Blag Hag Dag

I'm feeling bloggish this morning, so what better thing to do than write about what's kicking around in my head right now?

I had a late dinner with Avani, one of my gal-pals from college who just got back from an internship out at UC Riverside in a GLBT center. She got a chance to work with a lot of great people and was amazed at the cultural diversity everywhere she turned. It made me really want to experience that myself.

We talked about how annoying the scene can become for a gay member of an ethnic minority in the South. You're either looked over or exoticized by a lot of people; both options don't give you much opportunity to really be seen for who you are, but instead for what you are. I can't count the numbers of times I've been asked what my ethnicity was before they even knew my name! Then there are the guys that aren't even interested because you don't match up to an Ambercrombie and Fitch model. It really is tough to get noticed in a positive light sometimes!

We also talked about our plans for the next year. I mentioned wanting to move because I've grown tired of Austin and Texas in general, and we talked about places we'd want to move to. She, having just gotten back from California and having loved every minute of it, obviously plans to live there at some point after she gets her Master's sometime next year. We talked about how we should move out there together next Summer, and I'm at the point where I'm seriously considering it. I mentioned places like Chicago or Boston but really California would be an exciting place to live. Chicago is full of family on my father's side who I'm not extremely close to, and I'm really not interested in getting to know. Boston was thrown in there just because I went there for New Year's and enjoyed the hell out of it.

Of course in my linear mindset, I immediately begin to worry about how I'd support myself out there and that's how I usually talk myself out of planning for something big like this. This time I'm not going to fall for it. I look at it this way: I didn't take the job I have now as a career move, it's just something to pay the bills, a holding pattern if you will. It allows me to maintain a life in Austin, and should be given up if I don't want to live here anymore.

The past year has been great in that I had my first relationship, and I've got something to put on my resume besides a string of part-time college jobs. But somehow Austin has changed, or maybe it's just me. I'm growing as a person and I feel like I may have outgrown my surroundings. I just don't mesh anymore with my environment, you know what I mean?

I guess that's the first step, admitting out loud that something's changed. That still leaves the question of what needs to be done about it unanswered.