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About this blog

An examination of my own whirling thoughts, opinions, and rabbit holes.  Most if not all posts will center around writing and my motivations for undertaking such work.

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Entries in this blog

Blog

Words for My Brother

I went to Kentucky. My brother's funeral was on Saturday, and I needed to be there for a number of reasons. Chief among them was my mother. She needed support. She needed to know she wasn't alone. She needed to know that Adam mattered. So I went. My sister and I met with Mom the morning before the funeral. It was scheduled for 10 AM, and we sat at her house with her for a couple of hours before heading to the funeral home. About a half hour before it was time to go, she looke
Wayne Gray

Wayne Gray in Blog

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Blog

Gone

I got a call from my sister this morning. "Bub, they found Adam unresponsive. I'm not sure how he is, but I'll let you know. Mom is super upset, so I know it's bad. Love you. I'll call soon." A few minutes passed ... then the phone vibrated with a text. Two words. "He's gone." My brother died today. My brother is gone.
Wayne Gray

Wayne Gray in Blog

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Blog

A (little) Secret That Has Never Been Told

As a writer, I love hidden meanings. As a reader, I love them even more - particularly when I stumble on them myself. So, it was with great joy that I inserted one into one of my stories. Once someone sees it, they'll KNOW. No guessing required. It'll be that obvious once discovered. It wasn't hard to do, but apparently it was (is!) hard to detect. It has been years now, and no one has found it. Or, if they have, they've yet to comment on it. So my question is: have you done somet
Wayne Gray

Wayne Gray in Blog

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Blog

Motivation

Warning: I'm about to geek out over working out. Move on if you aren't interested. LOL   I've got the habit now. Getting up early, going to the gym, and getting that handled 4-5 days a week is now something I just do. I used to be extrinsically motivated by results. I needed to SEE changes to keep doing what I needed to do. But I'm past that. It's just something I do (which helps with consistency).   But after using a new workout system called "Average to
Wayne Gray

Wayne Gray in Blog

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Blog

Sneaky bastards ...

Well, we knew it'd happen. This week, I've been tapped by our CFO to help in a dispute against one of the federal regulatory agencies governing us and our funding. The short of it is this: an audit found they had overpaid us for our lab expenses to the tune of $200,000 a year for five years. In other words, they planned to shave a cool million off our next payment and withhold $200,000 a year from here on. The reasons are utterly bogus. Claiming we're double-dipping. Part of that is cl
Wayne Gray

Wayne Gray in Blog

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Blog

We All Resist in Our Own Way

Yesterday, I visited my tattooist. I had given him the parameters for a new tattoo. I wanted the inclusive pride flag, tattered and marred but still flying. And with it, the symbol of the Social Democratic Party of 1932 Germany. The Social Democratic Party was the only real opposition to Hitler and the nazis (the only party to vote against the Enabling Act responsible for the authority Hitler gained to send people to their deaths in concentration camps). Though ultimately defeated, they fou
Wayne Gray

Wayne Gray in Blog

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Blog

Politics - They FAFO, we all pay

Yesterday, my clinic system had an emergency meeting. That's because we're an FQHC - Federally Qualified Health Center, and about 40% of our patient population has Medicaid as their coverage (insurance). Medicaid is how these people pay for their healthcare - everything from vaccinations to pregnancy care to emergency visits. Medicaid literally saves millions of lives from preventable deaths every year. The trump administration attempted to freeze all federal grants yesterday. And for a mom
Wayne Gray

Wayne Gray in Blog

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Blog

If You Love Someone ...

