A North West View

So I have been a bad blogger and fallen off the face of the earth for a while, in part just because of the holidays, but also because I just don't seem to manage my time well enough to allow myself to sit down and with myself, to just be and to collect my thoughts, let alone to sit down and write.   Which is something that I really want to start to work on, as I need to try and carve out time to do just that, instead of incessantly distracting myself from the time I get up until the time that I go to bed. I think that this is something that I want to try to focus on doing this year (I know that it is pretty late to be coming up with a New Years resolution, but when it comes to that thing who says you have to be on time)

So after the hiccups at the start of my vacation, that I covered in my previous post, it all turned out to be tremendous fun! I got to get out and see lots of neat places, and to get to meet and spend time with familiarly members that I never really get to see or spend time with because they are clear on the other side of the country.  It all combined to be one amazing vacation and it has left me feeling totally renewed and refreshed. I made a video sharing some of the photos from my vacation that I post so that all of you can see some of the things that I got to see and do! I hope that you all enjoyed this post.

I know it has been a while since my last post, I have been doing OK, in a bit of a rut but not bad. So once again I have really been struggling lately with taking my medications, (how ever I have been strictly adhering to them) and wanting to be off of them for a number of reasons. I have once again had somethings come across my desk so to speak that have again stocked my mistrust of medication and psychiatry at large

Well it has been awhile since my last post and I have been doing well, still feeling a little adrift spiritually but starting to pull the pieces together to help deal with that.  I have over all been doing ok, although I am still pumped that my Seahawks won the Super Bowl by a blow out!! Yeah the game may have been a little boring for the non Hawks fan but for me it was a great game to watch! Now that that is all out of the way I would like to take about something that has been weighing on my mind for quite some time now and that is if after almost 3 years I should jump back into the dating pool.

Today and yesterday has been one of those days at work. It has been heck in no small part due to the fact that our which of a regional has been in the store.  I thought though that I would share with you guys some songs that I love.

As if there where not enough reasons to dislike and not trust Fox New with their lies and sensationalism, here is another glaring example, and this one dose not involve politics, or anything about a person that is something that they have made a choice about.  No this one is about something that people have no say in whether it exist as part of them selves or not, it is about mental illness, and like is typical of Fox News it is shoddy "commentating" that fails to get all the facts behind it, in order to paint a sensationalist even fear inducing talking point.  In this case it falsely reinforces many stigmas that people with mental illness have to deal with in daily life and that keep meany from seeking the help that they need, or when they get it disbelieving that the problem is real.  They are lies that make people that already have a challenging road to walk feel all that much more ashamed, isolated and like social outcast and pariahs.  To be fair this is some...

I know that some of you have been worried about me and how I have been doing, I am really starting to feel better.  Matter of fact I have been feeling creative lately and I have started to write, and a story at that which is something that I don't often do.  I thought that I would share a little taste of it with you so after the jump is the first paragraph of my story. (8 pages so far)

Nothingness sneaks in first filling in the hidden corners of one’s being, then slowly spreading like a black mass, smothering all the lies in its path, draining the life out of life itself.  Yet its familiarity in a very twisted way brings some level of comfort,  as if a treasured blanket on a cold dark evening. http://anothwestview.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-storm-clouds-gather.html

Time ticks by slowly inevitably moving closer and closer to the time of death. As clouds build up in the sky, first on the horizon then encroaching ever closer and closer, until all of the heavens are blotted out behind their threatening dark masses, waiting to open up and flood the earth below. Until everything that is and everything that was is washed away and all the is left is nothingness.

I have been having a lot of issues lately, I have always had feelings like I wish that I could go back into the closet. Of course that is something that I can't do short of packing up my whole life and moving somewhere else where nobody knows me, and that is not in the cards at all. I still find my self wishing that I could do that, that if I had a chance to do it all over again that I would not have come out in the first place.  I know that, that sounds stupid and horrible, and makes me sound like bad person and that it probably makes some of you hate me and think that I am a very bad person, and you have every right to feel that way about me, and even to express those feelings towards me.

This seems to be a constant struggle of mine, one that seems to throw a wrench in the works of a lot of things. It also seems to play on a lot of insecurity's that I have as well as bad feelings from the past.  It is a topic that has come up recently in therapy with my shrink, as it touches quite a few areas in my life and is one of the big things that cause me to have negative feeling about my self. That thing is that I really don't want to be seen as a women, as womanly or as playing the roll of a women in any part of my life. However those are things that others have blatantly thrown at me making me hyper aware that they think I do/am, and that they seem me as doing and being womanly.  I have a very clear picture of how I want to be seen and how I should be, but it seems to be a picture that I just can't live up to, or in other ways have dieresis that conflict with that desire of how I really should be.  I strongly want to be seen as a real man, as someone that fit...

