twenty-something

It's odd to be a "lame duck" now. I'm here for another six weeks or so, but a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders as the semester ends. As Yelli says, Saturday was my "last day of days"... The end is here.

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.

Dane, that softy, gets all mushy about what this means to him over at his official site:

The dream that I had in 7th grade is about to become a reality. I've been asked to host Saturday Night Live! December 3rd! I did this with my stand up comedy. Not a tv career or a film career. I did it because I was a good guy with great intentions. I never got caught up in anything beyond the simple idea of bettering myself at this craft that I love and respect. More than anything I am doing it because my fans are some of the sharpest, coolest comedy fans on this planet and you got behind me and never left... The things you dream can become the things you have. The things you have should always be shared. I share this with you guys because, well, you've become part of this ride. We can all enjoy this together.

I met Dane once, after having had the pleasure of booking him for a very sold-out show last year in Vermont. He was a really, really nice guy -- totally amazing on and off stage. He immediately showered praise on the poster that I'd designed for the show, so I instantly fell in love with him. The whole thing was my coolest career moment so far.

Added bonus: James Blunt, who's single "You're Beautiful" has been in iPod heavy rotation this fall, is the musical guest. (Sorry, Rick, but I louve that song.)

So tomorrow I leave for a conference in sunny Minneapolis, Minnesota until Wednesday. Then I'm home for a night. Then I rocket down to Boston for the President's Day weekend -- beginning a fancy-smansy job interview on Friday. Pat me on the back later.

It felt good to be able to change my voicemail and email auto-reply to state "out of the office until Tuesday, February 22nd." Lord knows, I need this break.

I can't bring myself to pack for tomorrow, though. I couldn't even bring myself to do laundry this week so, out of desperation, I had to go to Wal-Mart today to buy a couple packs of clean underwear so I wouldn't run out this week. Luckily I only have to wear t-shirts, jeans, and hoodies at this conference, but still, I'm lacking the motivation to throw them all into a bag.

Now that you know my packing status -- my blogging status is up in the air, true believers. I'm bringing my computer, but I'm not sure what's up with internet access at the hotel or what my schedule looks like. But rest assured -- I am too damn addicted to this damn thing to go two long without logging on (especially since hits here hit an all-time high today).

Wish me luck as I head out west -- and let me know if you need anything at the Mall of America. Yee haw!

Remember that job I applied to in Boston exactly one month ago? After a tepid phone interview last week, I got a call back today. They're "very interested" in having me come to campus for an interview. Which means I'm a finalist for the position. Rock! Boston, here I come?

Of course, this all has happened in a voicemail so far. I need to call and schedule something. And get new clothes. And print resumes. And just when I was about to start thinking about moving to NYC...

The big news, I suppose, is that on Friday I got a call about that Boston job I applied to. I got a voicemail, actually, but I didn't get to connect with the person who may or may not not have been calling for an interview.

So not only have I had to suffer through the weekend, wondering why she called (and I've analyized the situation from all angles and, come on, she had to be calling for an interview), and convicing myself that I need to pack and find a subletter because I already have the job -- I also just learned that said college in Boston has already decided to close tomorrow (Monday) due to the snow.

Good Grief. Don't these people realize how these things affect me?!

So Friday, the day of the call, was a good day for me, here in Vermont, in my job, aside from the Stella snub. One of the high points of the past year and a half, if you will. And so the timing was a little -- odd. I was excited about this voicemail and the promise it held, but as the night wore on, it all sunk in, and I wondered how I could leave. I have been at this school forever. This is my home.

Yesterday, I got all scared about this potential change. Moving away again... will I hate it? What bridges will I burn? What would my life be like? All that unknown, that brand new start, that had attracted me to apply to this job started to terrify me. I convinced myself that I was leaving, I was going to hate it, and nobody would miss me. (Except my grandmother, who almost cried when I told her the news, because I would be "so far away" -- a whole three hours.)

And then today, I looked through some pictures from last summer's Pub Crawl down there, and it just made me long to be back down there. With my friends. With a life. With lots of gay people. With tall buildings and the Texas Roadhouse. And I sold myself on the idea, and I've resigned myself to a happy medium of "wait and see." No counting of the chickens, no premature good-byes. I'm just opening myself up to the possibility. Let's see where this goes after I get to call them back and talk to them.

On mother-fucking Tuesday.

A lot of emotion over a voicemail and a job I'm far from having. I need to calm down.

These guys are quite funny on stage -- even if Michael Ian Black is a bitch off stage (ya know, relative to his pseudo-celebrity I Love The 90s status).

This, of course, is based upon a two-minute "interaction" with the man. After the show, I approached him for an autograph. The three men of Stella we giving them out, along with the opening comic. No big deal, right? I came up to him after my friend had gotten his signature. MIB then promptly turned his body from me slighty, and then kept his head cocked away. He wasn't talking to anybody else, not really listening to his fellow comics chat with fans. He just sort of turned away, from me, and his body was telling me, just me, to take a hike.

