A brief interruption before we move on...

So while I’m positive that this blog is sure to become a veritable clearinghouse for everything depressing and gay, something happened to me today that I feel compelled to share first.

I think I may have watched an elderly man pass away at the Harris Teeter. And I’m going to be horribly insensitive and talk about how this is affecting me for a moment.

It was so weird to see, not least of which because it’s not the kind of thing one expects when one goes grocery shopping. I was just standing at the U-Scan, u-scanning, and there was this elderly man sitting on a chair next to a shopping cart at the front of the store. He starting falling over in his chair, and a cashier and a customer went over to help him. Over the course of several minutes, the man went from being responsive and talking to... well... not. At the end, the customer who was helping was saying he couldn’t feel a pulse (and checking both the man's neck and wrist) and the manager was calling the paramedics. And then I left.

I felt bad about leaving, but, in all honesty, there’s not much I could have done. I don’t know first aid, they had already called an ambulance, the customer who was helping seemed to know what he was doing... I also didn’t think that having a bunch of people standing around gawking was helpful to the situation. So I left.

So I walked out to my car, feeling overwhelmingly odd, and as I drove home, I started to get sad, for lack of a better word. That poor man… who came to Harris Teeter to do some grocery shopping… and it ended up being the last thing he’ll ever do. And how depressing it seems to endure your final moments in a busy supermarket, surrounded by strangers. It just seems like such a lonely, impersonal way to go.

I’m projecting here, of course. It would be sad for me, not necessarily for him. Maybe it wasn’t lonely for him.

For all I know, for that matter, maybe the paramedics arrived and were able to revive him. Maybe the customer checking his pulse didn’t really know how, and was feeling in the wrong spot(s). What I do know is how it looked when I left, which was not good… and how he looked as the whole thing was happening.

I don’t know if I’ve ever actually witnessed someone pass away. I’m not saying that so that anyone feels bad for me, because that’s entirely not the point. But I can still see the whole chain of events clearly in my head. And I think they’re going to stay with me for a while.

Anyway, I hope he’s ok… though, to be honest, I’m not optimistic. And I hope that, wherever he is (and I’m not about to start that particular debate), if it was as lonely for him as it would have been (would be) for me, at least he knows that someone is remembering him and thinking about him.

That’s all. Back to the usual misanthropy.

Cheers

Hello.

And welcome to my blog.

So I thought that the proper thing to do would be to introduce myself a bit.

This, of course, presupposes that someone might read this who doesn’t know me… which is (let’s face it) a pipe dream… but one that I’ll indulge in for at least a few sentences.

If pressed, I usually describe myself as an amalgam of awkwardness, misplaced anger, and social anxiety. I’m a misanthrope, yet am one semester away from being a social worker (hence the title of the blog). I’d consider myself to be both in the middle of the LGBT rights movement and an outlier in the community. I identify as gay, but am thinking of switching to queer, mostly because it’s a much more fun word to say. I’m a tad pretentious. Maybe a bit more than a tad, but it’s nice to pretend otherwise.

And, as you may have noticed, I can talk for a while about myself without actually revealing anything of any substance.

So why am I doing this? Well, a few reasons. I guess that I’m choosing to look at this as a collection of everything that's consuming my life right now... which I will no doubt look back on in 5 or 10 years (or 6 months, for all I know) with a combination of embarrassment and shame… but that fits in nicely with my masochistic streak, so it's a win-win.

I habitually post a lot of things to Facebook, but find my comments are often hampered by character space limits. As you’ll undoubtedly become aware, I tend to be wordy, so having space unencumbered by said limits appeals to me.

Plus, I like to rant, complain about things, and just generally bring down the collective moods of all who surround me. What better way is there to do that on a large scale than a public forum such as a blog, right?

And finally, at the end of the day, probably the biggest reason why I’m doing this is because a few friends think I’d be good at it, and I want them to quit bugging me.

So what can you, the reader, expect from this blog? If I had to guess, I'd say it will feature an extraordinary amount of depressing gay stuff, coupled with an odd assortment of other topics that happen to catch my eye. Additionally, I'm planning on using this space as an outlet for some of the theories and ideas that have been kicking around my head. If anything I write moves you to comment, please feel free. I'll try to respond to every comment in a timely manner. (And honestly, I'm not expecting anyone to actually read this, so I figure one comment every six months or so should be something I can handle.)

I will confess that I’m a little worried about how often I’ll be able to update this without it becoming yet another timesuck in my life… but what the hell?

That’s the spirit, right?