So today I would like to talk about something that might make some people uncomfortable  and is not something that I find the most comfortable topic in the world myself ether, and that topic quite frankly is sex, and sexuality. Yeah that topic that is only supposed to be talked about behind closed doors in whispered voices, not in a forum that is public, even if it is one that to a certain extent is anonymous at the same time. (even though nothing in life even the web is one hundred percent anonymous) However I feel that there is enough anonymity in this particular forum to talk about such a thing and how it pertains to life and especially to myself personally, in an open and honest manor. So with out further adieu I will get started right after the jump.

So recently I realsed that it has now been over two years since my last relationship ended and that in that time I have been in nothing close to a relationahip.  Matter of fact in that two years I have only gone on two dates! I knew that it had been a while since I had been in a relationahip but it did come as a  shock to realise that it had been that long, to tell the truth I think that it is the longest that I have gone since I came out without being in any type of relqtionship.  in that time I can't say that I have not been lonely becuase there have been many times that I have been quiet lonely, yet at the same time I have had no will to actualy seek out a relationship let alone a date.

While being balanced mode wise is something that is good and something that I am glad to be, although I do wish that my medications made me feel less drained like I have been dragging a heavy weight around with me while I do things, in part because my mind seems to be sort of slow and just not totally with it at times leaving it to take a lot of energy to concentrate and get things done and that mental energy also has a physical manifestation as well, and is what tends to make me feel the most drained. while it is good to be balanced it is hard to not want to have a taste of the forbidden fruit that I have been brought down from having a minor taste of and that is to be on the more manic side of things.  It is times like this when I know that the meds are keeping me from an amazing natural high, that it is so tempting just to stop taking my medications.

Maybe I am weak, maybe I just can't do whatever it is that is the best for me, and damn the outcome!  Maybe that is what I need to do not to live not only in an awkward limbo with myself,  but also wanting something that i very well may never get. However it also seems to be the very thing that I can't do when it comes to my dad. Even though he had a "talk" with me after I posted this youtube video about feeling shoved back in the closet,

Being able to control one’s own finances is one of the important parts of being able to be a independent adult, and is something that is supposed to come along with being one as well.  It means being able to live within a budget and spending one's money wisely within that budget.  It also means having a realistic idea about what your income is and how much money you have to spend and being able to weigh that against financial decisions and the merits of purchases that one wishes to make keeping in mind the required purchase that one has to make and the cost of them.   Which is why the realization that I seem to be utterly incapable of controlling my finances is coming as such a blow,

Gay marriage or as it should be call marriage is something that is very important to me, and has been since I was little.  I have always know that I wanted to get married and to have a family of my own, the only thing that has changed is that as I finally came to terms with the fact that I was gay, a wife became a husband.  For me personally I have always wanted to find that person that I love and am meant to spend the rest of my life with.  The person that I want to build a family with, the house, kids, minivan the whole nine yards, and a big part of that is marriage.

As some of you may or may not know May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and as such I thought I would write a blog post to try and help do my part to help raise awareness, and end the stigma of mental illness.  I also hope to show provide some hope in the process.  As many of you already know I have a mental illness, and that is Bipolar Disorder, which I was diagnosed with only relatively recently, about a year ago, although I have had it for a nice chunk of my life.  It is something that while I am still just in the beginning stages of starting to understand and control, I don't feel that it is something that I should have to be ashamed of or have to worry about others finding out about it.  unfortunately though there is quite a large amount of stigma that surrounds mental illness especially "serious mental illness", which they are for those that suffer from them (and those close to them as well)  unfortunately  though it also makes it sound scarier t...

Well like I promised I would, I am posting a quick little update blog, so that you (my readers) don't worry too much.  Well yesterday I had my appointment with my pdoc (I like this abbreviation for psychiatrist better then what I have used in the past) I guess it went as well as could be expected all things considered.I I feel that I made a fool and a idiotic spectacle of my self, but I guess that is another thing all together.  Well I am still not sure how I feel about it, but I left the appointment with a new prescription, although I am not sure that is what I really wanted nor if it is what I want. That and an appointment for next week as well, which is something that I do want.   I guess the idea of the new prescription is to try to help level me out and deal with some of the symptoms that have been bothering me the most lately, but I am now not sure now if I really want to do that or not. (I know real decisive of me, then agai...

I want to share with you one of the things that has the power to make my bouts of depression even worse, which would seem funny as being depressed is not very fun at all as it is.  Now I am not trying to say that I'm horribly depressed right now but I am seeing the clear signs that what has been just a low mode is starting to pick up speed and head down the familiar slope of slipping into a depression.  Now the speed with which