Tag: WordPress

Sugar, butter, BROADWAY!

When Covid hit, New York gradually started to shut down some of the biggest staples that kept the heart beating in our Big Apple. Landmark after landmark went down, but when Broadway went dark I knew that this pandemic was serious. I took the loss of the great white way harder than I wanted to admit. Theater was a part of the magic that my younger self found in New York City. It was my own oasis of a glittery escape in my own backyard. I pictured the normally lit signs dim as the streets lay deserted with no usual foot traffic and life to pound the pavement. Sad wasn’t the word, I was devastated with no control of what was to come and it was the scariest feeling to watch my city slowly go dim.

I know we aren’t out of the woods yet. The threat still remains real but we are figuring out every day a little more pieces to the puzzle. Science is working double time and the lights are coming back to my beautiful hometown.

The last time we saw a show was November 25, 2019. Katharine McPhee was back on Broadway reprising her role as Jenna Hunterson in Waitress. We’d seen the show twice by then but couldn’t resist going back to see our girl tear the roof off the place again. We were 13 days into our new marriage already kicked in the teeth by the thoroughs of life. We needed an escape desperately and Waitress more than delivered. Our mutual love for the arts is one of the many things my wife and I share and this show was no different. Life was good in that evening, there was no reality, no stress, we were having a date we both needed.

Today after 650 days since our last show and 555 days into the Covid-19 pandemic in New York, I can happily and gratefully say that we made our return to Broadway and back to the diner. I felt like a kid on Christmas. A bundle of nerves being exposed to crowds again (we were all masked and vaccinated or tested) but excited to be back in the theater. It’s been almost a year and a half since I’ve seen Times Square and today I took it all in like I was seeing it for the first time. Waitress was revived and brought to the Barrymore Theatre directly across the street from its original home at Brook Atkinsons. I’ve dreamed about this day, I’ve mourned the idea that lights would never come on again and I cannot explain how happy I am to have spent time inside of a Broadway show again. The world has a ways to go but these gifts of what was once reminds me to never take advantage of what you have in front of you because it can be gone in an instant. I am thankful, humbled. Thanks for taking to me to the moon, Waitress. I’ve missed you and I’ve missed my city more than I could explain.

Wife heading to the theater.

My experience in finding the right therapist. (And breaking up with one too.)

Disclaimer: I am in no way qualified to give medical or mental health advice. I am simply someone who’s had their own mental health experiences and want to share my processes used for treatment. This post is in no way medical advice.

The process of finding a therapist can be daunting. Often people begin the arduous search for this unbiased resource to help them when they are at the most heightened state creating a miserable search that too many people could get burned out by. If you have insurance, there’s finding a provider that is in your network and then getting the consultation to see if they are a good match for the help you want provided. If you don’t have insurance, it’s even harder because the process often becomes about finding a therapist that remains cost effective to a budget but also suits your needs and gets the help that you’re looking for. Once the initial steps are taken, there are things I like to look for in a therapist to provide the best care for the issue I want to be maintained.

  1. Someone who specializes in goals I want to set or issues that I want to help manage for myself.
  2. Someone who listens to me without judgment.
  3. Someone who can be relatable but also not use the session to talk more about themselves entirely, but focus on the task at hand for that session while providing insight.
  4. Someone who holds boundaries in our professional relationship and doesn’t allow me to become overly attached to them.
  5. Someone who doesn’t blame me or others for my struggles but rather helps me accept myself for who I am in that moment and who I can become along the way.

This list can be added to or even subtracted but it is my baseline set of standards that I used to find my current therapist that I work with. My first therapist in 2020 was helpful but became someone who stepped outside of the standards that I wanted to set for my healing journey. “Breaking up” with this therapist was difficult because I developed an unhealthy attachment to them. After a while, it became apparent that our time together was becoming toxic, and I needed to start over with someone else. It was a scary thing to tell this person, but I gathered my courage and left a short and simple text message that while I was grateful for our time together, I no longer felt that they could help me any further. Thankfully, their response was cordial which eased my anxiety about leaving but it didn’t make any less nerve wracking to do. Change is hard especially when you’re not feeling your best, but it is possible to do. It’s important to stay true to your journey and make sure that you have the appropriate person to help you along the way.

If you have insurance, you can use your insurance’s website data base but if you want a broader search for a mental health professional, I’ve used psychologytoday.com with great success.

Blogtember

I’ve been writing since I can spell. For as long as I can remember, writing was an emotional outlet that allowed to express myself in ways I didn’t know were possible to do. As a child, I wrote elaborate handwritten birthday cards expressing how I felt for loved ones because it was one of my favorite ways to say it without appearing too repetitive or not acting my age. As a teenager into my early 20s, I created an entire world in written roleplay on MySpace with my character as a way to experience life on my own terms and meet others who were doing the same. It was the ultimate escape and what would lead me to find the love of my life in the real world outside of the pages of writing. Writing has always fit somewhere into my identity in an obvious way and I’ve never questioned my place in it until now.

As an adult, life gets in the way. Anxiety flares up, I’m living experiences in real time and sometimes so swept away by it all I’m exhausted. However, the ember is still flickering inside of me and a craving for self-expression. I still consider myself a writer but I find myself getting lost in the comparison to others. I’m surrounded by such an insane amount of talent in the Twitter world and my tiny NaNoWriMo platform and it’s been a daunting task to try and keep up. Am I an author exclusively or can I be a blogger too? Am I up for the challenge of consistent publishing and marketing? Can I stick to a deadline? I’ve found I’ve had a lot of difficulty with self-trust and I want to be able to keep a promise to myself in one of the safest places in my world; my writing.

