Catching up...

The good news? I'm back, "on-line and real-time" (as a friend says).

The bad news? I started this entry on "catching up" on December 19th.

I've got a lot of catching up to do...

I've been away from this place (and the blogging world in general) for a number of reasons. My "temp job" officially became "my new job" on December 12th - and at the same time, I got thrown into two incredibly messy and tragically-flawed projects almost immediately. The second project went live on January 2nd (about 90 days before it would have been ready), and we've been putting in between 70-90 hours a week for the last four weeks putting out fires.

So my life has been just dealing with first-order topics - work, sobriety, maintaining basic utilities and services (like laundry) - and there hasn't been any bandwidth for much else. It's not that I'm any less gay, or any less in the process of coming out. But frankly, sexuality has been the last thing on my mind - or on my co-workers' minds, either. I think that if Osama bin Laden had shown up, and been able to deal with the issues at hand, our team would have welcomed him onto the team with open arms.

One of the negative consequences of the excess hours has been that three or four days a week I've been driving into the office (rather than risk having to take the train home into the ghetto at 1 AM). So my reading/rest/meditation time has been sucked up by driving down Stony Island and Lake Shore Drive into downtown Chicago. So I've been kind of burnt-out and fresh out of things to say, other than "Damn, I'm glad that day's over..."

My goal, going forward is to post something on both my blogs at least twice a week - if only to think about something other than my two problem-children clients and their payroll challenges.

For now, there's a bunch of things on mind - including four books I've been alternating reading (when I'm not too brain-dead to read), and my reactions to seeing Brokeback Mountain (which I went to see with Tom and Damien earlier today). But the thing that has stuck with me the most happened on the phone a little over a week ago...

A week ago Thursday, I got a phone call about 11:30 PM, and it was my friend Eric. Eric's about the closest thing I had to a brother-in-spirit in my former church community - and therefore was one of the people I'd been more concerned about coming out to, especially because of some of the religious views he'd expressed about homosexuality in the past. Of course, when I actually sent him the email, he wrote back and basically said, "I've know that about you for quite a while, and it doesn't change how I feel about you," which was an immense relief.

Flash forward to last Thursday...Eric was calling from Hong Kong using Skype, a voice-over-IP internet phone service. (He goes to HK, Taiwan and China several times a year for business. Since I'm one of the few people he knows who are up late, he thought he'd try out the VoIP deal on me.) So after the initial "Guess where I'm calling you from?" deal, he said, "Yeah, I thought I'd be your first-ever call from Hong Kong..." (and I could almost hear the smirk in his voice) "...and it's a cute boy, to boot."

Well, to be honest, Eric would definitely qualify as a cute guy (although not necessarily a type I'd be drawn to) but it really surprised me, for some stupid reason, that he'd be comfortable enough to tease me about that. It took me a two-count to recover, and then I replied, "Yeah, and doesn't it just figure that the first time I get a phone call from a cute boy, he's in freakin' Hong Kong..."

And we laughed...and I breathed a sigh of relief. There aren't many things in my life that are big deals - but finding one of my best friends able to tease me about my orientation was a really big deal. Especially when I'd been so terrified about people finding out for so long.

You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. (John 8:32, NIV)