It was almost as if we had slept together once, it had gone badly, and he now wished to pretend that I did not exist. Sadly, I know what it's like to be on both sides of that awkwardness, and it was a familiar feeling.

So I stood there for a good thirty seconds, maybe a minute, not sure exactly what to do. He had obviously done this to avoid me. I was within two feet of him, holding a poster, and he could see me out of the corner of his eye. And yet he was being a little bitch.

So the opener sees me and grabs my poster, signs it with a smile, and hands it off to Michael Showalter, who signs without missing a beat. David Wain takes it next, makes a joke, and is a nice guy. Then it's back to Michael Ian Black. And at this point, I say, "Fuck you, Michael Ian Black!" (in my head, of course), and I decide I need to be aggressive.

I turn around and face him. I walk right up close. I shove the poster at him and, with a smile, I ask:

"Can I snag an autograph?"

He rips the poster out of my hand.

"You can't 'snag it.' You can have it."

Throws his signature on it. Tosses the poster back at me.

I turn to leave and, from behind me, I hear him declare, to his buddies: "I'm done. We're out of here." And he forsakes the short line of autograph seekers behind me -- all students workers who made the show happen, leaving their hardwork without the reward of a simple signature.

I will never understand the lives of performers and "celebrities," and I suppose I'm happy about that.

Still, Stella is hilarious and I'm still a fan, even if I have a tiny little bit of a bad taste left in my mouth. Hm. Maybe Michael Ian Black and I did sleep together...

[Please see also: "20sum Retraction: I Love Michael Ian Black"]

I walked out of the Waterman building today, and outside, it was just beautiful. Mild -- cold, but mild. Snowy. Beautiful. The bells started ringing almost immediately -- 4:30 -- over at Ira Allen Chapel. Almost enough to make me want to stay here forever. Almost.

I had just dropped an application in the mail. To a job in Boston. A carefully crafted cover letter and my resume (along with a bag of microwave popcorn and a whole lot of hope and fear) is now on it's way to some office in Beantown that could, maybe, just maybe, become a big part of my near future.

Now it seems that everything is screaming, "You're gonna miss me!" Buildings, sidewalks, trees, bars... But in a good way, ya know? Almost telling me, it's great here -- I will miss it terribly -- but now is the time to go.

I know I'm counting my eggs. But I'm excited. Terrified -- of rejection, of acceptance -- but excited.

Fingers crossed.

(It's a recycled image, but you get the picture.)

Just told the fragmented, twenty-minute version of my coming out story to my co-workers today as part of a "life map" exercise in a a diversity staff meeting. I haven't told my story as an over-arching narrative in ages, and I hadn't really even thought about it until a few weeks ago. It was kind of crazy. I shared more personal stuff than I would've expected and realized I'm not a very good oral storyteller. I went on longer than the two people before me, and then I didn't leave enough room for anybody else to go after me. And I indirectly made somebody cry.

It felt good. Not the crying, but the sharing. I guess maybe I'm not so "post" gay / "post" coming out stories as I thought...

One of the straight white guys in the office told me I should write a book.

Last event of the semester last night. Karaoke. And a bad snowstorm.

The kids decided we should do a group sing. So I grudgingly aggreed. The six survivors and I took to the mic, and I found the song they chose was purposefully and accurately fitting.

I Will Survive.

Yes, we all will.

I've just faced down my biggest challenge in my job yet, and I can say with some certainty that I have survived, and I have passed the test. I wish I could celebrate, but it's not really a victory. It's just... over.

I can't, of course, talk any specifics, but I will say that someone that I was once close to, someone whom I care about, has well and truly disappointed and betrayed me with a brutality, and with a regularity, that is usually only reserved for boyfriends. Not employees. He/she has been "going through some stuff" which seems to be the scapegoat for all this, but in hindsight, these problems have been present going back to practically Day One. It's been an "abusive relationship" for too long, and should've ended long ago.

I can't really complain, because I'm not the one "going through some stuff." But he/she seems to have no perspective on how his/her actions affect others. Depression aside, he/she has been poisioning my work for months. And the last two weeks, dealing with the fallout from all of this -- For me, it has been horrible and draining and harrowing. I feel angry, guilty, sad, relieved, hopefully... happy that it seems to be over for me.

I'm sick of this melodrama. The semester is almost done, and, god, do I need a break.

I am staying home from work today. It's almost 3PM on a Monday as I begin writing, and I am still in bed, in my undies, listening to Sarah McLachlan, and loving every stinky moment of it. (How's that for a mental image?)

I am just returning from a four-day venture to a Marlboro, MA for a Campus Activities conference, and I am taking a day of rest. It was four days of loud music, bad comedy, matching t-shirts, and "Ride That Pony." Waking at 7AM and passing out at 3AM, only to do the same thing the next day. Overall, it was mostly fun but most certainly always exhausting.

