Time to Stop and Reset

All the time, things need to be reset. Sometimes the best medicine for our computer is to just turn it off and let it sit for a moment. When we turn it back on, it is ready again for whatever we need it for. Our router needs the same thing, our cell phones, our cars, our outlets and so on. With a quick reset, our appliances and such are able to continue working without disruption. We are the exact same way.

One of the greatest luxuries of starting Project Kinect last winter was that I got the chance to meet my daily routines on my terms. There is no way to measure the magnitude of personal happiness when we are meeting deadlines, making appointments, and taking responsibility for ourselves and our own business. Well, unfortunately our own business doesn't always pay the bills and additional money making solutions are required. That is how I ended up here in Wisconsin for the winter, working at a restaurant that I love and for a woman that I admire, look up to and support completely. That does not disregard though how we all still get in routines that are not negotiated by ourselves.

I took off from the restaurant for the weekend to reset. For the past four days, I have had the opportunity again to run my life on my own schedule and it has been fantastic. Despite having a ton of responsibility at the restaurant, I am still in full force working on The Dina and Gregg Show(which we just left our radio station to launch Dign2it Radio), Dign2it Magazine, Project Kinect as well as a new nonprofit that I am helping out with in St. Paul. Those things are the big picture and it is necessary for us, as human beings, to repeatedly reset throughout our lives in order to keep a grasp on the big picture. It is a way to continually be centered to maximize our own productivity.

Think about the last time you reset? It could have been just a moment away from your children or the need to walk away from your staff for an hour. Maybe you needed to take a vacation and get out or you jumped in the car and drove for hours just to clear your head by processing everything. What ever it was, think if you need it again. We tend to reset when it is already too late. It's kind of like when we are so thirsty that we would do anything for a glass of water. Well, the water was really needed a while ago before it got to that desperate point. Our mental reset is completely like that.

Well, that is my thought for today. I must return to my to do list. Have a great day. Take a moment for yourself.

These videos really don't have anything to do with the post. I just came across them for the first time in a while and thought it would be great to post them.

Waiting with the Weight

Tonight at work I had an eye opening moment in the realm of my own insecurities. We were getting to the end of the night in the restaurant,(I'm in WI working at a restaurant right now if you don't know) and for some reason the two straight men, along with the female who was my closing server, got on the conversation of weight. I didn't think anything of this and when everyone was sharing. I quickly spouted out my my usual weight spectrum of 185 to 190. Knowing in my head that I haven't been eating the best, I figured it probably was around 195. Well, either way, I just let it fall off the shoulders and moved on with my life. The universe was not having that though.... Uh Uh Uhhhh! My closing server announced that she knew where a scale was down stairs and we all should check our weights right then and there.

Well that sounded the alarms. Me thinking about not eating the best turned into I'M WEARING HEAVY SHOES! IT'S THE END OF THE DAY! I SHOULD POOP FIRST! and every other possible "heavy" thought I could. Well it was about to get worse.

Two of them went and grabbed the scale and I sat there, and thought nothing of it, and then they getting adamant about me getting on it. This quickly went from a screaming in my head to an actual, "No, I will not get on that scale!!!" It wasn't about me not wanting them to know how much I weighed, it was about me not wanting to know how much I weighed. I have not thought that much about my weight since I left Los Angeles for my travels for Project Kinect. I have been conscious about what is going into my body and how much I am putting out as of exercise but haven't actually weighed myself.

Well this wasn't my most stoic moment and I ran away and hid from the guys while I quickly worked on closing duties and tried to forget my fit. While I was filling my time with tasks, I sat in the question of why did I have such a problem with this? Also, why am I so insecure with my weight? I am really, extremely insecure with my body and I have no clue where this stems from. I remember moments as a younger child at the pool thinking I was bigger. At one point I was husky, but never large. In high school I always felt that I was large but then I look back at pictures of me then and realize I was a skinny white boy. That is all.

Well now I am a gay man who lives in Los Angeles. How did I get to this point where I am so disgusted by my body? I'm not completely sure but I know that this needs to be specified and eliminated from my being. It is a major character flaw that because of this odd moment in my life, I realize that I add so much cause of other avenues of my whole being from this one small issue. That magnifies this insecurity by a million.

Needless to say, when everyone was gone, because of the monster of major insecurities, I stood on the scale to see a whopping 206 pounds. Now it's one in the morning and I am making a list of ways that I can get to a size my brain thinks I should be. That is the thing about deep seeded insecurities. It takes more than a plan to resolve it. It takes repetition, habit breaking, daily reminders that this insecurity is just that, an insecurity.

As for all of you with what ever you have that gets you screaming at friends over something absolutely childish, remember that you have to have your fit to move forward. Maybe then some resolution will come of it. Maybe not. I will just finish my bottle of Pinot Nior and try to not think about it..... Well at least until I wake up and look in the mirror. Good night beautiful people because we all are absolutely perfect and beautiful just the way we are!

Sundance Celebrating Those Girls Who Love Us Boys

The newest season of Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys officially airs on November 19th and it will be a great season. If you are not aware of this show, it is a reality show that follows four ladies and their gay best friends through the different drama and details to their lives. It is definitely showing all sides of these peoples lives and people who may never be exposed to these communities are getting a great example of how diverse we all are.

Fighting Women in Government

Just a reminder that there are still real people running for higher positions in government. I know we all know this, but it is great to acknowledge it when we see more of it. Here are two women who continue to make waves in our government that are helping our the majority of us.

