As you can imagine, life has been hard for me since a certain malevolent ignoramus has taken over as president of the U.S. for the second time. Everywhere I go, online and in real life, people are depressed or angry or ready to give up. Just when I've gotten myself to a positive state of mind, someone comes by with a new travesty to lament and I sink back down into the muck.

I don't want to despair. I understand why we are despairing. But, I also think it's important to set aside the chaos that is the U.S. right now, and focus on our individual lives and what beauty and hope we may find there. Even if the only thing I can come up with to be thankful for is that I am still breathing and I have a cat warming my lap.

That is enough for now.

I found neocities. It's free. It's basic in a good way. I know a little html and css, and I tried to set something up that I could easily update. It was a lot for me. It didn't have enough "blog" functionality. I didn't have the skills or the patience to get it there. I found some templates & tools like zonelets and bimbo. Still I found my skills and patience were not up to it. Eventually, I came across publii and that is what I am using. It is like a barebones wordpress, but installed locally on your computer. Now, I have everything set up. There is still more I can tweak but the basic site is ready. 

I only have to write.

Since this is my first post and I've already bored you with how I got here, I'll tell you a little about myself. I'm old. No, I shouldn't say that. Most of my friends are older than me. I am early Gen X. I am queer. I came out in the late eighties - early nineties. I proudly called myself a dyke and a lesbian feminist. Now I am a trans man in a relationship with a gay cis man and I call myself queer. I am college educated. I read too much and yet never seem to have the time to read serious nonfiction things. I read a lot of fantasy, science fiction, and horror. I want to read books on current events, history, and religion. I'm an atheist, mostly, who has always been fascinated with religion. 

I lived for twenty years in a place I hated, doing a job I barely tolerated. Inertia ruined my life. I let it lay waste to years of my life. Did I mention I am old? If you're young, don't do what I did. Fuck what you are supposed to do and do what you want to do. People told me that when I was young and I thought I would listen to them, but job security and paying off my student loans was too tempting.

I am only now learning how to do what I want to do. It's hard. I guess that is what I'm doing here. I'm writing because that is what I want to do now.