Life keeps flying by

Its been an “interesting” couple of months. I know I haven’t updated but every time I try to sit down and write about what is going on in my head nothing has really wanted to come out. Today I feel the urge to spill my guts a bit about what is going on in my life if only so I can document it for myself.

Work

I’ve been having a hard time at work lately to be honest. For the past two years at Gap I’ve often felt like I really loved my job and was almost always happy to be there. I’ve taken on so many new projects and responsibilities lately,  with only the vague promise of being promoted or being rewarded in the future for all of this work. My coworkers and I are all being worked to the bone and my boss is incredibly stressed as well and she has been taking it out on us in a variety of ways. Work simply is not the happy environment that it once was and I am finding myself increasingly disengaged. I know in this economy I am lucky to have a job but at the end of the day my happiness is the thing of paramount importance in my life so if things don’t start feeling better I might imagine myself putting feelers out there for other opportunities. Another issue that I am having is just the industry I am in. I am working for a retail company and at the end of the day do I want my efforts to be put towards something that continually tells people they need to consume more to be happy?

Social Life

I certainly haven’t had a lack of a social life in the past few months. I’ve gone weeks lately where I have had plans every single evening. All of this going out has been a little bit exhausting emotionally to be honest. I am a social creature and I thrive on human interaction but at the end of the day that interaction has to be meaningful for me to get something out of it. The interaction I’ve been having sadly, has rarely been meaningful. There have been some bright spots in new friendships I am forming but for the most part its been pretty unsatisfying. I’ve been spending most weekends going out to bars with friends, getting drunk, making out with people, and then doing it all over again. Its been fun but really this kind of behavior is not sustainable for me. It is too hard on my body, my wallet, and my overall well being.  I only went out once this weekend, didn’t get sloppy drunk, and stayed within my budget for evening. I see my bar attendance as something that will be decreasing more in the future which is a very good thing for me.

Dating

A big piece of my social life has been dating new people. I’ve gone on at least 10 different dates in the past few months. I have only really connected with two people and one of those people has really turned out to be a friend with benefits situation if even that. The big loss in my dating life was finally ending things with Kevin (The Professor). We had a long talk about just being friends and then I left for the evening. We’ve only spoken briefly since and I’m not going to pretend I don’t miss him. He was someone in my life that I could really rely on and I connected with in a very deep way. I hope that we will begin to speak more soon but I figure I should give him space for now. I had date #2 with a guy today and I think it went really well. I’m not going to give any more details about that for now for fear of jinxing it though.

Health

All the drinking has pretty much negated my healthy diet (which I have strayed from a bit). The good news is that I haven’t gained weight but I am still not quite where I want to be (those last 10 pounds are a killer I guess).  I also have pretty much stopped swimming. The YMCA that I go to is going to close down at the end of month which is quite frustrating. I am thinking of investing in a bike so I can get more exercise coming and going to work and just have a quick and efficient mode of transportation going around town. I am starting to make my health more seriously again and it’s not like I’ve really fallen off the wagon its more like my wheels need some grease.

Travel

I was lucky enough to take two trips lately. The first one was just for a weekend back up to Davis. It was great to see some old friends like Kaiti, Karla, and Robert.  However, I was struck by how out of sorts I felt in Davis and I probably won’t return soon unless it is just to spend time with friends. The other big trip I took was to Brooklyn with my sister to visit our step-sister. I really fell in love with Brooklyn and could honestly see myself living there. It was so nice to spend time with my siblings without my parents and we spent plenty of time taking a look at our messed up childhoods and tried to piece together exactly what went wrong (what else do siblings do?).

Overall life has been a bit depressing lately. I’ve been feeling like I really need something to look forward to, some sort of meaningful interactions, some goal I’m working towards. My dad always said that the law of inertia could be applied to people as well and I have always agreed with him. I need the motion in my life to continue to be positive but I always know there is something to be learned from the dark times as well. I still know that I am the only person who can make me happy and with these lesson learned I’m going to continue on the path to happiness with a few bumps here and there I’m sure.

-Robert

One small happy family

Last year Dustin and I adopted a kitten named Baron and he died shortly after due to a rare disease called FIP. Baron was a wonderful cat and his death really gutted me so I wasn’t sure how ready I was going to be to get another.

I went with Amanda down to the Marina where the SFSPCA was holding a small outreach event where they would have cats. There was only one kitten there and I decided to pet him and see how he reacted.  When He let me rub his belly and I saw the white markings on his black face it sealed the deal.

