasing some. Oops. I need to get better about checking for it.
  7. If you’d told me ten years ago that I would run even one marathon, I’d have laughed in your face.
  8. As much as I enjoy exercising, about a third of the time I actually find it very hard to get the motivation to actually do so. This is especially true in the winter months, which is partially why this is the first year I’ve ever trained for a spring marathon.
  9. I enjoy cooking but I go through phases where I will do very little cooking. I prefer to cook for more than just myself, which is part of the problem. Still, thanks to my plastic containers to save for later, that’s not as much as an issue as it could be.
  10. Half of the reason why I signed up for a Community-Supported Agriculture half-share this year is to force myself to actually cook on a daily basis, and to break out the cookbooks just waiting to be used.
  11. Part of me wants to get back into writing fiction, but I’m afraid of what I’d have to give up right now in order to have that extra time in my day. As it is right now there are many leisure activities which have already fallen by the wayside.
  12. I continually feel guilty about not spending enough time with my friends, many of whom I only see a few times a year. I also worry that my friends will leave me behind.
  13. Every time the idea of having children is brought up, my first thought is, “I can’t possibly be old enough to have children.” When it’s pointed out that at my age my mom had three kids and one of them was already a teenager, I am amazed. That then follows up by the thought that I don’t think I should be trusted with having a kid just yet.
  14. I used to have a really bad (almost obsessive-compulsive) completist streak. I like to think I’ve actually gotten a lot better about it. I suspect the reality is that I’ve just given it a much tighter focus instead of applying to so many different possessions.
  15. Doctor Who will probably always be my favorite television program of all time. I suspect my parents still slightly rue the day they bought me a Doctor Who book as a gift, which is what started me down this path.
  16. The images in my head and what my camera actually takes very rarely intersect. The few times they do, though, have brought me a supreme joy.
  17. I hang up all my t-shirts in my closet, sorted by color and arranged by the rainbow spectrum.
  18. I am horrible at movie quote quizzes. Even if I’ve seen the movie a dozen times, I will probably not remember the line until the source is pointed out to me.
  19. I cannot draw anything worthwhile to save my life. Even my stick figures are malformed.
  20. I get genuinely upset if a plant I am taking care of gets sick or dies. Which is probably why pets and/or children are just right out of the question for now. Just imagine if I had something to take care of that could actually make noise.
  21. It’s been four years since I dropped a lot of weight and my body has still not adjusted to the loss of all that internal insulation. I finally had to start wearing sweaters and undershirts again in the colder months to keep from freezing to death.
  22. If I had to start all over again with college and a career, I think I’d want to be a psychologist.
  23. I find it almost impossible to look at someone the entire time I am talking to them, or they’re talking to me. I will still be paying attention to them, but that amount of focus requires conscious and deliberate effort.
  24. I knew I had “become an adult” about two years ago when I bought a new vacuum cleaner and was genuinely excited about doing so.
  25. I can honestly say that I am right now at the happiest point of my life.
Posted in Me

A Year of Self-Portraits

In November 2006, I tried a project where I took a picture every day for a year. It was a lot of fun, it made me get out there with my camera every day, and most importantly I think it helped me a lot with my photography. This year, starting in New Year’s Day, I’m working on a slightly similar project—only this time it’s a self-portrait a day.

I did this for two reasons. First, I like the idea of getting out there and taking photos every day, but making it a little different so I could keep my attention span up. But second, for someone who likes being behind the camera, I’m not so good about being in front of the camera. So, this will hopefully help me with that.

As I’ve been uploading my photos, though, I’ve been putting more and more commentary with them. So, I think that I’m going to start cross-posting them here (provided there is some actual meat to them). Just little glimpses into what I’ve been up to.