Do you know that axiom, "If you love something, sometimes the best thing you can do is let it go."? I've appreciated it but never considered what it means on more than a superficial level. Well ... that has changed. I'm in an open relationship with my husband. I'm polyamorous, and he accepts that. He and I have each other, and we each have a boyfriend. My boyfriend is a super sweet, lovely guy named Matthew. We've been together now for about three years. While camping with Matthew
Wayne Gray

Wayne Gray in Blog

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Blog

Stinky Nature

As anyone who read my last entry knows, I like to work out. It's something calming, something I control, and it is therapeutic in ways nothing else is in my life. So during today's lunchtime, I strolled out past our garden to our garage. I offhandedly noted that Kevin had been working on the garden, and caught the barest scent of the chicken manure he'd used in his raised beds. No biggie. It wasn't too bad, and I was raised on a farm - I had smelled far worse. I started my workout in our de
Wayne Gray

Wayne Gray in Blog

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Blog

Aging My Way

I think I've done it. After literally years of tinkering and trying different workouts, this week is the first time since I've turned forty that I've managed to work out five days in the same week, and not ended up with aching joints. My workout of choice had always been weightlifting. I love lifting so much. Change is dramatic, and you get out of it what you put in. There's nothing easy, and you have to push past your notions of what you can do. It's absolutely a mental challenge as well a
Wayne Gray

Wayne Gray in Blog

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Blog

Well, It Happened

Looking at all of the numbers related to the Delta and Omicron variants, I suspected since I'm in healthcare and my husband is in one of those "Essential Services" positions with lots of customer service interaction, that it was only a matter of time before we got hit. The night before, I felt ... odd. Cold. I went to bed dressed in a sweater, sweat pants, a knit cap and two pairs of socks. I woke the next day to largely the same symptoms. But I was feeling mostly okay - to the point where I deb
Wayne Gray

Wayne Gray in Blog

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Blog

Faking It

The chapter I'm currently writing has this scene. It's a scene with a therapist and her client, and I am trying to portray her as clever, caring, and deeply insightful. I mean far more insightful than I could ever be. And let me tell you, that's tricky business. So I'm faking it. I get the luxury of time, while she has to deal with someone sitting across from her, and she is having to think on her feet. What takes me writing and rewriting, and hours of thought, she does in moments. I g
Wayne Gray

Wayne Gray in Blog

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Writing

The Hazards of Love

There's this album by "The Decemberists", and it's called The Hazards of Love. The first time I heard it, I didn't know it was an epic. It's a story, and it's told from song one to seventeen, in order. The title fits as well as a tailored glove. It's not all good, and it even ends in ... well, nevermind. I'll let you listen to find out. Regardless, a couple of days ago, I had this scene slam into my head. If you want to read the unedited, raw scene, it's here. In it, we watch someone s
Wayne Gray

Wayne Gray in Writing

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Blog

A Different Kind of Story (for me)

I've been working on a new sort of story, a sort I've never really written. I'm writing a story about a "what if" scenario. It's a tale, set in a world much like our own, with one key difference. That is, it's written in a world where Love is Love. Where healthy relationships of all kinds are simply accepted, and there's no social pressure to be something you're not supposed to be. The difference is actually quite profound. I have to think about it. I have to constantly rewrite bits, b
Wayne Gray

Wayne Gray in Blog

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Blog

The Sawmill - A Gay Campground

A reader emailed an article written by a woman detailing her struggles finding acceptance for both herself and her partner. The story details them sort of falling into life in an RV, and making their own path. It's a great read, and she has wonderfully perceptive views. Take a look. Gay and Lesbian RV Living After I read it, I was curious; I followed the link in the article to the campground in Florida called The Sawmill. And there it is. A warmer, sunnier, more tanned, though les
Wayne Gray

Wayne Gray in Blog

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Blog

Hope

My husband and I had our first night out in over a year in a physically distanced, but indoor dining situation. We went to a spot we love - a little, intimate place with dark, burnt orangey walls, ferrous-stained concrete floors with these glorious cracks filled with rust, and of course a terrific menu. The servers all wore masks, and all the patrons did too until served. Between courses we masked up again, and were all more than six feet apart from other tables. To add a bit of security, I
Wayne Gray

Wayne Gray in Blog

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What Makes Me a Man?