Sadly, little of any interest to those who weren't at the conference happened, or at least nothing I'm willing to put the effort into making into something particularly dramatic, enticing, or funny.

Two items I'll share:

(1) Mr. Belding (or at least the actor that once played him on Saved By The Bell) was there, like always, and he looked sadder and drunker than ever. On the last night, at the hotel bar, where I sad on an uncomfy stool, Mr. Belding drunkenly pressed up against me as he closed out his tab, awkward and inebriated, hopefully unaware that he was touching me, hopefully not coming onto me in any way, shape, or form. I could've given him the satisfaction of turning around to greet and recognize him, but I couldn't muster up any enthusiasm. So he paid his hefty bill, removed his hefty gut from me, and went on his unmerry way.

(2) There was also a mystery man there at the conference, not a celebrity, but a fellow professional. I knew him and he apparently knew me -- or so he told one of my students. He looked and seemed familiar, but I swear I have never met him. He was balding and slightly chubby, but he was cute and, inexplicably, sexy. Especially when he wore his Sox hat. I could have gone up to him to introduce myself, but then again, this "Chad" person could've done the same. We made crazy eye contact at times, but always kept our distance. Maybe we could've had crazy conference booty calls. But that's all past.

So I guess I still do have a serious boyfriend waiting for me at home, and maybe that's why I didn't answer any real or imagined conference booty calls. In fact, I came home to him yesterday and we spent some quality time with fast-food Chinese and The Simpsons. How deliciously domestic.

October 8 marks the first "birthday" of my late night program's start (and the year-and-one-month anniversary in my job). The milestone passes with little fanfare -- I noted it to my staff, and on the program's website -- and I suppose that's the way it should be. I'm just surprised -- I usually make a much bigger deal of things of this nature.

I received a major reward for my work over the past year-and-one-month: a surprise (and hefty) raise, which took me completely off guard this week. It really came out of the blue, but the timing couldn't have been, well, better or worse, depending on which side of my brain you're talking too.

See, I've always sort of said that I love this job -- that it's perfect for me, if only for right now, and I'd be hard pressed to find a position that blended my interests and talents so deliciously -- BUT it was just "for now." The now I never defined, trying to be Mr. Live-in-the-Moment. But as I headed into my second year as a professional staff person at the college I graduated from, I made the command decision to apply to graduate schools for next fall, to job search, to keep my options open and to, mostly likely, leave Vermont sometime next summer.

So after spending a lonely weekend researching graduate schools on the web, I come into work one morning and find that my boss has a nice surprise waiting for me: a nearly $7K raise.

Small potatoes to some, but to me, to this 24-year-old who's still digging staying up late, planning events, and making pretty posters, that $7K will make a big difference in the coming months and, perhaps, a world of difference when it comes time to make the big decisions about my future. I'm sad to say that money could be such a major factor in my future -- but right now, it makes sense to stay, live more comfortably, and try to save. After all, it's hard to find a job like mine -- especially one that pays like mine now does, without a Master's.

I've been stressed a lot lately, by the job I so desperately love. It's been a rough fall -- busy, full of conflicts, colder than I remembered -- but my rewards (the raise, my new Powerbook) make it worth it, in a non-Buddhist sense. Sure, it's going to make my next big decision that much harder, but at least now the option of staying is a bit more feasible, if only for monetary reasons. I'm just glad to be privileged enough to have options right now -- and maybe that's the biggest prize of all.

I did laundry today, for the first time since February 1st. Isn't that cool? I officially have enough underwear to last me a month and a half. I am a god amongst men.

So today officially ends Spring Break for all the Groovy UV kids. Which means tomorrow is back to life, back to reality. I enjoyed this week of laid-back work and home, having extra time to goof off at work and to spend QT with Dunc at home. I look forward to seeing those students that are a regular part of my life and whom I actually like -- but I am not looking forward to the status quo.

I've really enjoyed having the past two Friday nights off. Not that I've done anything eventful. It was just nice not to be doing events til after midnight. Plus, I've gotten into Wonderfalls, which is just an amazing new show, and anyone who is home at 9PM on a Friday night should tune to Fox because, goddamn it, its sweet. I think that even if you aren't home then, you should go home or at least get to a TV and turn it on. It's that good!

Spring Break was a nice break for me, even if I didn't really do much of anything. My big plans to go to both Boston and Montreal were sadly scrapped last minute. But it was nice to rest and catch up, because lord knows the next six weeks will be hell. Events every Friday night until May and TONS AND TONS of design work to do. I look forward to the peace and quiet that I'm promised come with summer.

Goddamn it, I'm a geek. Want to know how I know? The song today is Andy Partridge's "I Wonder Why the Wonder Falls" which, you guessed it, is the extended theme song of my new favorite show.

Tomorrow - back to the grind. Until then - Home Movies!