Random Saturday Thoughts

The real estate seminar this morning went well, although since there were three other presenters, too much information was crammed into too little time. I will be speaking again in two weeks. It was a nice crowd and overall a pleasant experience.

After the seminar, I met my youngest daughter and we had an enjoyable lunch – Mexican, one of my favorites from the years I lived in Texas – and a pleasant conversation. It means so much to me that I have a good relationship with her and that things are on a better plane now with my other two children. This evening, I am going with one of my straight friends/clients to a “Second Saturday Salon” discussion group which she says is great based on the others she has gone to. It will be something different and she reports that other attendees tend to be progressive and interesting. Time will tell.

On a less upbeat note, my mom needs to have a CAT scan to check out something possibly in her lung. It may be nothing, but it is one more thing to have to worry about. While I have made a great deal of progress in not obsessing and worrying, when it comes to potential health issues of loved ones, I will be worrying until I know the full story. I learned about this development through my sister in Charlottesville who called me because my mom probably was not going to tell me so that I would not worry. Since my sister tends to always assume the worse, I called my mom directly. Other times I call my other sister who is also in the medical field and who tends to be less of an alarmist. This time, I called my mom directly. She seemed to be taking it in stride and pushing to get an early scan date to get the issue resolved as early as possible. I will keep readers updated on where things go on this.

Yesterday, Matt at Debriefing the Boys (http://debriefingtheboys.blogspot.com/) had a good post on relationships and self-confidence that contained some very good advice and which I thought I would share. It is definitely something I try to do:

But lately I've been realizing how utterly unhealthy, self-destructive, self-loathing and destined for failure that is [trying to be what you think your date/partner wants]. If I want to find a guy to be with for the rest of my life, he's going to have to love ME. And I'm going to have to love HIM. So the first problem is that if I start out trying to pretend I'm something I'm not, I'm not giving him a chance to even know me. If he falls in love with the pretend version of me, he'll ultimately be disappointed when I let down my guard and want a big fat hamburger or I vote for a California proposition to protect the coastline. And if he falls out of love with me, that's MY fault, not his. I misrepresented myself.

Matt often comes up with great thoughts and comments. His account of his own coming out process (at admittedly a far younger age) in large measure prompted me to begin this blog.