Caution: Some personal stuff concerning sex and sexuality is in this post. The reason I post it is for my own thought process, and with the idea that it may prompt other guys to go get tested if they're having problems. That said, here we go. I'm not very evolved when it comes to some things, I suppose. I fully accept that there are men out there born genetically female. That's not at issue. I don't define their maleness; my role in knowing and supporting trans folks is to acknowledge
Wayne Gray

Wayne Gray

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News I Needed (COVID-19)

I have a meeting every Monday morning. In that meeting, we discuss SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and specifically news and our response to the virus. Today the following information was released by our medical director, based on a huge sample study of folks who had been previously infected Concerning reinfection: To date, we have proof that five of thirty-eight million people have been reinfected by SARS-CoV-2.  This means once someone gets the virus and
Wayne Gray

Wayne Gray

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Abomination

I manage medical labs. Part of that management is I decide which tests ordered by our providers are integrated into our EMR (electronic medical record). Some will never be "mapped," as it's called, because they're esoteric, or just too rarely ordered; it takes effort and time to do this mapping, so we pick and choose which get added. Well at the request of a number of providers who particularly like this odd genetic-based test for cancer screening, I began the process of mapping this new it
Wayne Gray

Wayne Gray

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The rheal

Do you really want to know who I am? Or do you want the carefully edited version of who I want you to see? Of who I expect you'll want to see? Because the real me? Well, he's doughtful, and questi0oning, and drunk, and scared. And he doesn't really know what tomorrow will bnring. Reality is niot clean or carefully designed. It simply is. And if you can't handle  that, then you should unfollow this imperfect vessel. And maybe follow someone who will more careully alighn himselrf wi
Wayne Gray

Wayne Gray

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Making the Light

"My batteries are almost gone, and it's getting dark." This was the slightly-romanticized description of the last transmission from the little, tenacious rover, Opportunity, on the planet Mars. It had been there and operating for fifteen years - thirteen beyond the wildest dreams of NASA engineers. It heavily depended on solar power, and over time the dust storms on the planet slowly covered its solar cells. That last transmission came when a planet-wide dust storm hit. The rover sent the t
Wayne Gray

Wayne Gray

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Playing God

I never thought I'd be playing God. I manage twelve small clinical labs, including the staff that go along with them. I plotted out minimum staffing levels to run each. I asked for volunteers to go on unemployment while our business contracted, and patients stopped coming in for routine visits. The idea, so beautifully expressed on paper, was to have those "extra" staff waiting - out of the line of fire, and hopefully staying healthy away from the front lines of this epidemic. One of t
Wayne Gray

Wayne Gray

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Bad Timing

I do not need this right now. I am so freaking busy. But ... - Scene - I am seated around a table with one of our medical directors (Kelvin), my boss (Stacy) and our risk manager (Koreen). "Wayne, do you have an update on turn around times for LabCorp COVID-19 samples?" *I am idly scratching an itch on my neck* "LabCorp is saying their turn around is three days, but it's averaging more like six. Regardless of what we're being told, it's six." Koreen pipes up. "Should we inclu
Wayne Gray

Wayne Gray

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Coronavirus COVID-19

The coronavirus is large and in charge in the news cycles right now. Since I work in healthcare, it's sort of center-stage in my world. I'll say this now - though I work in medicine, I am not an expert in virology or epidemiology. However, I have access to both of those types of experts, and I listen very closely to what they're saying. The overall messaging is: It's likely that there will be a worldwide pandemic. It's likely that there will be a huge disruption of services, due to how many
Wayne Gray

Wayne Gray

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Another Ninety Days

I got the results of my blood work back a week and a half ago. I will go see my doctor to officially discuss them in a couple of weeks, but he messaged through our electronic health record. He applauded the twenty point drop on my cholesterol, but ... said that he'd still like me to consider statins. That the drop alone isn't enough to push me into the "normal" range for heart-attack risk. Well, I need one more data point to decide. If what I'm doing is working, even if it's slow ... then m
Wayne Gray

Wayne Gray

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