twenty-something

I quit my job today.

While it still doesn't quite seem real, and while it wasn't easy, it certainly seems right.

As of June 30th -- or perhaps sooner -- I will no longer be an employee of the University of Vermont, an institution that has been my home for six and a half years, as a student and then as a staff member. I resigned of my own free will, not due to blogging or other controversy. My reasons for leaving now are both personal and political, and while I may reveal them here at a later date, for now those reasons will remain my own.

This news also means that I'll be leaving my home state of Vermont. For my friends and longtime readers of this blog, this news should hardly come as a shock. I've had a conflicted relationship with Burlington for years. I've longed for something new, different, more urban. I haven't been able to thrive as a gay man or a twenty-something at UVM or in Vermont for some time. In fact, I've been downright unhappy with many aspects of my life, particularly in the past year. It was time for a change.

So it would appear that, after years of thinking, longing, and whining, I've finally taken action. My resignation letter has been handed in.

At long last I am taking the next step. I am moving to Boston this spring or summer. No turning back now.

I know that leaving won't solve all my problems. In fact, it won't solve any, really, and will probably cause more. I'm a little scared to leave a good job and a decent life -- comfort -- for who knows what, but I'm more excited. After six years at UVM, and over twenty in Vermont, it's time to go.

I was born here -- literally on the UVM campus, in what is now known as the Fletcher Allen Medical Center. I like to think that I began my life here twice -- first as a ruddy, redheaded newborn in 1980, and again as a transfer student in 2000. I think I learned more in the past six and a half years than in the nineteen before them, not necessarily from my studies, but from life. There have been great victories and crushing defeats, highs and lows... This place made me the man I am today.

I'm leaving now because I can still say that I love this place. I'll leave behind friends and family, a good job in an excellent department, and a city that feels like a part of me. I'll leave behind a life and many, many memories. In Burlington and UVM, I found, for the first time since I was nine years old, a place to truly call home. It's been an interesting ride -- amazing, conflicted, tumultuous. I leave now because I can still call this place home, because I know will always be able to, even as I search for a new place to belong.

Wish me luck. A new chapter -- a new direction -- for this twenty-something officially begins today.

Tonight I defer to Guster:

To tell you truth I've said it before tomorrow I start in a new direction
I know I've been half asleep I'm never doing that again
I look straight at what's coming ahead and soon it's gonna change in a new direction
Every night as I'm falling asleep these words repeated in my head...

I loved it. Really well done and engrossing. Natalie Portman, despite her bad accent, is great. Hugo Weaving does a superb job as V, making a somewhat ridiculous character (on celluloid, anyway) into something that works. And the message is there, heavy-handed but white-hot. Overall, it's just a solid film that delivered beyond my high expectations. Not an Oscar contender, but a really stunning ride.

Go see it this weekend. This movie deserves to be huge!

There's something about Vermont where I just get the sense that folks don't just talk the talk, they walk the walk, that kind of flinty say-what-you-mean attitude that this country needs because sometimes it seems like we've gotten caught up in so much spin and so much inauthenticity and so much nonsense that just a nice cool blast of the truth is what's needed.

Here's a report from the Washington Blade about today's movement surrounding the FDA, Red Cross, and the gay blood ban. I'm too tired to decide what any of this means or to comment tonight -- but it's something I'll post for now.

Red Cross calls for equal treatment of gay blood donors
Current FDA policy 'scientifically unwarranted,' blood banks say
By ANDREW KEEGAN | Mar 9, 1:13 PM

For the first time since a ban prohibiting gay men from donating blood went into effect more than two decades ago, the American Red Cross is petitioning the government to revise the guideline.

A federal Food & Drug Administration advisory panel heard arguments against the policy today in Bethesda, Md., at a conference on "Behavior-Based Blood Donor Deferrals in the Era of Nucleic Acid Testing."

The current FDA policy, passed in 1985, prohibits any man who has had sex with another man since 1977 from donating blood for the rest of his life.

The Red Cross joined the American Association of Blood Banks and America's Blood Centers in asking for guidelines that treat all donors equally.