Hunter Thomson

Thank you @Reader1810. I don't necessarily feel brave right now, but everything will get better once I'm there, I think. It'll be a different, unusual journey to be sure. Too many things are still up in the air right now. I am indeed at the airport right now, waiting for my flight and to see if I'm even on the flight (yay standby passengers). Everything is prepared, I just have to go and do it now.

Thank you tim, I shall keep it in mind if I need to be put back on the right path.

Thank you for the kind words of inspiration, I hope they shall serve me well in this new, undiscovered country that is to be my new home. Prince George is a whole other universe as far as I'm concerned. It's much more rural, and it's much further inland as well. So I'll be avoiding fish for the duration of my stay. Inland fish is just asking for trouble... The area is much less gay-friendly as well, so I have some serious thinking to do about how out I am for the next year. It's just for graduate studies. I will return, I've sworn too many oaths to that effect already.

We'll see if I can avoid falling into old behaviour patterns.

In some ways it is a good thing to start new. My reputation is a blank slate now, so I can become something more than the charlatan I've let myself become here in Vancouver. It's just... it's new and it's overwhelming and I can't deal with change very well. And this is a lot of change for me. I am starting graduate studies in a place I have only visited once, and then only for a day. I know perhaps three people in the whole city. Two of them are sexual partners, and one is a curling teammate I've spoken to once on a phone. Beyond that, I am utterly without people I can talk to in this new city. I am alone here as well, in that my professional and personal lives are unlikely to become better by staying. People think I'm a man of ill-repute here, and that I'm sexually precocious. None of the gays want to associate with me because they think I'm only after sex. My professional reputation is likewise in tatters because of my constant need to publicly place principles before party loyalty. I will not succeed here, and thus I am alone. But I have my family, and Josh, and my friends. And that makes all the difference.

So, this is it. In ten hours I'll be on a plane to my new home in Prince George, five hundred kilometers away from everyone and everything that I've grown up with for the last twenty-seven years of my life. I wish I could say I was excited, because I should be, and on some level I suppose I am. This is a chance for a new start and to erase all of the mistakes I made in Vancouver. No one knows me in Prince George; I don't have to face the stigma of all of the things that people think I am or anything like that. I can be a completely new person and not be held back by my past life. Except that this is my home, the place that feels most comfortable to me in spite of the summer heat wave and the fact that I'm completely persona non grata in the gay world and my political world. I'm utterly alone here, but at least I'm alone with people who love me. I won't have anyone or anything when I get to Prince George. I wish I knew how things would turn out, or that at least I'd be okay up north. I don't know anything about the culture of the city or even what the food will be like, and I'd hate to think that I spent all this money just to get sick repeatedly and not be able to actually do any of the things I want to do. I'm scared that this will be another stupid detour and waste of my time and money, that I won't be any more employable than I am now and that I really am to be relegated to a pointless existence for the rest of my life. But there are no guarantees, and staying here is nearly a sign of surrender. So I guess I'm off. I don't know what it will accomplish, but I will be back again someday... I think. Except for GA. I'm not leaving here, you people can't get rid of me that easily.

A facebook business page (or any kind of public page could work) would be a good idea if you don't already have one going. I've had relatively good results with Mailchimp, and it works well. It customizes each email for you so that it automatically adds the person's name to the email. So it would take your generic email and add the correct person's name to each email address.

Hush you! You didn't say what you were reading! -chases you around with Silent No More-

Is it nerdy to say I'm reading a pile of political philosophy, or is it just in character for me? I've got the Selected Political Writings of John Locke, and Achieving Our Country by Richard Rorty. And some Nietzsche, because you can't go wrong with some more Nietzsche in your life.

Take care of yourself Comsie. We'll always be here waiting, but you gotta take care of yourself first

Always was, always will be. I forget how close he and I are in age sometimes. It scares me

Happy birthday Pagey!

Another amazing chapter. The slow burning connection between Bailey and Declan have finally allowed Bailey to trust Declan. Declan was the perfect level of comforting and strong that Bailey needs right now, and the fact that he was trying to stop the rumours at school was a nice touch. Now that we know more about Bailey's backstory and the extent of the attack, it makes a lot of his past behaviours make much more sense. I'll echo Steve and say that allowing for that kind of physical comfort is a very good sign for both boys, as long as they keep doing things to build the trust that's formed.

Cia; Thank you for everything that you do. I hope your birthday was everything you hoped for it to be. A belated happy birthday to you!

Happy birthday dear Caz, hope you have a wonderful one filled with love and happiness.

This was well worth the wait, thank you for coming back to it @craftingmom. Bailey's responses to Declan were perfect, exactly what almost any other teenage boy would have done in his place.

IT'S FINALLY HERE! Happy Pride everybody. Whoever's reading this, Happy Pride from your favourite (or only) Vancouver gay! Love each other and love yourselves, but for goodness sake stay off our roads!

Oh, god no. Way too weird. Maybe in the last session before I move I'll talk about it, but I wouldn't bet on that. Just not my style and it would be far too weird to do anything. Besides, I'm pretty sure he's dating my more successful doppelganger so it's a moot point.

I understand where you are coming from, as I'm in a similar situation. I'm currently going through life coaching/therapy, and I'm very aware of my feelings for my professional counterpart. Part of my concern is that he and I do know each other from our respective pasts. Nothing serious, we worked a political campaign together. But it does present an interesting situation where we traveled in the same social circles and were conversational with each other before meeting in this totally different context. In this sense, my feelings didn't arise from the sessions, but were more reawakened by seeing him. Either way, neither he nor I am going to do anything about it. Neither of us wants to pursue anything with the other, and it would be way too weird to do so at this point anyways. But he is rather nice to look at...

I'm sorry to hear you're back in hospital Lacey. Please take care of yourself, we'll all be here when you're good and ready.

And I'm crying. That was wonderful.

Thank you for sharing this tim. I'm looking forward to reading your novel, and I can already appreciate the connection you make between the reader and the characters. They're so lifelike and real, it makes the story so easy to relate to.

I'm a BC boy. Nanaimo bars!

Glad to hear you're home and recovering well.

I love it. And you're both right. Failure is not the end of a journey, simply a detour on the path that needs to be circumvented. It's interesting that we have such divergent views about dwelling on the past. I find it useful to think about what could have been done differently. And yes, sometimes I dwell on such things. After all, if I was truly done with them I wouldn't have brought them up to anyone. But it's interesting that you see the life coaching in the context of a D/s relationship. I hadn't thought about it that way, but now that I'm putting my mind to it I can see some parallels.