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.

I just can't. They took a lovable piece of my childhood and butchered it. I can't ever forgive them. 😛

I'm curious how many of you have tattoos and/or piercings. If so, where? How many? Any other information you want to share? For me, I have both ear lobes pierced and I usually just wear simple studs in both. I also have three tattoos. One on my left shoulder-blade, one on my right shoulder-blade, and a third on my upper left arm. I plan on getting a fourth one on my upper right arm sometime in the next couple of months. I want my body to be totally balanced tattoo-wise. 😛

Ok that's great and all, but what initially attracts two people almost every time is physical looks because it is all we can see at first. Emotional connection comes after.

Nope, there's at least two of us. He was much hotter when he was younger (and twinkier). No he just looks like something that crawled out of the cold north woods where everyone is afraid to go. https://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/667229/Game-of-Thrones-Jason-Momoa-Khal-Drogo-Baywatch-Hawaii-Model

That must be really hard to swallow, even if the rational part of you knew that it probably, eventually would. It's good to write out your feelings and process them.

After seeing the train wreck that was Episode 7, I refused to keep watching anything that got put out after that. It was depressing because I have such good childhood memories around Star Wars. Right before they released the prequels, they re-released the original three in movie theaters. I was 6 or 7 then. My dad, who was away a lot of the time for work, took me to Sunday matinees to go see them. It was just time him and I got together that we didn't really get otherwise. I actually liked the prequels too. Episode I was meh, but II and III were good. Disney ruined it.

I can tell you, as a teacher in the elementary level, that ADHD is absolutely a real thing. I have students where I can tell within the first ten seconds of them coming into the classroom if they have taken their meds or not. The days they don't are incredibly frustrating, because no matter what you do they simply can't focus. They become distractions to everyone else, interrupt everything, and act out because their brain is just all over the place. Trying to get them to calm down is impossible, and you can't really be mad at them because they can't do a thing about it. It simply is better understood now (like so many medical conditions) than it was 10, 15, 30 years ago. Can it be a fallback for kids who may be a little more hyperactive than normal? Yes, and there are several students I know whose diagnosis I highly question. But most kids who are diagnosed with ADHD legitimately suffer from it, and need to be on some sort of medication. Without it, they can't function effectively in life.

Halloween was big when I was growing up. We lived in a relatively quiet neighborhood where it was safe to walk the streets. Pretty much every house was giving out candy. As we got older, it turned more into a "lets be little shits" night where we would scare little kids, ding-dong-ditch people, and other (mostly) harmless stupid stuff. Halloween now as an adult is just an excuse to dress sexy/slutty and party. I was in Brooklyn this year and got to see Discodromo play all night. They spin some really great and upbeat techno. It was fun.

Not that I'm a prolific writer or anything, but I do write short stories from time to time. I tend to base my characters off people I know or observe in real life. For example, I based one character's physical description to the T based on a guy I've seen pretty much every week in the gym for the last four and a half years. The thing is, he very much keeps to himself in the gym, which is out of the norm considering it's a majority gay gym where a lot of people know each other. I think I've heard him utter only a few sentences in the four and a half years I've been around him. So even though the character's physical look is exactly this guy's, I invented a personality completely of my own imagining because I don't know his real one. It was kind of an interesting exercise. But yeah, I mostly base physical descriptions on real people I know.

You and me sound like we have very similar personalities. Like you, I'm a somewhat introverted person. Like you, I'm not shy and don't mind attention sometimes but not always. At work, a lot of people think I'm more introverted than I really am. I work almost exclusively with married, middle-aged women with kids. Not exactly a demographic a 26 year old guy can relate to easily. Ironically the person I am closest to and relate the most with is a 57 year old, never-married woman with a brash, in-your-face personality of sorts. I don't get it, but we click for whatever reason. Luckily my relatively reserved personality at work doesn't preclude me from showing my competence. When I'm surrounded by friends, at a bar/club, or brunch I'm a much more outgoing and personable person. For you, you live in a city full of hyper-competitive, brash people who view others as a threat to their own survival. New York is a tough city to survive in, let alone thrive in. I may not live there but I spend enough time up there to get what it's like. You say you're about to leave the job, so my advice would be to just survive until then. You've realized you can't thrive in that kind of environment so it is definitely time to start looking for something new. But....as you know entry level jobs are incredibly competitive in New York because everyone and their mother is applying for them as a way to get a foothold in New York. So if I were you I wouldn't quit until you had a guaranteed new job lined up. And you probably know too, entry level jobs treat you like a slave, and that is doubly true for New York. They know they have you by the balls and can replace you in a heartbeat, so finding one that will accommodate a student schedule is probably slim to none. You can pick between money/grades/having a life, but you will probably only get two of the three. I got let go from my first job after college within a year, and I was basically forced to take another job with lower pay and a much lower level of responsibility. I sucked it up for a year and used that job to survive until I landed at the amazing job I have now. It was competitive and exhausting getting into that job, but it was worth the struggle to get there. There are plenty of jobs that value introverted and analytical people. Part of the reason I thrive in teaching is because I have both those traits. You just have to find what you're interested in and compete like hell to prove they should give you a shot. You're going to be competing in the most competitive job market in the country, so do something that makes you stand out. Welcome to life in BosWash. It can be a real tough bitch sometimes.

I learned a couple months ago that there are different kinds of numbered plastics, and only certain ones are recyclable. I thought they were all recyclable, and had no ideas there were different numbers for different kinds.

This Is Me was named the Pride Song of 2018 by The Advocate magazine. The lyrics sing as if it were written for the LGBT community. I've heard this upbeat remix version played at almost every single party I've been to this year, and 3 times in one night over Pride weekend. It's one of those songs that just makes you wanna paint yourself in rainbows and dance through the streets. 😛 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6VZuWtm9H8