On Sunday, April 4th on a beautifully sunny day I became the proud parent of a  kitten named Zephyr. Zephyr is a 2 month old bouncing baby boy. Zephyr is also a little hellion but I have learned to love his crazy ways and have developed a strategy to play with him a ton to tucker him out so he behaves better.

We’ve already had our struggles because he is a very typical overactive kitten that loves to jump on, get into, and explore EVERYTHING around him. He also has very sharp nails and when is running around like crazy he can inadvertently slice me up. Overall though he is a very loving cat and I am lucky that he has warmed up quickly to me and seems to do well with others so far.

My little man asleep

Zephyr is helping to make my house a home and I happy to have him.

Life Update

Its been an interesting 7 days for me. I’ve had some incredibly ups and some rather depressing downs.

Operation Get Gay Hot: I hit a bit of slump when it comes to losing weight but as of today I’ve lost 4 pounds in two weeks. I realize that losing too much weight too quickly is recipe for gaining it back so I am pleased with my progress. Swimming is going well but I am not finding my endurance growing very quickly. I am going to try to add a lap or two every time I swim or at least every week so I can continue to get better at it.  Eating well hasn’t been hard and I only drank once last weekend and I feel good about making healthy eating and exercise a lifestyle and not a fad or diet.  I also went for a 9 mile hike with Kevin at point Reyes on Saturday. It was incredibly beautiful and while it was a tough hike it did make me feel like my working out is starting to pay off because the hike didn’t destroy me.

Dating: I’ve been on a few dates but nothing has really sparked. To be honest I miss Kevin and I’m glad I still get to see him. He really is a great guy so I don’t quite know where I stand with all of it.

That is enough for now I’m feeling much better lately and hope to keep that going.

Issues: Happiness

Lately I’ve been feeling very listless. Yes I have Operation: Get Gay Hot going on but I can’t focus all of my energy into getting thinner (last thing I need is an eating disorder). I feel like I need things to look forward and aspire to.

I received my performance review at work last week and I got a great rating. It was excellent news for a years worth of hard work. I did get a really slight raise which is awesome because people aren’t supposed to be getting them. My boss even said that I am ready to start looking at moving up in the company. All of this should be amazing right? Well due to the economy the chances of me being able to take on another job are slim so this leaves me with few options but a lot of promise. I don’t do very well with being impatient but I realize that I have to deal with it because I really do love my workplace and there are not a lot of opportunities to be found anywhere. I tend to really strive to develop myself professionally but perhaps all the doom and gloom is making me feel like some of this would be futile at the moment.

My other issue is finding a solid friend group. I have a lot of wonderful individual friends but as I was discussing with Kevin, no one person can fulfill all of your needs. As I’ve grown older I feel like I keep getting further and further away from establishing a really solid group of interconnected friends. How one even goes about finding a new friend group is beyond me other than doing a variety of activities and really “putting yourself out there”.

The next issue is going out. When Dustin and I were together we rarely drank. Now I am free to do whatever I please I’ve found myself going to bars 1-2 nights per weekend and spending 60-120 dollars a weekend on drinking. I’ve been lucky to have a few financial windfalls come my way lately but I realize that spending 300-400 dollars a month on alcohol is unsustainable. I’ve spent many Sundays lately feeling completely awful and sometimes not remembering the endings of the previous night. Drinking to this extreme is detrimental to me in many ways so I’m going to cut it off. That doesn’t mean having a few beers is out the question but 5 or 6 vodka tonics is.

So enough bitching. What the hell am I going to do make myself less listless?

Volunteering: For around 4 months I was volunteering at the Larkin Street Youth Homeless Shelter. I really tried to connect with the kids but just didn’t feel like I was really doing much good there so I decided to stop my commitment there. I am now really looking to start doing some volunteer work again. I recently submitted my resumes to The Taproot Foundation so hopefully I can use my HR skills to better serve the community in some way. I am also going to training tomorrow for being an ambassador for dining out for life. Dining out for life is a night across the country that has restaurants donate their proceeds to HIV/AIDS treatment, research, and prevention. I will be hosting the dinner at Roots Restuarant which does everything with seasonal local produce and sustainable meat.  So in doing this I am serving two passions of mine.

Getting Out More: I really do want to get out and do more. There are so many things to do in San Francisco so I am trying hard to just tap in to different communities to make more friends and find things to feed my spirit.

Kitten: As soon as kitten season really kicks off (the period of time where kittens are born and ready to adopt) I am getting one. I think having another presence in my apartment won’t make it feel so empty plus I know having a pet will make me happier in general.

I know I’m just going through a period of transition and writing this out has made me already feel a lot better.

Dating: When are you ready?

