Recap

One thing that makes this blog really different from other blogs, besides the obvious fact that my entries are just soooo fucking long and that almost every entry has a flashback for some stupid reason, is that most of my entries read like a narrative and are driven by several different long running plots. Most blogs only contain broad and episodic musings or reflections, so they’re easier to get into. New readers who haven’t been reading my blog since the summer probably get lost frequently, so this entry is for getting yourself up to date on the different areas in my life. Last updated 10/23/10. I’ll try to update this every two weeks if important stuff happens.

Jump to...
- A Few Notes. Just some things to keep in mind before you start reading.
- Teaching. Working toward my dream of being a high school teacher.
- Dancing. The journey to becoming a better dancer.
- Family. The ups and downs—generally ups—of my family.
- Relationships. From hook-ups to actual boyfriend/boyfriend status.
- Gay. My struggle to reconcile self-acceptance and an open mind with my sense of individualiy.



A Few Notes

These recaps do not cover any flashbacks on my life before the start of this blog (June 2009), and these recaps probably don’t even cover half of my blog’s best entries. Don’t rely too much on these recaps to stay caught up, because you’re missing out on some really thematic entries and some insight into my past that would give you a better understanding of my thinking and how I got to where I am today.



Teaching

This blog began with my second summer teaching with Breakthrough Collaborative in Summer 2009. When the internship ended in August, I wasn’t too sure if I was going to come back to teach for a third summer. Around this time, I also began to question my career goal of becoming a high school French teacher, mainly because I was losing interesting in French. In October, I finally decided that I was done with French; my dream career was still to be a high school teacher, but I didn’t know what I’d be teaching. At the end of October, I also finally decided that I would not be coming back to teach for a third time with Breakthrough in summer 2010, but I did come to visit at the beginning of that summer, and the students were as excited to see me as I was to see them. However, four weeks later when I came back to visit during their celebration night, I realized that they had moved on and formed bonds with the new teachers.

During the school year, in November 2009, I got a tutoring job at the Education Academy, but in as early as February, as much as I loved my job, I had to accept that thirty-dollar paychecks would not even get me by for food, so I started looking for another job, most likely one that would be far less meaningful and fulfilling to me. In September, I found a clothing retail job at Promod.



Dancing

During summer 2009, I took dance classes as part of the Funksters summer intensive program up in San Francisco, and the classes really affirmed that I sucked at dancing. After the program ended at the end of August and by the end of summer, I did show some kind of improvement at least, and the intensive was still fun, because I made friends with some of the Funksters.

When school started again fall 2009, my friends Kevin and Alfonso and I planned to audition for CADC, but none of us ended up making it except for my friend Sang, who I met through the Funksters during the summer. Despite all the rejections, fall quarter was still a great quarter because I danced, and I danced with and hung out with friends. During winter quarter, I was on a dance team but I quit, and by the start of spring quarter, I became a little bit more independent with my dancing. Gradually, however, dancing started to fade into the background as my priorities shifted, probably not for the better, but by the beginning of summer 2010, I got back into it.

By the end of the summer, however, I felt like my dancing hadn’t really changed, and I considered quitting until I got a personal call from the director of a team I tried out for (but didn’t make) in the beginning of fall 2010. Now my drive to dance was greater than it had ever been. And most importantly, I learned to start believing in myself (and possibly others) more.



Family

During the last two years, my relationship with my parents had been generally positive, though we did have some rifts at the start of this blog. They were supportive of my dancing when I thought they wouldn’t be. They were always very supportive, but I kept my breakup with Trung a secret from my parents because I didn’t know how to tell them, and Trung had long since been accepted as a part of the family.

I had an aunt in Westminster who I strongly disliked, but she’d give me one hundred bucks every time I visited her when I was down in SoCal for college. One thing about being in SoCal for college was that sometimes, I had trouble keeping in contact with my parents. In November 2009, I discovered that they had financial problems far worse than I had thought, so I quit my job at my school’s dining commons for a job at the Education Academy, which promised me more hours.

In the following month, December, I had another small rift, this one with my dad about my career aspirations not being lucrative enough, but we all quickly got over that because we could never stop loving each other. At the beginning of 2010, I finally told my parents that I had broken up with Trung, and they also figured that Ranier was going to be my next boyfriend. When I broke up with Ranier in April, I told my parents about the breakup in May. They probably forgot all about him already, but to this day, Trung still remained an integral part of my family.



Relationships

At the start of this blog, Trung and I were heading into the nineteenth month of our relationship, and we taught with Breakthrough together that summer. A few weeks after our twentieth-month anniversary, however, we broke up. We slowly reconciled and ended on pretty good terms by the end of the summer. I guess I still had some trouble though because I had some jealousy problems during fall quarter. On December 8th, 2009, we briefly celebrated over the phone what would’ve been our two-year anniversary. When 2010 started, it was time for me to finally move on.

By the start of April, I was already in my third month into a new relationship with Ranier, but we broke up shortly into the month because of tensions that escalated from an argument over my calling special ed kids at the Education Academy “ stupid.” We resolved that issue post-breakup and remained on good terms.



Gay

My self-acceptance of my dicksucking sexuality has fluctuated repeatedly over the last five years. At the start of this blog, I was relearning to embrace my gayness thanks to my friend Cameron. Still, I never fully accepted myself, but in October of that year, fearing my mental health, I eventually realized that it was important that I did. Something went way the fuck wrong the following months, however, and by December, I was once again back to my old bitter self, what some would consider self-loathing. About three months later, I was back trying to find some sense of self-acceptance again, though my rate of progress was slower than ever. I eventually found acceptance when I learned I could love myself by hating on another subculture of gays.