Discombobulated

Today was my last day of work. I had an exit interview at noon where I have to sign some papers. 45 minutes later I walked out of the building for the last time with my severance check in hand, which deposited at the credit union on the way home. They took out more taxes than I expected; so, the severance check was a bit smaller than I had hoped for.

Being laid off from work has me feeling all discombobulated. And, I don't think the timing could have been any worse. I was informed that I'm being laid off the day before my daughter's wedding - and my last day at work was my first day back after my son's wedding.

I still haven't told anybody in my ward - I mean, how are you supposed to bring it up in conversation?

Them: How are you?

Me: Oh, I got laid off work, my life sucks, and I don't have any idea what my future holds - but otherwise I'm just peachy.

Plus, with conference, Easter, and being out of town for my son's wedding - there just hasn't been much of an opportunity. With traveling to and from Florida, I haven't even been in church the last two Sunday's (just got back last night).

The thing is - I really haven't enjoyed my job much for the last few years. I've tried to do the best I could - and I got good ratings at work. But the thought of finding another job doing the same thing depresses me. Unfortunately, the things I would enjoy doing don't bring in enough money to pay the bills. So, I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. How am I supposed to network if I don't even know what I want to do with my life going forward?

I've been working on my resume - and it's really hard trying to make my job sound interesting, exciting, and that I made a difference in the lives of others. I mean, how do you make "I wrote a design document and handed it off to a group of computer programmers in India to implement" sound interesting? It might have taken me months to come up with that design - but in retrospect, it just sounds lame. And, does anybody even care about some computer program I designed and implemented 25 years ago?

I'm feeling over loaded. I don't want to deal with any of this - I just want to shut down. I want to withdraw. I want to wrap myself in a cocoon and escape from all of this.

Maybe I should just go around blaspheming in hopes of being hit by a bolt of lightening so that my wife can collect life insurance . . .

Kris Allen is NOT a Mormon

Since my last blog post, I've gotten an unusually large number of hits from people googling "kris allen mormon". So, let's just be perfectly clear and get this out into the open.

Kris Allen is not a Mormon

I repeat

Kris Allen is not a Mormon

He is, however, a Christian and, as I understand, works with the music worship ministry in his church.

And, for anyone stumbling across this blog because you heard that Kris Allen is a Mormon - Yes, this is a gay blog - specifically a gay Mormon blog - welcome to the Mormon Queerosphere!

We, like other gay Christians, struggle with reconciling our sexuality with our religious beliefs and with non- acceptance by other members of our church. To get an idea of this struggle, watch this trailer for the Gay Christian Network's new documentary, "Through My Eyes" - a film, created for Christians by Christians which is an inside look at how the homosexuality debate in the church affects real people.

Kris Allen

I think I'm falling in love with Kris Allen on American Idol.

Kris Allen Fan Channel on YouTube

Kris is 23 years old and hails from Conway, Arkansas. He has worked with the worship ministry at New Life Church in Conway and Little Rock campuses since 2007. He is also involved with Chi Alpha Campus Ministries at the University of Central Arkansas. Kris and his wife Katy were married in September 2008. In addition to singing, he also plays guitar and piano.

Bottom line: He's young, talented, cute, married, humble, spiritual, and totally unavailable - the perfect imaginary boyfriend for a married gay Mormon dude like me.

Vermont

As I'm sure everybody that reads this blog already knows - gay marriage has been legalized in Vermont. This is significant in that it is the first state where gay marriage became legal via legislative action (verses judicial action).

• it was passed by the legislature
• vetoed by the governor
• and the veto overridden by the legislature (23-5 in the senate, 100-49 in the house).

This is big! These are the types of successes that we need to see more of.

I find myself wondering if this would be the outcome had there not been a big battle on the other side of the continent. Perhaps this is the silver lining behind the prop 8 cloud - it brought gay marriage into the public consciousness - not just as a political issue, but as a real issue that affects real families.

Sulking

I appreciate everyone's kind comments.

I'm still sulking - this whole layoff thing just stinks.

But, I'm going to try to get myself out of this funk I'm in.

Tonight my wife and I are going to go see the Ten Tenors at the Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas

Lost

I'm feeling lost today - like I'm falling and there is nothing I can do about it.

I should be finishing up my assignments at work

I should be working on my resume

I should be networking

I should be ...

But I just want to crawl under a rock and cease to exist.

I haven't told anybody in my ward about my impending layoff - should I? I really don't want to hear people say how sorry they are - I don't want their pity. I'm sure they're genuine - but it doesn't help at all - and it just puts me in a sour mood.

I really just want a hug right now - a man hug!

Line in the sand

"The moral footings of society continue to slip, while those who attempt to safeguard those footings are often ridiculed, picketed and persecuted ... It would be easy to become discouraged and cynical about the future—or even fearful or what might come—if we allowed ourselves to dwell on only which is wrong in the world and in our lives."
President Thomas S. Monson, April 5, 2009

This is an obvious reference to the aftermath of proposition 8 in California. By opposing proposition 8, the brethren were attempting to safeguard the moral footing of California society. Why it's not important to safeguard the moral footing in other states and countries where gay marriage is, or may soon be, legal is still a mystery.

However, I think this statement is significant because President Monson has declared that the church is not backing down. While not stated explicitly, it is obvious that the brethren continue to believe that it is our moral imperative to oppose gay marriage. Let there be no confusion, president Monson has retraced the line in the sand.