So it has now been three months that I’ve been out of my 3 and a half year relationship. I used to joke with Dustin how glad I was that I didn’t ever have to date again. Well now that I am back on the market I still find that I wish I never had to date again.

On January Second I moved to the Tenderloin. On that same evening I met a wonderful guy who I will call the Professor. The professor and I immediately hit it off and starting spending most weekends together. The professor did have a few things that meant that there might be some issues long term (just like any person you meet), the largest being that he is 22 years older than me.

The Professor and I dated for two months and things were going really well. I grew to really care for him and appreciated just how grown up our conversations were and how we really seemed on the same level intellectually and had many similar viewpoints. It was around that two month mark that the Professor asked if he could call me his boyfriend. I was excited, I thought I was ready, but I thought wrong. Within two weeks I began to see that it wasn’t fair for me to be with him because I was still healing from the breakup. I wanted to be able to give my heart to him but I was far from able. I realized that the only thing I could be at this time was someone who looked out for myself.

I had spent years in a committed relationship and quickly saw that getting back into a committed relationship was a place where I couldn’t be.

I broke things off with the Professor but our mutual care for one another has not changed. We have decided to slow things down and still see one another but all obligations are now off the table. I don’t know if this will work or even close to how sustainable this is. But for now all I know is I cannot have a boyfriend.

I am once again single and on the market. I think the best thing I could do is just try not to date anyone. I don’t know how sucessful I can be at that but taking some more time to be introspective cannot be a bad thing.

Operation Get Gay Hot: The Action Plan

So when I last left off I was discussing weight watchers and how for the first time in my life I have complete control over the food in my home. I also was discussing how upset I was at reaching the 235 pound mark and how I wanted to change that.

Weight Watchers was good to me but having to calculate points on every single thing I ate was getting tiresome and I felt like it was geared to middle-aged midwesterners and not to 25 year old urban vegetarians so in the process I’ve created my own “meal plan” of sorts.

1. Eat three square meals a day that include protein, fiber, and fresh fruits and vegetables.
2. Try to take in as little sugar as possible (besides naturally occurring sugar from things like fruit and a bit of honey)
3. Do not eat after 7 pm
4. Eat foods that are as close to their natural state as possible (minimal processing)
5. Eat until you are full not stuffed
6. These rules are negotiable on Friday and Saturday nights

What this “plan” has enabled me to do is give me general guidelines about what to eat without making it super strict. A typical day’s meals would look like

• Breakfast: Whole Wheat Toast with whipped butter, organic plain yogurt cup, and a banana
• Lunch: 8 Brown Rice Avocado/Cucumber Sushi Rolls, Low fat Cottage Cheese, Apple
• Snack: 2-4 Whole Wheat Wasa Crackers
• Dinner: Baked Tofu Sandwich with Spinach and a bit of peanut sauce on it, Baby Carrots, and a handful of Blackberries for dessert
• Supplements: Flax Seed Oil, Multivitamin, B-12, Cal/Mag/Zinc, and Chinese Herbs prescribed by my acupuncturist

Even though I know I am eating far fewer calories than I used to, I find myself being full for a much longer period of time and I’m not suffering “crashes” like I used had been. I imagine because I’m getting a lot of fiber, complex carbohydrates, protein, and not eating a lot of processed sugars my blood sugar is stabilizing.

I’m not treating this like a diet in my head. This type of food is the right kind of food to fuel me and hopefully I will be eating like this for the rest of my life. I may have the occasional cupcake and slice of pizza but I’m not going to let that get me all crazy and stray off the path. Reading books like the Omnivore’s Dilemma have really given me a lot of insight into the type of stuff I want to eat and how it doesn’t have to hard or frustrating to eat simple fresh food.

The other big thing I am doing is committing myself to regular exercise. Gyms have always been a source of incredible anxiety for me. Because I never really learned how to lift weights properly so I always end up giving up due to sheer lack misunderstanding of what to do.

This changed last week when I joined the YMCA. I wanted to find a low pressure gym where I could do physical activity that I loved and I discovered that in swimming. Ever since I was a little kid I’ve enjoyed and thrived in the water and once I got to swimming I realized that I had found the exercise for me. No fear of sweating too much, no fear of not knowing what I was doing or that people were looking at me. It was just me and the water.

Over the past few weeks months of diet and now exercise I’ve managed to take off around 30 pounds. My goal is to lose another 20 and then just maintain it.

The effects are starting to show already and I’m excited to get into the best shape of my life.

3-19

I will be tracking my progress here and hope to see myself transform before my eyes.