I’ve tried series on here and always somehow embarrassed myself along the way with some sort of excuse as to why or how I couldn’t continue. I want to make the change and train myself with Blogtember. I’ve decided to do this now versus December because as of this month, my life is going to pick up to a level of pre-Covid speeds. Am I crazy for trying this during that? Probably. But, I am eager to build this stamina in my writing. It’s who I am, it’s one of my gifts and I want to use it as a wisely as I can. I’m going to be creating a table of contents below that can be used to enjoy the entire 30 days of this journey. I’ve had some topics I’ve wanted to discuss and some personal journeys I want to document. All of these will contain links as each article becomes published so you can use this to follow along.

30 days of September:

  1. Introduction
  2. Once Upon a Penny
  3. My experience in finding the right therapist. (And breaking up with one too.)
  4. Covid Summer Vs. 2021 Summer
  5. Sugar, Butter, BROADWAY!
  6. The Pieces of Me – Acceptance Journey
  7. The Silver Linings of a Pandemic
  8. The realization of my people-pleasing.
  9. ~~~~DAY OF REST~~~~
  10. Connection for the disconnected: TLP experience
  11. September 11th – 20 years later
  12. I LOVE NY
  13. My experience with Headspace
  14. The Dare App Premium Access (Review)
  15. Hard decisions to make (Life during Covid-19)
  16. Dream Hunter: A short story
  17. My love hate relationship with Social Media
  18. My Mental Health Update
  19. The Truth About Self-Love
  20. ‘Twas’ the Night Before A Very Delayed Honeymoon
  21. Disney World: Travel Day
  22. Disney World: Day One
  23. Disney World: Day Two
  24. Disney World: Day Three
  25. Disney World: Day Four
  26. Disney World: Day Five
  27. The Disney Downs are Real
  28. My experience traveling in Covid
  29. Dear Me,
  30. Blogtember Wrap Up.

My first NYC Pride.

Credit: NY Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Facebook page.

Up until 2014 my experience in the LGBTQIA+ community was limited. I met my wife on MySpace. Some of you may have even been Tom’s friend too. Our presence in the community remained mostly digital even after meeting in person. There weren’t many resources in our youth, beyond Hillary Duff defending our identities as more than a slur. June 2014 marked our first Pride together. It was one year after Edie Windsor struck down DOMA. History was alive and witnessed before our own eyes. We were both eager to be amongst the community to celebrate history being made but also the intense love that was growing between us. The last Sunday in June came and we got up early to get a good spot to see the parade in Midtown and waited for it to begin. Our experience quickly started to turn from a patient waiting moment to immediate excitement. while we stood waiting for the parade to begin. 

The Grand Marshal’s that year were Laverne Cox and Jonathan Groff. I am a huge fan of both so when my wife asked Jonathan Groff to take a picture with me I was speechless that he agreed. He was as handsome and good natured as I imagined and I was on cloud nine. As a millennial and Gleek, my heart exploded at the encounter and the day only continued to get better from there. 

The parade started and we were engulfed by the community and its openness. The streets were packed with people like we have never seen before. Despite being out both of us remained passive in public in fear of being hassled for being openly affectionate with each other. To see so many people simply being free was a life changing experience for me. It gave a younger me the strength to live her truth as openly and as often as I could. The fear still presides but the memory of literally THOUSANDS of people walking up and down the streets of Manhattan with confidence in a parade of love of themselves and each other remains the North Star to me every time I want to question my ability to be open. My relationship has always been something to celebrate and be proud of and that experience will always engrain a sense of bravery and pride inside of me.

Today is the 51st annual Pride Parade in NYC. While I’ve decided not to go, my heart is with those young, old, and closeted and all, who could have the same experiences as I did that day. Whether it’s meeting your favorite LGBT celebrity, or finally being in person doing all the things you never thought you’d have the guts to do. Enjoy your time, be kind, be respectful to each other and HAPPY PRIDE NYC!

Feelin’ 32.

On Sunday, May 23rd, I enter my 32nd trip around the sun. I love my birthday to begin with, but this year has me particularly reflective. Life inside of a pandemic has been a tricky one. My mental health has flopped around like a fish out of water, my time with family and friends was grossly limited and life in general was just uncertain overall. I celebrated my birthday last year in a very limited way and it bummed out. While I appreciated the absolute best efforts of my wife and my brother and my sister in law, I found myself with a serious case of the blues. I love people, that’s something that this pandemic confirmed for me so being without all my people on my special day made things a little heavier than I would have hoped they would be.

This time last year, I had already been away from my parents for three months, there wasn’t really a direction to when this pandemic would end, and no one really knew how to continue a daily life. Were we supposed to hunker down and stay totally inside? Could we see people we knew were safe? Should we see people at all? There were so many questions with very few answers. The end looked like it would never come but here I am a year later and there has been glimmers of hope that have left me grateful for time and perspective. While we are far from out of the woods, we now have vaccines available and much better testing protocols. My entire immediate family has been completely vaccinated, which provides me with the ability and utmost happiness to say that I will be spending my 32nd birthday with all my people once more! Huzzah!

I enter this upcoming weekend with much gratitude for the ability to do this and sheer excitement to have plans to look forward to. There have been a lot of growing pains in the last year and there are still more to come but I am learning to love myself in ways I never thought were possible. Compassion and patience have not been my strongest suits but I hope to approach everyday in my 32nd year with those two things in mind and a grateful heart to have the time back that was lost in the hellish year of the global pandemic.