He Who Is Blinded By Ambition

"He who is blinded by ambition, raises himself to a position where he cannot mount higher, must therefore fall with the greatest loss." - Niccolo Machiavelli (1469 - 1527)

Feeling A Little Bummed-Out

I'm back to feeling a little bummed out due to a couple of silly issues that have been excavating things out of me. Normally when I'm caught in this state of mind, I usually can't wait to rush home and splash every single detail of my emotions here on the white pages. But this time, the fire that used to drive my overwhelming need to express myself through writing has faded. I can't seem to figure out if it's because I'm mentally tired and have accepted things for the way they are, or that I'm just drained from work.

Anyway from an editorial perspective, it's already mid-February and I have a public journal to run. If the Gay & Invisible Journal were some kind of publication, we would have gone bust for the absence of strong content and updates (laughs). So here I am trying to make an effort for myself, for I believe that foolish writing has to come in order for better ones to resurface again.

So it started with me feeling all sorts of horny-cum-lovesick emotions towards people. With the gym downstairs and me constantly bumping into guys I'd like to have sex with, I can't quite put my finger on what the emotions are exactly because it's a mixture of wanting take him to bed, and also being hopeful or hungry for how it feels like to be in loving attachment with another man I'm attracted to.

Restlessness also gradually became the dominant theme for the past week. Even though my days are tightly jam-packed with work and personal projects, but I find myself daydreaming a lot. I've even resorted to purposely going to the bathroom just to jerk off to good-looking images on my phone.

Then, my self-esteem issues started to catch up. I think in terms of personality and character soulfulness, I am very much at peace with the level of competitiveness they command. But in a surface-oriented society that includes myself, it's the physical acceptance that I still struggle with.

"Man that guy looks like a model, has a nicely built body and is confidently masculine. He's attractive and a natural sex magnet. You're not even close to resembling anything like that and you're just "you". You're not a conventionally attractive male and male beauty doesn't describe you. To top it off, you want something as a substitute for what you might lack. It must feel really good being him. To be somebody who never has to doubt the reality of his attractiveness because no matter the weather or occasion, he is hot. I wonder what that feels like?" There. I said it. My honest and most insecure thoughts in black and white.

Coming back to the other reasons for being bummed-out, I started to feel the pinch of not being paid a proper salary on top of a workload that is slowly taking over my personal time and after work hours. Don't ask me why, but this is how it is for now.

I was paying some bills today and it left me with nothing but emptiness. I know this is something everyone has to go through in life, but my spirit was just really dampened. For more than a year, I realised that I haven't actually had proper excess money to invest in myself. At times like these, I would normally tell myself to ride out the emptiness and just not whine. But today, I felt somewhat depressed and foolish for choosing to learn on a job, than to work in accordance with the standard protocol of being well-remunerated for your efforts.

Deep down, a part of me knows what I'm doing. To some extend I do believe in the genuine success that might be due later in the long run, but another part of me that forms the average human being living in the practical world is deeply frustrated and distraught. I am not making enough of a living, and I am not fully in place with where I want to be.

Throughout the entire drive home, a million questions, analysis and worries bombarded my head. I started to analyse my life and let the angry voices flow. I thought about the various aspects of my life ranging from love, finances, career, spirituality and self-enrichment. 

I asked myself what am I going to do about my wish to make love and experience companionship. Have I subconsciously accepted my situation and given up on a boyfriend? I pondered about my finances and how am I ever going to achieve a life of true freedom where I feel good. What about that life career that is in alignment with what I'm genuinely called to do in life?

As my car stopped at a traffic junction, I welled up due to a fireworks of emotions that started to burn inside me, and just before I allowed myself to continue being carried away with what I'm feeling, I told myself to acknowledge the bad moment and move on. Okay, I'm done. I'm gonna stop, and just take whatever it is that will become tomorrow in my stride.

