TetRefine

I thought you'd like that one.

An awesome remix of a great pro-gay song by the best DJ on the circuit, Dan Slater. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBaMRJxSJuk

I guess I just like tragedy. I like endings to be messy and not as we hoped. My absolute favorite book, Dancer From The Dance is tragic in just about every way. The setting, the lives of the characters, the characters themselves, and how it ends. The hopelessness and sense of loss that is present throughout the entire novel just gripped me in a way that no happy story ever could or can. It felt so gritty and real it was almost scary.

I tend to just skip over most sex scenes unless it really adds some depth to the story. Most sex scenes are, even in good stories, meant just to titilate the reader and it's boring. Also, I pretty much skip entirely over the teen romance genre. It's the same damn characters, with the same generic problem, in the same basic setting, over...and over...and over...and over again. So little of the stories told in that genre resemble reality (at least how it was in my teenage years) that they might as well call it fantasy. To me, it mostly comes off as "this is how I WISH it was when I was a teen." I don't know, maybe that's part of the appeal.

I remember in middle/high school, the main attractive look for men here in the US was the lean-muscled, "Abercromebie model" look. No beef, no body hair, no beard. Very boyish. Now it has transitioned back to a much more classic, "manly" look with beefier muscles, chest/facial hair, etc.

As someone who has benefited greatly from all the changes the last 30 years, thank you. We owe a lot to you guys.

☝️ This x1,000,000.

There is a significant shortage of teachers, and there is projected to be a crisis-level shortage within the next decade or so. In Pennsylvania, the amount of teaching licenses issued every year has plummeted since the Great Recession. Why would anyone with smarts want to go to school (and eventually be forced to get a masters) when the pay sucks, society generally treats you like crap, and the workload is brutal. You have to really believe in it to put up with all the BS. Some states are better than others. Philadelphia actually isn't all that bad, pay and benefits-wise. It also has a strong union, which can make a huge difference in the way you're treated. If you have the balls to teach in an inner-city school, it's a good place to start. The problem is most new teachers gain a few years of experience in the rough-and-tumble city system, and then the rich suburbs poach them away with higher pay and much better conditions. The city school system is literally like a training ground and farm system for the suburban districts ringing the city. It's ridiculous. The school I work at now gives us very generous benefits packages because it's the only way they can retain quality people for long periods. The pay scale is almost laughable, but the school makes up for it in prestige, independence, and quality of culture. Our average tenure of teacher is something like 9 years, which is unheard of for an inner-city school. It's even more impressive given the fact the school has only been in existence since 2005. The first school I worked at had a turnover rate of close to 40% every year. That's the norm in your average city public school in rough neighborhoods. America values education, just not for certain groups of people....

My job requires a lot of work to be done in my own personal time. I get one 55 minute prep period a day, and the rest of the time I spend in the classroom with students. There is no way I can get everything done in the 55 minutes I have to myself during the work day. Most days I'm in my office by 7am trying to get a head start but it's still not enough. So, I generally spend at least another hour or so a night after I get home catching up on everything I couldn't get done during the day. The same goes for my email. My work email is linked to my personal phone, because I hate having to use Outlook on the computer. So, whether I'm at work or not, I know instantly when I get an email. Sometimes the emails start flowing in as early as 5am from people, and before I'm even fully awake I'm checking what's coming in. From about 7:30 to noon, there is generally a flood of them coming from all directions. But there is rarely time to answer them, so they sit in my inbox till the end of the day. Then other people don't have time to check them during the day either, so everyone starts responding after they leave work. I generally respond to mine when I'm at the gym after work and on the train home. The school I teach at is a highly ranked one, and this is one of the reasons why. There is very much a "work harder and do whatever we can" culture there, which is great for the students we serve. You have to be one of those people who truly believes in what you do in order to tolerate it for how much we're paid. I don't mind it because I like my job and am just used to it now, but it has definitely turned some people off over the 3 years I've worked there. Note: As I was typing this, two emails came in and it's not even 9am on a Saturday morning....

