Been a while since I updated my blog but don’t think that means I’m bored with it. Far from it given how unpleasant commercial social media has become. But the Parkinson’s diagnosis has thrown me for more of a loop than I’d originally thought (that happens) and I’ve been engaged in a process of downsizing and letting go. I’ve taken several large storage containers full of stuff I’ve saved for nostalgia value to recycling because I’m feeling now like that past I had, while valuable and important, is not something I need to keep as close anymore, if I’m to spend a few final years of my life in peace and serenity. And adventure.

It seems to me now that there is a lot I should just let go of, so I can be me, and not as much a replay of the me I was once. Some of it I will never let go of, because it made me the person I am today. But I don’t need the details of my past as much as I’d thought I would. Those 16 and Tiger Beat magazines I saved to remind me of the closeted gay teenybopper I once was, I can send to recycling and let the paper they were made of become something new, just as I can finally become something more than everything I used to be. There is a saying that’s particularly relevant to gay guys my age and my generation, to the effect that the task before us is to remove everything about us we had to become in order to survive, so we can finally be our authentic selves; the persons we were always meant to be, and would have been if not for all the hate we had to endure. And I have always said there is no such thing as growing up, but only growing. I think that diagnosis of Parkinson’s has given me some perspective. I am letting go of a lot of stuff, so I can grow, while I still have time to grow. Before I become a prisoner inside my own body.

More later…