Hot Stud From The Gym Downstairs

So my work place is located on the highest level of this commercial building with a very popular premium gym chain just two floors down. Sometimes I don't know whether to be irritated, or grateful for the frequent eye-candies that come and go within the transitional space that we all occupy. Especially during a period where it's been a while since I last had any kind of fun and I'm starting to feel like I want a snack for myself.

The gym trainers in particular are always a treat because number one, they're somewhat attractive on their own, which I'm guessing is all part of the marketing strategy and image projection of the place. And number two, their uniforms are these body hugging Polo-Ts and microfibre navy blue gym pants that accentuate every part of their physique. Chests, legs, arms, biceps, ass, hips, I could go on but that's not what I'm here to talk about.

The other day while descending in a packed elevator, it stopped by the gym floor to pick up this total hot stud on the way down. "Oh my god, wow!", I hear myself gasp internally as I blush like a teenager on the inside. Tall, well-built, blue eyes, chestnut brown hair and chiseled looks in work clothes after a shower and a shave from the gym. My heart skipped a couple of beats as I tried to digest the idea that this guy might actually not be as stunning as what I'm seeing. But deep down, I knew I was just deluding myself.

As the elevator continued its descent, I was in a complete zoned out mode and my eyes were just fixated on the strands of his still wet hair and the skin on his neck. What would a good loving make out with this fine specimen feel like?

My heart pounded increasingly with every whiff of his scent. I couldn't gauge too if I was the only one being affected by his presence, but the female-filled elevator was definitely charged with this inexplicable vibe that I swear wasn't even there before he stepped in. Somewhere between ground and basement, he disappeared through the doors.

Few days later during an upward commute to the office one morning, the hot stud unexpectedly walked into the same elevator that I was sharing with two other woman. "Look, it's him!", whispered the giggling teenager from within. Pipe down!

He stood intimidatingly behind me in confidence and it drove me insane. This guy must be accustomed to looking good all the time. He must be used to getting all the attention and special privileges all the time. I wondered at that moment what it felt like to be in the shoes of somebody who have that kind of innate security and power.

His relaxed attire and amazing just-got-out-of-bed face suggests that waking up in the morning and going to the gym before work was his routine. I started fantasising about waking up beside him and sharing an apartment. We could have breakfast in bed or laze around on an island together. What would it feel like?

I didn't know which floor the two ladies were going to get off, but I was partially irritated with them for being in the elevator. Suddenly two stops before the gym level, they walked out and I was left to ride alone with the hot stud. Yes! Thank you God.

As the metallic doors slid shut, I took a couple of seconds and contemplated if saying something to him was really necessary to 'my life'? The answer was yes because I am somebody who prefers to savour my cocktail of regret over stones turned than stones unturned. Even if taking a glance at him was going to make me look desperate, but in the end there's still nothing to lose because my eyes would have enjoyed that two seconds of gratification.

I turned around to look at him and coincidentally, he looked up from his phone and into me. We gave each other a friendly smile and a nod in unbelievably good timing. Man, he's so cute. God.

"Morning work out?", I asked with a casual expression. "Oh yeah, just trying to get some exercise done", he replied like a natural conversationalist. 

Before I could go on, the lift doors opened to reveal the gym. "All the best", I said and he was well on his way. I spent the next minute smirking to myself like a kid and wondered if I will ever grow out of being this love sick boy. Engaging in a pointless two sentence exchange might come across as silly, but it was well worth my every breath and every accentuated heartbeat.

Life Can Only Be Understood Backwards

"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards" - Soren Kierkegaard (1813 - 1855)

Sexuality Issues at the Office and How I'm Fitting In

Commitment at the new office has taken over much of my time that I don't seem to have very long moments to myself these days. I find it hard to even sit down for a couple of hours and properly put my feelings onto paper. But whenever I do manage to write, I am always profoundly rewarded by the liberating state of mind that comes with catharsis.