I had probably the most enjoyable Thanksgiving ever last week. For the first time I didn't spend it with family, and instead did it with friends. I wish I had figured out how much more enjoyable it was doing it this way sooner, but better late then never. My boyfriend lives in New York, so Tuesday after work I hopped on a train up there to spend my Thanksgiving break with him. He had to bring his mom to the airport that night, so I met up with a friend I hadn't seen in a long time and we had dinner and drinks. Meeting up with someone you haven't seen in awhile is so much fun. You have so much to talk about, and can just go on and on catching up with each other. We hung out for almost four hours before finally saying goodbye. My boyfriend took off Wednesday, and we went exploring around some potential neighborhoods I could live in when I move there. That night we went to a house party of these two daddies who have this beautiful apartment in Hell's Kitchen, then went to a drag show at Therapy. While I'm not a big fan of drag, it was fun just getting drunk and hanging out with a group of people. Thursday morning I was supposed to take the train out to Long Island for thanksgiving with family, but was really dreading going. I love my family, but put all together at once they can be a lot to handle. Them: Oh you're gay? Me: Yeah. Them: Well you're still having kids right?? Me: No. Them: Well you're still young, you'll change your mind eventually! Me: Okay. As I was about to leave for Penn Station, I checked the Long Island Rail Road app for service advisories. If I believed in a god, I would say he granted me a miracle. There was a downed power line at one of the stations and it was causing huge delays and cancellations throughout the whole system. It gave me the perfect excuse to stay in the city. So instead, I plus-oned with my boyfriend to a friends-giving on the Upper West Side. It was cool because they live half a block from Central Park West, which is right where the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade goes through, so we watched a bit of the parade until it got too cold. It was the first time I'd ever seen the parade in person. We spent the next nine hours all just getting drunk, eating tons of food, gossiping, and just enjoying a big 'ole gay thanksgiving. It was an interesting mix of guys too. You had guys in their 60s all the way down to guys like us in our 20s. You had millionaire tech executives (the guy who hosted it all) to a guy who is a professional escort, to everyone in-between. I've been spending more and more weekends up in New York, and every time it gets harder and more depressing to go back home. I guess life here has changed a lot recently, and mostly not for the better. My roommate and best friend moved out of state, and she was a big source of support in my life. Another very close friend of mine got a new job and moved to Germany with his boyfriend. He has been my closest gay friend and party buddy since we met 3 years ago. With him gone, that has left a big social void too. I used to go out every weekend, and now I've only been out here in the city once in the last two months (and that was for his going-away party). To make matters worse, another close friend of mine moved with his boyfriend out to the far-flung suburbs and doesn't come into the city much anymore. He was probably my first real gay friend that I met back in college, and we've stayed close since. So I now have no close friends left around me on a daily basis, and not much of a social life to be had here anymore because of it. Because I know that I am moving next year and also because I'm so busy with other stuff, I've stopped investing much into my life here in Philly. I'm not really trying to make new friends, I'm not getting involved in anything outside of what I already am, and am instead putting that energy into making connections, both professionally and personally, in New York. I just don't see a reason to start over again here when I know I'm going to leave. I see investing in the future as a better option. That being said, I'm a bit sad at losing so much of what I had of my life here. I love this city with all my heart, and it gave me a great start in life. I made a lot of mistakes along the way, but I've come out in one piece. I'm also entering the final stretch of grad school, and the workload has absolutely skyrocketed. I'm routinely putting in 60 hours a week between work and school. Because I don't have much of a life here anymore, I've started falling into the workaholic mode again, which makes me low-level depressed. In a way it works, because I have so much that needs to get done and get done right that being able to focus like I do is important. In the next six months, I need to finish up all my remaining classes, take the New York State licensing tests (multiple ones), and then begin applying and interviewing for public school teaching jobs in New York City, which is a feat unto itself. If even the littlest piece has a crack, it throws off the entire plan. I'm such a nervous wreck right now because trying to balance all this for the next six months is exhausting and there's still so much time left to go. I am so motivated though. The one dream I've always had was to live in New York, and now I'll finally have the earning power to afford a good life there. My boyfriend lives there, and I definitely see long-term potential for us. I'm of the attitude right now that this phase is just the challenge before the prize. If it all goes according to plan, I'll have the life I always dreamed of when I was a closeted 16 year old kid growing up in a depressing small town. I'm hoping it'll make the moment it all comes together that much more satisfying. Until then, I just gotta suck it up and push through.

My mom, who always said tattoos were trashy things for trashy people, ended up getting two at 51 on her ankle. I got the two sayings from her mom and dad tattooed on my back, and she got them tattooed on her ankle.

I'd tell my early 20s self to have more of a life focus. Making and starting a plan then would have been a whole lot easier then it is now.