Dealing with Integrity and Personal Truths

I’ve been thinking a lot about the truths that I know to be valid in my life. I know it sounds odd, but one of the only things that I can absolutely say I know for certain about getting older is that we start collecting a list of personal truths. This list doesn’t necessarily have to be true to other people, but they are true to one’s self. As I write this, I am enjoying one of my personal truths: That is, that I know when I need to be in a very melancholy yet inspired mood, all I need is a little Sade and a bottle of pinot nior. This has been this way for years and I know that about myself.

As I was going for an enjoyable autumn hike today, I started thinking about how life sometimes just isn’t the way we plan. I do feel that there is a great role for us all and sometimes we don’t take the most direct route of getting there but right now, I can’t figure out where my route is going. Before I get into this whole topic, I must ensure you that this is not a pity parade or some sort of self-inflicted guilt show; it is only to share what I have learned in this experience and hopefully gives a sense of security to someone else out there reading this.

Last January, I signed on to a great load of new work that would bring me into the next chapter of my life. It was December thirty-first and almost midnight and Dina and I were ferociously working on getting our first month’s edition of Dign2it Magazine. After that, we officially turned our Dign2it name into an LLC and started our media company. Much of these efforts are applauded to my friend and partner Dina. She took on such a burden by getting all of our paperwork set and filing all of the necessary papers to the proper offices. None the less, we got our company up and running.

At this same time, I was to set on my journey of Project Kinect. I put all of my belongings in storage, set a course to Las Vegas and then Austin, TX and then where ever from there. The purpose for my travels was to find out how people are connecting one-on-one and how these people, making up a plethora of different communities, are taking action to better them and their communities. This journey brought me all over the south and the east coast. I spent some time in Tampa and Saint Petersburg, Baltimore, New York, D.C., Connecticut, Rockford, Tuscaloosa, Minneapolis and many other significant places. I was on the Today Show, heard so many horrible sad stories and got the opportunity to hear stories of triumph. Despite the state of my current location, this journey is far from over.

While I was travelling, I was also working on helping our magazine grow and find ways to build our business. With me not in Los Angeles to help, it became almost a burden than a new opportunity on both Dina and I. We are still extremely motivated and moving forward, but the lack of day to day support grows heavy on our shoulders and success is taking a bit longer than we had hoped. Isn’t that how it always is though?

In all of this though, we celebrated her birthday in LA, we put on an amazing two year anniversary show of The Dina and Gregg Show and are expanding our media company into a great new venture. That is something to really celebrate as we go into our third year on air.

In June, all this greatness came to a halt. I was in Tuscaloosa, AL helping out with tornado clean up from the April twenty-fifth tornados that flattened much of the city and surrounding area. When I returned to Wisconsin to get centered, I realized that there was no more money in the center and I picked up an opportunity to make some money helping out a good friend at her new restaurant. Starting out as a summer gig to get back on my feet and continue with my journey on Project Kinect, it has now become a six month, rent a house and stick out the winter kind of set up. I love what I am doing and love that it is helping out the big picture of a friend’s dream but I can’t help to feel left out of my own life and in a huge space of idle back story that isn’t moving me forward.

So, I sit here in Wisconsin with a huge space in my heart and a huge lack of integrity. The space that is there is both positive and negative. It is a space that wasn’t there because my plans for the entire year were so set in stone. Now that I am here for these six months, I have space to work on some other things that would not have necessarily had the time to focus on them. Because of this new space, I have made a lofty list of goals that I will have accomplished by the time I leave. Some more personal and some are extremely business oriented to help all of my endeavors along.

This lack of integrity thing though is where I am having the major issues. I am not someone who just stops doing something and falls to the wayside on projects he sets out to accomplish so when I face the fact that I have stopped Project Kinect because I need to make money to go on, well that goes against what I said I would do if I got into this position. It goes against me saying that I would be out on the road for one entire year, nonstop, helping out and getting other people’s voices heard. I have failed at that goal.

I know, you are thinking “well, things happen. We all have to do what we have to do sometimes.” That is a help but I have so many beautiful loved ones who are supportive and tell me those same things. Well, I don’t need that right now. I need someone to hold me accountable to what I said I would do and say “Why the hell are you not doing it?” and tell me “Not good enough” when I answer them.

Unfortunately I don’t have anyone else to share this with right now because life is nonstop and the friends I can share with can’t understand and the friends that could understand have more pressing issues so that is why I am sharing it here, on my personal blog that doesn’t get read very often. It is out there and can be received by whomever, however, whenever.

I spent some time in Los Angeles working and partaking in the Landmark Education program. The most important thing that I took away from these great experiences is that once we admit that we have lost integrity, we can regain it by restating our intent and then continuing to do what we say in that intent. I have always felt that I have great integrity and that makes these feelings about what has happened in the last ten month even worse. However, with this knowledge, I can re-state my plan, and follow through with that new plan; always keeping in mind that the universe has it’s influence too.

Now that I am honest with myself, with my integrity and my plan in line, I go to the things that I have known to be absolutely true in my thirty years on this planet. We are always trying to know ourselves better, that is the bottom line. We do it in different ways like finding our soul mate, getting that perfect career, always finding a way to lead so people can be amazed by you and so on. Right now though, while I am getting through this rough part, I will go back to what I know are absolute truths in my life like Sade and red wine. It really can be that simple some times.