Anyway, ever since I started working again, I've been feeling very insecure about my colleagues possibly finding out that I like men. Despite being in a field where I believe many successful gay guys can be commonly found, I have no idea why such an irrelevant subject like my sexuality should matter, or even bother me in the office that I'm working. 

I guess at the back of my head, I do still worry about how I'm going to be judged or talked about. Or how this innate circumstance of mine will go against my favour in a society where my sexuality is still a highly sensitive subject.

When I accepted this position with the intention of wanting to try things out, I anticipated to a great extend too that this could be the avenue from which I would have the opportunity to meet other successful gay guys within the industry. Not that that takes priority over the career aim I want to pursue, but I did think humourously to myself: "What's the point of being in this field if it can't grant me the bonus access of putting me in touch with other successful gay associates?"

So imagine my slight disappointment when I found out that all the men in the branch of this company are strong devotees of the Abrahamic religions. The impression that I got from everyone at the office including the females themselves, was that they've never actually seen the world from a soulful aspect beyond work or perhaps gone through a certain self-enlightening process that comes with the development of broadening one's mind.

One day at lunch, my colleagues started asking me if I'm attached or if I have a girlfriend. I said confidently that I was single and I just left it at that. Now I am aware that it's a harmless question where people usually ask out of wanting to get to know you, but I can't help but feel precariously insecure with questions like these, and take on the enormous pressure that comes with the insecurity of not being like everybody else. 

Then came two occasions where I felt kind of awkward and suffocated. One was when a female colleague was telling everybody in the office of how her ex-boyfriend turned gay after they broke up, effectively making him the eighth consecutive member to join her league of Ex-Boyfriends-Who-Turned-Gay club. The entire lunch hour was a shallow discussion between them all of 'who knows who is gay' and 'what does what is gay' according to their straight perspective.

The second was when a male colleague of mine was doing something I can't remember which was deemed "too gay" by the people in the office. They placed him on the hot seat for a few minutes but he cleverly used his I-Have-A-Girlfriend-And-She's-From-Church card to put a cap on it.

For some reason, they spontaneously put me as a target and made some teasing comments. I acted as if I didn't hear it because I just can't be bothered, but deep down inside, a very irritated voice was screaming at the top of his lungs: "What the fuck is wrong with you narrow-minded people? If being gay was as simple as 'doing this' or 'doing that', then the world wouldn't be so problematic would it? Real gay guys like me wouldn't need to 'fuck men' to be gay am I right? Jeez!"

The Inner Voice:
"Calm the fuck down."

I excused myself from the crowd to go off because I wanted to buy something from the book store. It might have been too obvious, it might have not, but I knew that I needed to get some air alone. As I wandered around the neighbourhood shops on my own, my mind was just flooded with thoughts and emotions. 

Me:
"After everything that you've put yourself through for the past two years, to come out and to accept yourself, you're letting some people at work make you feel inferior or insecure? I thought we weren't going to let it be a problem? I thought we were going to 'release the shame' and live our life truthfully. What's happening?"

I pondered deeply to myself if there was a bigger reason behind why I'm still affected by it. Could this be the universe's way of trying to help me make peace with it once and for all? Is this scenario going to keep happening until I finally make a decision not to let it bother me no more about what other people think?

Me:
"You know M, if people are ever truly going to genuinely not make an issue out of who you are, shouldn't they be more 'mature' or normal about it when it comes to sexuality? I mean you don't see your friends from abroad engaging in the same childish reaction do they?"

The Inner Voice:
"So are you saying that we should just get it over with and be transparent? Let them know something so personal?!"

Me:
"No! Of course not! That's just not fair. I don't want to be transparent! It's none of their business if I'm gay or if I like men. And I definitely don't need to pander to people by sharing that kind of information. It's irrelevant to their lives or in the office!"

"Never forget that people need to earn the right to know your story. And in our case, it has taken us so long to even tell the people we hold dearest to our hearts. We learnt that the long and winding way. So stand tall and fight it out. Just take things as it comes and move on as necessary."