Today is my birthday!!! I love my birthday… just love it! I’m sorry I’ve not been blogging, but it’s an organic process, and sometimes there is a great deal to say and other times not. I know how I will be picking up with Part 6 of 13, and I will do that soon. Right now I’m nursing a neck injury, and may need to spend the next few days resting. At any rate, it took 35 years, but I finally turned 24 years old today. In honor of plays on the word twenty-four (and as an excuse to throw Janet Jackson on my blog), here’s the video “Twenty ForePlay:”

I have come to the realization that the best friends you will ever have are the ones who get away with posting pics of you from middle and high school on Facebook. This is what happens when 9th grade and 1990 collide. I think I’m going to go die now. LOL

So, this is what 20 years does to a person, eh? This portrait was taken on the Wednesday before school started on Monday. I remember they had to make the ID’s by hand, and they needed a few days to get your yearbook and ID photo done at the same time. What a monkey. Wow.

This other one is from my 13th birthday party – I had the same birthday as Leslie, so we shared parties several years (so that people wouldn’t have to pick which one to go to). This particular year we had it at Dad’s house. The next year it was her turn to pick the place, and we all went to Putt-Putt. I hate Putt-Putt. I needed something like 38 strokes on the hole with the windmill spinning around. I think I actually walked over and clobbered the damn windmill with my Putt-Putt whacker. Yeah, that’s pretty ignorant (especially since I got a hole in one on the previous shot by accident). LOL

I have become slightly too fascinated by this video, but it makes me laugh my balls off (especially when I apply all the commentary to myself), and I thought it would an awesome gay superhero name: THE HONEY BADGER. Mwahahahaha!

Here’s a fun post. Nothing of any real depth. I just thought it was cool that a pic of me got posted on www.guyswithiphones.com

I just go back from a nice massage after a short trip to DC. The dance company had a performance this past Friday night (we did a dance using “The Seven Deadly Sins” as a theme), and so I could do only a short visit up north this weekend. I do like the road trips to DC and Atlanta: I get to sing (badly) for several hours there and back. San Francisco next! (No singing on the planes…)

Just so you know: I have appreciated the support and condolences from all of you over the last few weeks, and everything my friends, family, and readers have done to be supportive has helped me heal since Grampa’s passing. He will always be missed, but I am back to feeling optimistic, energetic, and happy. It isn’t disrespectful to Grampa that I “already” am not sad anymore: I am a better person for having known him for 34 years. Being the person he helped me become is part of his legacy (and that gift would be squandered in sadness). So I dedicated all my (bad) singing to him on the drive home today. I’m sure he was smiling patiently somewhere…

Have a great week everyone!

UPDATE: 02/02/11 – Happy Imbolc! Here’s the back side.

(If I have set it up properly, this post will not be published until 12/21/2010 at 3:14 am. This is a very important moment for me, and I hope it goes off without a hitch…)

It has been the Winter Solstice for 3 hours and 14 minutes: HAPPY YULE!

It is the first day of winter: The season for rest, introspection, and planning. Tonight will be the longest night of the year, but winter also promises eventual light and warmth; however, today, at this moment, isn’t “just” Yule. Now is also the moment of the full moon. But, even more significant, there is a total lunar eclipse today at this moment, too! This is the first time this has happened since Yule, 1638!

Yule is the season of self examination. The full moon is a symbol of complete empowerment. Eclipses remind us of rebirth. Today holds a cosmic call to put all this together into one meditation: Knowing oneself allows a person to become a powerful newborn.

Yes! Today is the day to formally announce it: I am engaged to be married!

To myself.

I have asked me to marry me, and (after a year to consider it carefully) I have accepted my proposal to myself. I had to get to know myself for a year, because I didn’t want to freak out and reject myself.

Joking aside, this isn’t a cynical ploy to scorn others’ relationships or marriages. I’m not doing this to warden myself off from sex or future relationships with others. I am not doing this to please, anger, gratify, or perplex anyone. I have placed a diamond band on my finger (a solitaire will follow in 2012 [Edit: You can see and read about it here]); I plan to court myself; I will take solemn vows before a spiritual mentor (as well as family and friends) to love, honor, and cherish myself; and I will take myself on a honeymoon.

I do all this for a very practical reason: I have chosen my boyfriends very poorly. I had no ability to be successful in a relationship. I gave until my integrated wellness was bankrupt.

I have been single for over four years, and I am VERY happy. But I also recognize that I will eventually need to relax my guard… And since rituals soothe and calm me, I have decided to recreate my reemergence into a formal process of training myself to value me properly, so I can then value another properly.

By going through this structured ritual of falling in love with myself, testifying before witnesses to honor myself, and beginning a new life as a person empowered to command respect, I am forcing myself to abide by the vows I will make. If, in front of people, I promise to take care of myself, then I must do it, or be a liar. I empower everyone who sees my marriage (live or via YouTube) on June 29, 2012 to rebuke me if I break my vows. Since I have not honored myself on my own, I am putting it outside of myself, so that I have to honor myself as a function of maintaining my word of honor before others.

In 18 months, just after the Summer Solstice, I will marry myself. By that time I will be free of debt. I will have more personal stability than ever before. I will have been single for nearly six years, and will have had the necessary distance from all my past relationships. I will be ready to try again. From beginning on the longest night I will finish on the longest day.

I do not regret taking this time to myself to be single. I luxuriate in being utterly myself on my own terms, without making compromises. I have needed that. This has been an incubation period: When I come back from my honeymoon, I will not immediately hatch as someone’s boyfriend. But I will return open to the idea of trying.

I am not becoming a monk or eunuch. I will begin to include others to a degree that I have avoided since 2006. In marrying me, I will be ready to marry someone else.