average life

I’ve been pretty evasive, I realize, when it comes to the topic of me blogging.  I mean, what’s the big deal?  It’s just a blog – the internet is littered with millions of them.  It’s not as if people blog anymore, anyway.  Blogs are passé, having lost to Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr (until those lose to the Next Big Thing).

Even so, I’ve had a long, overly personal history with blogging.  So sit back, kids, because it’s about to get overly personal.

I started this blog back in 2004 after having just broken up (in a rather poor fashion) with a girl, dropped $2000 on a new computer, and changed my major from computer science back to film.  Like every blog in the world, it was poorly written, overly trite, and dealt way to much to school and television, but, whatever, it was a blog, who cared.  I didn’t.  Obviously.

A year later, I started a my first secret gay blog under an anonymous screen name that I ripped off of another gay Mormon whose blog was the first dealing with the subject that I had ever read.  I found his frankness at discussing his feelings incredibly refreshing and I started one to give me an outlet for my own thoughts.  It did and those thoughts terrified me.  After only a few weeks of posting almost every day, I deleted the blog.

Of course, it wasn’t to be the last.

I graduated, moved to Atlanta and started another secret gay Mormon blog.  Like the first, I poured my tortured little soul into it which, of course, meant that was almost unreadable by anyone other than other tortured gay Mormons.  They did read it and I read theirs, amazed that were others out there sharing the same struggles.  While it wasn’t always the best environment (angst usually begets angst) it was kind of nice to talk to people who knew pretty much exactly how I felt when it seemed like no one else around me did, try as they might.  Of course I maintained this blog with no clue as to the existence of the other one.

This new gay blog, though, also collapsed under the weight of its own self pity and was shut down to the world.

Time passed.  I was becoming more comfortable with myself and I decided that I wanted to start the process of coming out which, of course, involved starting a blog.

This one would be different than the gay Mormon blogs that I had started previously.  Firstly, it would be less angst-ridden.  Secondly, it wouldn’t be a gay Mormon blog at all, at least not in the traditional sense.  While I had enjoyed the virtual companionship of those who understood how I felt, I decided that I wanted to write for people who didn’t really understand how I felt – most straight Mormons.  It would be lighter, a bit snarky, and would help people to see things from a new perspective without pushing them too hard out of their comfort zone.  This blog would also serve as the platform for my coming out – finally merging two parts of my life that have be divided for a long time and in April 2008, the first post of  Soy Made Me Gay was published.  Unlike my other gay Mormon blogs, the readership of Soy grew steadily and included as many straights (and those who claimed heterosexuality) as it did gays.

Then Prop 8 happened.  As the campaign when on, my daily unique count climbed into the triple digits, which meant that Soy was more read than anything I had ever written, probably including a letter to the editor that I had published in Time magazine when I was eighteen.  I struggled to maintain a positive tone as the two groups that represented me best carried on a disturbing war of words that exploded across the Internet.  I became ashamed of both of them.

Still, I came out on the blog as planned, having come out to my family a few weeks earlier to ensure they didn’t find out from the Internet and having come out to my ward in testimony meeting the day before.

The email started ramping up.  At first they were simply messages from people saying that the liked the blog, thought it was funny, etc. – which I found very flattering and caused my ego let out a belt notch or two.  Then the emails started getting personal.  People started talking about the struggle they had with accepting family members who were gay and how my blog had helped them to come better to terms with it.  At the height of the campaign, I was receiving two or three emails a week from gay Mormons – some sounding young – asking for advice on dealing with their sexuality, advice on coming out, and giving praise for being a good example – especially after I outed myself.  Some of these conversations happened over email, some over IM, and even others were happening over the phone.

All of this was happening as I saw the words of other Mormons insisting that they had to protect traditional marriage from attack from the gays.  People like me.  The gays called the Mormons bigots.  People like me.  I was starting to hate them both and certainly didn’t feel like, nor want to be, an example to anyone.

After the election was over, the president was black, California marriage wasn’t between men anymore (or between women), but readership stayed up and the messages continued.  I was nominated for a couple of Niblets (Mormon blogging awards), and one of my posts was published in Sunstone with the editor requesting more submissions.  Behind the scenes, I was sick of the whole thing.  I wanted to move on, and so I shut Soy down.

And I tried to move on for a long time.  I started other blogs, which usually only lasted a post or two.  I tried to return to my main blog, but it didn’t work.  Every time I tried to write something, I couldn’t.  Somehow all the pressure and expectations and anger had shut down the part of me that connected my thoughts and emotions to my fingers.  And so, I stopped writing.

Time passed.

I went to church.  I dated.  I changed jobs.  I fell in love.  I was dumped.  I dated some more.

After my most recent breakup, however, I found the part of my brain that had bound up my expression was starting to loosen up a bit.  I’m still not sure why I’m not paralyzed at the thought of typing my thoughts on random items or writing a personal essay about other random events, but I’m not.  And so I’m going with it.

I make no promises, of course, because who knows if/when my brain will lock up in another overly-emotional fit or when I’m just going to get bored and decide that blogs really are so 2005.  I’m here for now, though, and since I’m currently living in the ‘burbs, you’re probably going to hear a lot from me.

It’s not like there’s anything else to do out here.