So, what side of the line am I on?

o
o
o

I am truly sorry president Monson - but I'm just not with you on this one. While I agree that the moral footing of society is slipping - I do not agree that gay marriage is either the cause or a symptom. Gay society is known for its promiscuity - so isn't it a good thing to bring family values into the gay community? Shouldn't we be promoting committed monogamous same sex relationships rather than demonizing them?

I guess I'll just stand over here with the morally-corrupt society-endangering family-destroying homosexuals. At least they accept me for who I really am - and not who I pretend to be.

Decisions, decisions, decisions

As I indicated in my last blog post - I am being laid off from my job the end of the month. I find myself going through a whole range of emotions from angry and betrayed to relieved and even (on occasion) excited about possible new opportunities - but, mostly negative emotions. One thing I learned yesterday is that I am forfeiting my retiree health benefit (when I actually retire). If they had just waited 8 months then I would have qualified for the retirement bridge and would have retained the health benefit when I retire - that just stinks!

And, in case anybody is wondering - the company is IBM, and I'm one of 5,000 people that were laid off last week. Essentially what is happening is that they are transferring a lot of work to India and other low cost countries and laying off the US employees. The general feeling among those who escaped the layoff is that this was probably just the first wave.

I attended a job transition webinar yesterday; and, one of the things they encouraged us to do was to take a Birkman First Look® assessment which is 3 part questionnaire:

• * How do you see most people? (125 questions)
• * How do you see yourself? (125 questions)
• * Which jobs interest you the most? (48 questions)

It produced a 25 page report which is supposed to help me figure out what kind of job I should look for - I'm still trying to figure out what dang thing is telling me. One of the graphs included was:

So . . . where can I find a job with responsibilities that capitalize on my artistic and musical interests - and pays lots of money? Any ideas?

According to the assessment, my interest in a job with persuasive responsibilities is basically non-existent. I'm thinking a sales job probably isn't a good idea.

What's new with Abelard?

I don't blog much about my personal life. I really don't know why - I guess I'm just not quite ready to divulge too much about myself. But, I thought I'd share a little of what's been going on in Abelard's life these days.

First of all, my youngest daughter was married on Saturday. Her husband is a non-member; so, the marriage was performed at church by our bishop. It was a very nice ceremony, a wonderful reception afterwards - and I was dead tired when it was all over. The groom's family was a little miffed that we weren't serving ice tea at the reception (and one family member was overheard during the reception asking where the liquor was); so, they brought an ice chest full of coke and dr. pepper - don't see that in an LDS cultural hall very often. And, I should point out that it wasn't just the non-Mormon's who had a can of coke or dr. pepper sitting in front of them at the table. :)

The only negative is that I was informed the day before that I am being laid off from my job after 28 years of service. I'm still processing this bit of news. Fortunately, I'm in a better position than many who face this challenge seeing as how I no longer have young children living at home. I'm thinking it's time for a career change - any suggestions? How about a wedding photographer specializing in Mormon temple marriages and gay weddings? Seriously, pursuing a career in photography is one of the options I've been looking at. Another is going into teaching - high school math. But, that Walmart greeter job looks mighty enticing.

My youngest son is getting (temple) married later in April - he will be the last of my children to be married. Now it's time to start pumping out the grandchildren :) - we're up to 4.

So, that is what's going on in Abelard's life - we're having a busy spring; and, I'm feeling pretty stressed - some good stress, some bad stress, but stress none the less.

And, I'm starting to think that perhaps it's time to consider inching out of my closet a bit more. Not that I want to go to church wearing a pink shirt and rainbow tie - but, I'm just tired of pretending to be straight all the time. So, stay tuned, although I'm not going to rush into anything.

On that note, if you've ever wondered what I look like in real life - there is a site called My Heritage: Celebrity Look Alike where you can upload a photo of yourself and, through face recognition, it will tell you which celebrities you look most alike. So, you simply have to reverse engineer these faces to derive a picture of me :)

Graphing the blog

Hidden found a site that graphs out a web site. Here is the graph of my blog.

All I can say is that some people have way too much time on their hands - including me, apparently.

Although, it is kinda pretty - maybe I should embroider this on my shirt pocket . . .

● (blue): for links (the A tag)
● (red): for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
● (green): for divisions (DIV tag)
● (violet): for images (IMG tag)
● (yellow): for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
● (orange): for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
● (black): for root node ( HTML tag)
● (gray): all other tags

Gay Mormon news

I've reported on this before; but, it's important enough that I think it bears repeating

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Camp Rock Hudson, Massachusetts - Gay Mormon polygamists have been arriving in droves at this remote corner of western Massachusetts ever since the state’s Supreme Judicial Court gave its approval last month to same-sex marriages.

“Looks like Massachusetts is going to end up being the ‘Promised Land,’” said Elder Moses Smith, who arrived yesterday at the gay polygamist compound with his spouses Ezekiel, Jacob, Joshua, Zachariah, Zebediah, Nehemiah and Kevin. “We mean no one any harm. All we want to do is to live in peace and to be left alone in order to have non-stop hot male action and watch “Malcolm in the Middle” reruns.

Traditional Mormon leaders denounced Elder Smith and the breakaway church he runs which is called the Church of Latter-Day Interior Decorators. “It’s not the gay orgies that we find so objectionable about the Latter-Day Decorators,” said Joseph Smith VIII, the 98-year old President of the Mormon Church who was speaking from his office in Salt Lake City. “What we really find offensive is that they drink coffee.”

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Source: Gay Mormon Polygamists Flocking to Massachusetts from Broken Newz.