End of the Year thoughts

As this year comes to a well-welcomed end, I find myself sitting up most nights playing around with the myriad of thoughts going through my mind. This has been a pretty eventful year for me which I hadn't been expecting. Maybe I should rephrase that. There were quite a few things that I'd been hoping for with 2017 and very few of those came to be. Other events arose and seemed to take over my life and those are the ones that slapped me in the face repeatedly. #yearend #thoughts #clearingout

Today, marks the 5th Anniversary of me publishing my first novel. With DREAM IT TRUE which came out in October of this year, I have self-published five novels in five years. I am quite proud of that fact. Of course, I've spent the last two years trying to find a publisher for three of my novels. DREAM IT TRUE was one of those novels. I decided to just self-publish it this year since it had been almost three years since I had published anything at all. But, I am still submitting my Young Adult Gay Sci-Fi novel to publishers. I have written the first and second book in what is currently planned as a trilogy but could be extended since I keep coming up with more and more possibilities for the characters I have created in that world. I had definitely hoped to find a publisher or an agent by this point; but I know that these books are important so I am working against every impulse I have to just publish them myself. I will just throw it out there that 2018 will be the year that I find a publisher. #anniversary #amwriting #writer #selfpublished #reading #readingissexy #gayscifi #gaynovel

I always felt somewhat close to my family. Even though I was on one coast while my parents resided on the other coast and my sister & her family lived here in Iowa, I felt close to them. In the age of technology, distance could be easily overcome by a phone call, text or FaceTime video. This year proved that I was mistaken. I have always found family to be a tricky matter. I've been lucky enough that as a gay man who came out at 17 to some people and at 18 to almost everyone, my family stuck by me and was incredibly supportive. I've leaned on my family through various points in my life and again, I am thankful I've been able to have that support. But, as my life has progressed, I have expanded my definition of family to include friends that I am exceptionally close to. From experiences and conversations I have had with numerous gay men and lesbian women, this seems to be a common occurrence. Most people who fall in the LGBTQ spectrum start to choose their family because often the one they were born into isn't accepting of them and no one should EVER have to deal with that. Since moving back to Iowa in May of 2016, I've seen my family 'change'. I've grown much closer to members of my extended family, which was a very pleasant and wonderful surprise. I've also distanced myself from other members of my family for various reasons that I won't talk about in depth here; but it's been a somewhat harrowing experience to say the least. As I stated before, I always felt somewhat close to my family. This year I have learned that what I perceive to be true and what is actually true are two completely different things and in some cases, are not even remotely close. It's always difficult when you make the decision to stop or temporarily stop any form of contact with someone you thought you were close to. I lost contact with a lot of my high school friends when I went to college; but what happened this year was something completely different. But, luckily, the events of this year have helped to prove to myself that I am able to bare the weight of my decisions with the help of my amazing husband who is most certainly the first family member I think about. With his help, I found that I am strong enough to weather the storms of uncertainty that have arisen this year. And I do feel that I am the better for it. #family #LGBTQ #chosen #support

I feel that I have also started to take care of my health better in the last year. When I moved back to Iowa, I accepted a managerial position that ended up causing me to work almost 60 hours a week for no less than four months. While the money was nice, it wasn't a good situation health wise. Being called a manager but not being allowed by the corporate offices to act as a manager made things difficult. Once I left that job to follow my husband to his new job, I was able to really reflect on how much stress I was bringing home everyday. I want to take this moment to apologize to my husband again for subjecting him to that for such an extended period of time. This last year, I've been able to get back to truly writing full time and it's been wonderful. With the exception of the family matters that I previously discussed, I've been able to clear my thoughts of most of my stress. #health #stressfree #onmyway

As I think ahead to the coming year, I hope 2018 will resolve a few more of the loose ends in my life currently. I am ready and willing to go where it will lead me and my husband. I'm slowly learning that the journey is much more interesting than the destination. #newyear #lookingahead #dreams