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Rich Brown - Living My Life Out Loud!
Hello I'm Rich Brown and this is my personal website and blog. I'm just your simple, average, down to earth, professional, out gay man and aspiring circuit boy, living in Phoenix, Arizona with a few things to say while trying to find my place among all the scary, conservative, religious nuts in this sick and twisted world.
Wednesday, January 24, 2001
Well I'm now back at work after my brief trip to Phoenix. I wish that I would have had more time there. It didn't seem like I had much time for anything. I had other friends that I wanted to see, but I know that this trips sole purpose was to get the dogs down to Mark and Andrea. That reminds me I have to download the pictures I took of them from my digital camera and post them.
Anyway -- it was hard to leave the dogs there on Monday night. They just looked at me with those big eyes and wondered why I was getting into the car without them. I am confident they will have a great home with Mark and they will get plenty of attention and exercise. Much more then I could provide for them right now in my life. There is some value in knowing that I can see them whenever I want.
So it turned out that I got a chance to spend some time with Rob on Monday afternoon. I went over to his house after he was done work. I finally got to see his house and he 2 dogs. It's a really nice place. I'm so impressed at the work he as done to fix it up. It was nice to finally sit and talk as friends. I think that time has healed many of the wounds and we can now laugh about things. We both agreed that it was nice to have each other in our lives again, even if just as friends. As much as I still care about him, I think that we make better friends at this point. Our lives have taken two different paths over the past few years, but after talking to him, I can see actually how much I've changed and actually moved closer to his path. I guess I just needed to get all of my issues worked out. Regardless it was nice to see and talk to him. I feel he is now one of the few people in my life that I could talk to about anything. Since we know each other so well advice on either side is extremely well taken and usually very pointed and accurate. I'm happy that I got the opportunity to see him again. It's been too long.
The drive back home was a nightmare. I left at midnight but didn't actually get back to SF until around 7pm on Tuesday evening. I ran into traffic in Los Angeles in the morning which delayed me by about 3 hours. I also decided to stop along Hwy 5 and rest for a while which turned into another 2 hours as I fell asleep while resting. So needless to say I was ready to finally get home.
It's strange without the dogs around. I don't think it has quite hit me yet. I've wondered where they were a few times yesterday and today, forgetting for a moment that they are no longer in SF. For example when I got out of the shower I was so used to them coming into the bathroom to lick me and when I got out today they obviously were not there. It took me a second. I do have to admit though, it's nice not having to take them out in the morning when I'm in a rush to get to work. It's also nice not to worry about getting home at any particular time. It worked out well for us all.
While I was driving yesterday I was having mixed emotions about the future. If it were not for my job, I would really be tempted to move back to Phoenix. I'm so tired of how expensive it is here in the bay. I think maybe if I can just find some other living arrangements I will be fine. It's just frustrating and I know that I can live very well in Phoenix and not take too much of a drop in pay. There was a reason that I left Phoenix in the first place, but I used to be very happy there. I think maybe I talked myself into hating Phoenix because other things in my life were not going well at the time. Who knows. Mark, Andrea, Don and others have been trying to get me to move back and I have to admit it would be nice to be around good friends again. But as much as these thoughts go through my mind, every time I get back to SF I know why I am here. For some reason I feel at home here. I don't really want to move back, as there is so much to do, and I love it here. If it were just a little cheaper to live everything would be much better.
Overall it was a good trip, too short, too long of a drive, but I was glad to see everyone again. I'm not happy to be back at work, well not because I don't like my company .. just because I'm tired of work in general. But hey -- who isn't right?
So I also wanted to discuss the "revelation" that I had the other day. I don't really want to get into the circumstances of what happened, but lets just say that someone made a comment to me that they felt was just normal, but I thought it was very rude. Because of this and a few other circumstances involved, I decided that I didn't want to talk to this person any more. After ignoring and not returning his phone calls this person left me a message saying that he can't believe that I'm ignoring him and he thought I was different. Well this is when I believe I actually realized one of the most important things I've been overlooking my whole life -- the fact that the only person I need to make happy in this world is myself. This may sound really stupid, but it's not. I have always worried about what other people thought of me, I've always tried to be polite to people and not hurt their feeling. If I didn't want to talk to someone or do something with someone I would always come up with a good excuse of why I didn't and spend time explaining my reason to that person. I had to finally ask myself why? I have reached the conclusion that in the grand scheme of things it doesn't really matter. I don't know why I've been going out of my way trying to make everyone else happy at the expense of my own emotions. So thus I have come to grasp with the simple concept of "fuck 'em" I just don't care what people think anymore. If they think I'm an asshole because I'm living my life and not putting up with garbage from them then that's too bad. I'm going to make sure I'm truly happy from now on and I'm not going to worry about tiptoeing around everyone so that I don't hurt their feelings. So much has happened in the last year that I think it's time for ME. Time to be happy with myself, time to have friends that don't judge me, don't criticize me, and time to do what I want. Ok -- enough of that little tangent. Anyway I just wanted to get to my point that I realized I am not here to worry about others .. just myself.
Life for me is going well. I can't say at this point that I have any major complaints other then the cost of living here in SF. I'm happy with my job and for the most part I'm happy with me and where my future is leading. I need to make some minor changes in my life and then I will be even better.