-Robert

Operation Get Gay Hot: Prologue

I was walking with my friend  2 weekends ago and we were joking about getting in shape and I said “For once in my life I want to get really hot. Like gay hot”.  Once I said it out loud all of my insecurities rushed to the surface of my min but instead of letting them overwhelm me as I always have in the past, I decided that I was going to do something about it.

As long as I can remember I’ve had issues with my body. I remember once being called Blobby instead of Bobby as a kid and it must have traumatized me because I’ve never felt completely comfortable taking my shirt off in public. The funny thing is that when I look back at pictures of myself I was a skinny kid. I always imagined myself to be this little chubby guy but in fact I was pretty much a twig so then I began to think about when I really did start to gain weight.

Me as a little kid

My sister and I. Young Teenager

I was skinny or at least average until I was a Junior in High School. What happened at that point was that physical education stopped and I got license to drive.  What that equated to was pretty much a complete lack of physical activity coupled with my friends and I eating fast food 1 or 2 meals a day. This resulted in a very substantial weight gain.

At my largest

Big Boy

I spent the next 5 years being a very big boy getting up to a size 38 or 40 pant size and at my highest weight I was 265 pounds. The way that I initially lost weight was through the good ole Atkins diet. I pounded down bunless hamburgers and Atkins shakes for 3 months and ended up losing sixty pounds. I looked the best that I ever had and I think that weight loss helped give me the confidence that I needed to come out of the closet.

At my slimmest

Flash forward to five years, a long relationship, a conversion to vegetarianism (is that a word?), 3 cities, 4 jobs, and many outlooks on life later: I weighed 235 pounds. It certainly wasn’t as bad as the 265 I was before but I was becoming that “big guy” again and found myself never wanting to be in photos and feeling generally unattractive in my body.

Looking not so great on my 25th Birthday

I decided that what needed to change this time was my lifestyle and no diet was going to work long term. My job was offering a program where I could join Weight Watchers online for free and I found that I work really well with structured programs so I decided to give it a shot.

Weight Watchers gave me the structure I needed to lose around 15 pounds but once the holidays hit I dove back into eating unhealthy. After the breakup and moving out on my own I realized for the first time in a very long time I have complete control of what food is around me and it is starting to pay off.

Next Time-Operation Get Gay Hot: The Action Plan

Lessons Learned

So as many of you know or may not know I recently ended a three and a half year relationship. He and I were engaged and while we were best friends, at the end of the day the relationship was not the one that was going to sustain me for the rest of my life.

I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on my relationship and thinking about how I can make sure I take the lessons I learned here to a future relationship.

Lesson One: Communication is Key

They always say that communication is the biggest part of a relationship and one thing I discovered is that some cliches are cliches for a reason. Without a solid way of being able to communicate about almost ANYTHING to your significant other, your relationship is doomed.

Lesson Two: Sex Matters

We all love sex and we all know that it is important but if you and your partner just aren’t a solid match sexually it is going to express itself in many different ways in your relationship.

Lesson Three: Have a Life Outside Your Partner

While I did find that I had friendships after my relationship ended I also found that I allowed them suffer quite a bit and felt stifled all the time in said partnership. I made my relationship too large a part of my identify and my other relationships and even my quality of life suffered for it.

Lesson Four: Who Can You Trust?

I thought lies to “protect” myself were better than hurting my boyfriend. This was immature of me and degraded my relationship in the beginning of our relationship and those initial lies plagued it until it ended.

Lesson Five: Home Should Home Sweet Home

Before moving in with someone clear boundaries should be set around how you expect a house to be maintained and what each person should do. I drove myself crazy because he and I had different ideas about what was acceptable when it came to cleanliness.

Lesson Six: You Can Be Too Nice

I found that when I tried to address the issues I was having with my boyfriend I felt like I was being a jerk. I taught myself that it was better to just bottle it all up. Every so often I would explode and this would just make him feel like I was “dumping” on him so he wouldn’t hear what I had to say. When I have an issue that is important I need to make it heard or I won’t be successful in my future relationships.

I know none of this is revolutionary knowledge and I’ve heard it all before but probably the last thing I learned is that some advice you can’t really understand until you go through it yourself.

The Begining

This post officially launches AvidRobert.com

The point of AvidRobert is to create a space for me to reflect on a lot of different things in my life and to serve as a “hub” for my interwebz activity.

I’m not writing this blog to get a ton of comments but instead I am doing it to hone my writing skills and get my thoughts out on a variety of subjects.

I’ve had a livejournal for over 5 years but I have decided that it is time to move on and to create something new that I have more control over.

I’m excited to see where AvidRobert takes my thoughts and if you are reading this I hope you enjoy getting a little more insight into my kooky brain.

Hello world!

Testing all of this out but soon enough this will be avidrobert.com