I’m coming out for the LGBT community: A love letter from me

Go celebrate! I wouldn’t mind joining you!

Preface: This was something that had been stirring in my heart for the past couple weeks. I can’t pinpoint exactly why, but I felt that I needed to write this post… or at least put it out there. 

I am not actually gay. But having grown up in the Bay Area, having gay friends and really observing as an outsider, I wanted to share my thoughts on it. I haven’t been vocal about it in the past and part of it came because I wasn’t sure what to say. Now after some thinking, praying and reflection, I feel that at some level, I think I get it.  

I probably will get some negative responses to this and that’s fine with me. I might get positive ones too. This message comes from the heart and I write this out of love. 

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When I first even got a glimpse or an idea of what being gay might be, I was a kid. I didn’t know what it meant really. I just thought it was some kind of term you used to say someone was different. I distinctly remember calling Michael Jackson gay because he was different. I don’t think it was necessarily the fact that he was very pale and sounded like a woman to me, but I just felt that being gay just meant you were different. I might have used it as an insult like this as a kid, but I never really believed it. I had no problem with it, really. It didn’t affect me, so it wasn’t my problem.

That mentality has stuck with me my entire life. I didn’t see it affecting my life, so I didn’t really deal with it. (When Prop 8 came around, I didn’t speak out for or against it. I don’t even remember if I voted.) Despite the fact that I grew up in the Bay Area, went to school with gays, it never really meant anything to me. Maybe because I was used to it. Maybe because I was never scolded or told how to feel about it. It wasn’t my life, so I just let it be.

Thinking of Thanksgiving, we got it good

LOL turkey

This will be the first ever Thanksgiving for me where I won’t be with family. I have work today. But I think the fact that I am not with my family today is a good reminder of the things I am thankful for. I am not at home because of my job. This job is something that I should not have. So very few people in my line of work would be in this position.

But thank God that I got my 49ers gig out of college and three years of working my ass off got me here. Now I am doing something I am really good at and I am enjoying it.

It’s a tough thing too moving to LA not knowing anyone, but I have found a decent place to live and the surrounding is pretty nice. More importantly, a good church community. Things aren’t easy now, but I can’t complain. I got it good.

A weekend in which I ate a lot, watched the A’s win and moved like Bernie

What’s this? Yes, that’s me and my friend Chris doing the Bernie when he came to visit me last weekend. It was an idea that came up last month and today we finally put it into action.

But how did this all come to be? Let me take you down my weekend adventure in which I also ate a lot of good food and went to Anaheim to represent the A’s.

Recapping my weekend back in the Bay Area

Yeah, we fresh!

I love the Bay. It’s my home. It’s my upbringing. It’s what I am about. So this past weekend I was lucky enough to have some time off work and fly up back home. I had the entire trip planned surrounded by food and baseball.

Here’s a recap of all the fun that I had, including how I was able to meet up with a lot of really important peoples in my life.

FRIDAY: The journey to LAX was time consuming. I wasn’t going to drive to the airport and park my car there for three days. So instead, I decided to take public transportation. I had to walk up and down a hill for about a mile to get to the bus stop. I took the bus ($1.50) to the Union Station in downtown. There, I took the FlyAway bus directly to the airport ($7).

During the ride to the airport, I got a chance to really relax on the bus. It was like one of those vacation tour buses and it was comfortable. I even got a chance to read this very awesome article about Rick Ross in Rolling Stone magazine.

Tentative weekend schedule for my return to the Bay Area

I’m back!

I will be returning to the Bay Area this weekend because I miss home. But it won’t be a long stay and I will try to get as much done in that time. I’ll be in the East Bay the entire time and I wish I could see everyone. But since I know that won’t happen, I’ll just do the best I can.

If anyone wants to come by say hi, I’ll be around various places. Here’s my itinerary of my weekend.

What if I didn’t like sports — is there more to me?

https://twitter.com/#!/phutmasterflex/statuses/185327485490184192

That was my tweet after I woke up at 2AM to watch the A’s play their game in Japan. Man, am I crazy about sports or what? My sleep schedule is messed up because of this but I don’t regret it.

But recently, I started to wonder how much of me is about sports. My profession is about sports. Most of my expertise on things is sport. Heck, people always go to me about sports. I love it, but I wonder if it’s so much a part of me that I am viewed as only that.

This kind of thinking started when this past 49ers season started when I no longer started to see myself as a 49ers fan. I in fact was started to get disgusted with obsessive fans. These people make their lives surround around their team and it’s kind of hard to watch. Do people view me as that?

What’s coming up next in my life?

I'm going to two more concerts this month. One to see Chris Brown. The other to see The Game.

WOW. I cannot believe it’s already mid-October and there’s just a lot of stuff that’s on my plate… and I have to eat it all.

First, the fun stuff.

As you know, I just got back from the Lupe Fiasco concert last week. It was a great show and he did all the songs I liked… and more. This coming Saturday, I will get to see Chris Brown. I have been a Brown fan since Day 1. He makes great music and is a tremendous dancer. He is a great artist.

Of course, people want to remember him from his acts outside of his music. The Rihanna incident. The chair throwing incident. He’s a crazy guy. But I have always wanted to see him perform. I heard his concerts are wild, so let’s see how I handle all that.

I miss my buddy Phil

Phil always lived for the moment. What a champ!

This past week, my friend Phil passed away from Friedriech’s Ataxia. I’m gonna miss the guy.

I met Phil at SJSU as we both had the same magazine writing class. Even though he was in a wheelchair and had trouble communicating sometimes, he was such a joy to be around. He always made me laugh and never let his disability get to him.

What’s even cooler was that we both share the same birthday. Back in 2009, I went to his birthday party and we just had so much fun (and good food). There is where I perfected by beer pong skills.

I’m gonna miss ya Phil. May you enjoy your new life with God and thank you for being so wonderful.

One thing about Christmas I love is being with the best friends in the world

I love my friends.

This was from Thursday at our annual Christmas dinner/party/gift exchange/whatever you wanna call it thing with my friends from San Jose. We’ve known each other for about five years and being with these people always makes me happy.

We’ve now all grown up and probably things like these will be less and less. But it was all happy times. I have some great friends.

Merry Christmas to all of you!

Merry Christmas with my little Charlie Brown tree.

Merry Christmas everyone!

I hope that each and every one of you are warm and around the people you love. It’s that time of year where we just drop all the stuff that stresses us out and just love the people that matter to us (and also the people we don’t think about much too).

Of course, for me, Christmas is a time of celebration. This is the time I look back at God’s plan for salvation and smile because God sent Jesus down to Earth to save us.

Christmas, which means “the celebration of Christ”, is the celebration of beginning of eternal salvation. That’s what Christmas means to me.

To some of you, Christmas doesn’t have that meaning. It might just be a day where you’re with family and that’s cool. I think that despite all the mumbo jumbo with political correctness, respect, etc., that we should all just be happy that we’re here together with each other. It’s all about loving one another.

You are all wonderful and I’m very thankful for you guys being in my life. Let’s go have some fun today with our presents and loved ones.