What's on my mind...

(This is a photo of my husband showing his straight ally pride in the 2008 Pride Parade!)

I have a lot of things on my mind this week. Most of it revolves around money – and the lack of it. We are back to being ridiculously poor. (As in less than $2 left in our bank account poor.) It has been a long week of watching with worry as our gas gage inches toward empty and scraping meals together out of basically nothing. Thank goodness Brian gets paid tomorrow. Unfortunately, if we were to pay everything that needed to be paid by tomorrow…we’d be back to $2 in the bank for the next two weeks. So it will be up to me to figure out what gets paid and what gets put on the back burner for another two-week period. Brian just hands me the check and sulks on the couch in depression mode. It’s very stressful.

The kids go back to school on August 19th this year…so we are in the thick of back to school shopping as well. Once again, my mother has saved us. She has been buying the kids some new clothes and the majority of their supplies. We still have more to buy though before the first day of class. During Meg’s open house for 6th grade, I have to have at least $50 to pay for certain class items that the school itself sells exclusively and they are also taking class photos that day (the cheapest package runs about $15). That is only the beginning. There are class fees and other charges (like lunch tickets) that we need to be prepared for as well. I also have to put together a snack box for Brandon’s diabetes routine at school and pay for a second set of everything he will medically need for the school nurse. Again, it is very stressful & expensive.

Speaking of Brandon’s diabetes…we finally decided to change his endocrinologist. We have been with the doctors at Children’s Hospital since his diagnosis in September of 2006. Over the years, we have grown tired of the automated systems which we have to deal with to speak to nurses, to make an appointment and a slew of other things. We never seem to be able to speak to a person. We also have long waits to get in to see a doctor…and then the appointments tend to last for hours. We have heard from day one that Dr. Zipf is the premiere child endocrinologist in town…so I guess we will soon see if he lives up to the hype. I’m looking for a more personalized experience; one where my son is treated like every other kid his age with diabetes. I want his care to be focused on him as an individual. Our first appointment is on the 18th – the day before school begins.

Speaking of decisions…I have to make a very important decision and for the life of me I cannot do it. I am at a crossroads with my group SpeakOUT. Two months back, I told my board members that I wanted out. I had been burning the candle at both ends for years and I just couldn’t keep it up. I told them that I would remain on the board, but I wanted to be replaced as the director. Well, of course neither of them wanted the job and we had no other candidates, which left ending SpeakOUT as an organization as the only real solution. Could I allow this to happen after everything I did to make SpeakOUT what it was? No…but I was still tired.

So I decided to cancel all our summer monthly meetings and give myself a bit of a break to see if that would help. I still made sure that we met our summer obligations – like Pride and the AIDS Walk – and I also made the decision to continue writing and sending out our weekly update. The truth is that I don’t miss the meetings at all. Yet, everyone tells me that the meetings are an important part of the group. I’d like to have fewer (or even zero) meetings…but that doesn’t seem like a popular choice.

I think one of the main problems is that I did everything backwards. Here we are four years into it and only now am I trying to organize the group with a board, conduct fundraising and become a legal 501c3. If I had done this in the beginning – when my passion for the group was like a roaring bonfire – then perhaps it would be smoother sailing now. Instead I find myself running on empty yet still trying to run the group and organize the 501c3. It is just way too damned much for one person. Our group has changed a lot in the years – the people who are willing to come to our meetings, are not interested in being volunteers. I’m not spending my time the way I want too. I’m a paper pushing administrator now – not an activist.

I have very clear ideas on what I’d like to focus on this fall…but what about the rest of it? Do I submit my 501c3 form (and the $300 check that goes with it) knowing that we might not even have a group this time next year? Do I suck it up (again!) and just keep at it? Or do I walk away before I go insane…knowing I’ve done a hell of a lot for the cause? I clearly don’t want to end SpeakOUT, but I have to be fair to myself and my family. I’m burned out and I honestly haven’t missed being active this summer. I wonder if anyone even noticed my absence to be truthful. I have a lot of negative feelings toward some of the people involved in the LGBT leadership around town…and that has left me feeling negative sometimes about SpeakOUT. I want to think about me and my needs for a change – yet I feel very selfish doing so.

So I am wrestling with what to do. I keep looking for answers but just seem to find more questions. I’ve talked about it with some others who are in different organizations around town – and they just tell me that they’d hate to see SpeakOUT go away. I know that I have more to do…and I already know where I’d start. But do I really want too? I feel like a fraud when I get letters from strangers telling me how inspiring and wonderful I am - especially since I am so ambivalent lately. To top it all off, I lost a friend because of this. Susie and I had a huge falling out with regards to me wanting to leave the group. I can’t be held hostage to this organization for the entirety of my life – can I? I think I need to remind everyone that every thing that I do with SpeakOUT is as a volunteer. I don’t get paid a penny for the endless list of things that I do as director. That list just seems to get longer and longer too. Haven’t I pulled my share of the load?

I wish I knew what to do. I admit that my pride is at stake here too. I don’t want to be seen as a quitter, or worse, as a failure. I don’t want certain people to think they’ve “won” and succeeded in driving me out either. Fuck – this is all just a crazy mess! I wish I could have a moment of complete clarity and just pick a direction without regrets. Until then, I guess I will just struggle with this every night as I lay in my bed thinking of nothing else.

The biggest surprise this week was that I wrote something new! I sat down to write this blog entry yesterday, but instead I ended up writing a short “episode”. I have wanted to get back to fictional writing for some time now – but I just never did it. I ran into a friend before Pride, who once taught a writing class in which I was enrolled, and I told her how I’d stopped writing. She told me that was a shame because she thought my writing had promise. (No, actually she said it was good.) Ever since that chance meeting, I’ve thought about why I stopped writing and why I should start again. I mean, it must be a good 6 months or longer since I’ve even tried. For no particular reason, I felt compelled to write out a scene yesterday and I went with it. It isn’t very long, but I like it. I think I might even post it here. I’m always talking a good game about my writing but I never put it out there to be judged. So, yes…I’ll post it (look down there!). I welcome your critique.