A new beginning

I have decided to start a new blog.

Disclaimer: life is quite busy lately, so I don't know how often I will be writing. However, I enjoy blogging, and my previous blog, allmixedupinca.blogspot.com, doesn't really seem to fit where I am anymore.

Not to say that I'm not "mixed up" at all anymore. But I feel like I have a lot more direction in my life than I did during the bulk of my twenties, and I no longer want a blog with a title that has such a . . . negative connotation. Part of meeting one's goals is attitude, and I no longer want to label myself as being mixed up.

For those who don't know me, my chosen blogging moniker is Cal. Not so original, it's because I am a native Californian. Southern Californian to be exact. Land of sunshine, Disneyland, and Hollywood.

Just as the title of my previous blog was a reference to a 311 song, the title of this one is a reference to a Soundgarden song. Namely, the song "Outshined" off of their album Badmotorfinger. It contains the well-known line, "I'm looking California, but feeling Minnesota."

I chose the title for several reasons:
1. Soundgarden is one of my favorite bands.
2. I live in California.
3. I'm "looking." Not in the Grindr sense (hookups, etc) . . . but rather looking for that special someone to enjoy life with. Not to mention looking for my place in the world, as so many of us are.
4. The line in the song suggests that the singer has a positive, happy exterior but on the inside is a bit cloudier. Well, I'm generally a very positive, calm person on the outside. At times, especially over the past year, I've definitely had my "feeling Minnesota" moments (no offense to any Minnesotans that might read this). My aspiration is to not only be looking California, but feeling California as well. I think I'm on my way.

My blogging story:

I started my initial blog primarily to help me sort out confusion over my sexual orientation. All throughout high school and college I did zero dating, focusing purely on academics. I knew I wasn't as interested in girls and sex as some of my friends, but I just chalked it up to being a rather prudish kid growing up. I had small crushes on several guys in high school, but I also had crushes on girls so I didn't really recognize it for what it was. It wasn't until I fell in love with a male friend in college that I began questioning my sexuality. I spent several years trying to come to a solution via introspection, blogging, and therapy. My efforts were put on the back burner for a while in my mid-twenties when I had a bit of a career identity crisis, and began to come to terms with the importance of doing what you want to do, rather than what you feel you should do.

After the career issues settled down for a while, I finally decided that I had taken the passive approach to figuring myself out long enough. At the age of 27 I signed up for an online dating site and began going on dates with guys. It was mostly an experiment, to see how it felt. I never would have expected to fall hard for the second guy I met up with, a guy named Ben.

Ben and I had three fun-filled dates, and each time I saw him I liked him more and more. We had all sorts of things in common, from similar senses of humor to values to interest in fitness, hiking, movies, music, and traveling. We both were very social and intellectually very compatible. I also found him very attractive, with a smile that made my heart melt. At the end of the third date, however, disappointment struck. He told me he felt we were a "boat without a rudder," which I took to mean I wasn't being forward enough. He suggested we just be friends. I agreed, liking him too much to part ways. However, as we hung out more over the next month I found myself falling for him even more. I decided that if it was a "rudder" we lacked, I needed to step up my game. So after a wonderful series of activities on Cinco de Mayo, I went in for a peck on the cheek, to communicate to him that I still had feelings. One thing led to another, he ended up saying that his feelings had changed, and before I knew it I was in my very first relationship.

My time with Ben was amazing. He lived a little far from me so I would only see him on the weekends, but in many ways I didn't mind. It made every weekend a mini-vacation. We did all sorts of fun activities, from hiking, biking and kayaking to watching movies and traveling. I liked him so much that I accelerated my coming-out process so he would not have to have a closeted boyfriend. This involved coming out (and being outed) to my entire family and group of friends and taking Ben as my date to my ten-year high school reunion (a huge step for me). My love for Ben led me to break out of my comfort zone in other ways too: I finally started eating sushi, I began doing karaoke (I've always loved to sing but was always afraid to do it in front of people), and I even went to a Korean spa with him and walked around a bunch of strangers completely naked!

Despite my enjoyment of the relationship, not everything was perfect. There were various red flags that, in retrospect, I should have paid more attention to. There were signs that Ben had some major self esteem and intimacy issues. He often seemed to fear judgment from me (for instance, not applying to food service jobs when he was unemployed, for fear that I would not approve), he would sometimes repel my attempts to be affectionate, and he showed signs of being an excessive people-pleaser. Also, even though he claimed to be focused on dating men, he identified as bisexual and his Plenty of Fish profile that I found suggested that he had been dating women not too long before I had met him.

Long story short (see my other blog for the nitty gritty), he ended up blindsiding me with a break-up. One minute I think we're doing better than ever, the next he's telling me that I'm way more emotionally invested and he hasn't been happy for several months. He claimed that he would love for it to work out, but four days later he dumped me, saying he'd love to still be friends. He said I was the whole package, so he felt he needed to try dating girls again to see if that would work better for him. One emotional month later I reached out to salvage our friendship and he condescendingly pushed me away via email and a follow-up phone argument, comparing me to a drug addict and slapping me with what amounted to a restraining order ("I feel we should only be in contact once a month or so . . . anymore than that will stunt your healing process") Two months later, he "liked" a post of mine on Facebook which lead me to find via his profile that he already had a new boyfriend. The rejection and rapid replacement kicked off a difficult year during which I struggled with the sudden loss of the man who had turned my life around and shown me what it meant to have a special someone in your life. If that weren't enough, around the same time I was rejected by Ben, I was also rejected by every medical school that I had applied to. Suddenly when I thought I had finally had everything figured out, I was back to square one.

Since then I have grown significantly. It has been more than a year since Ben walked out of my life. I still think about him all the time, but the emotional impact is less and less. I no longer am hung up on the idea of us being friends and am more focused on meeting people who are capable of appreciating what I can bring to their life. I have a new potential career direction and have also gotten heavily involved in improvisational comedy, which is a hobby that served to give me a creative outlet and distraction when I was still struggling to recover from the heartbreak and disappointment. I'm back to dating as well, and I am constantly working on keeping an open mind, not playing the comparison game, and not trying to find a replacement for Ben.

I still occasionally struggle with doubt about dating guys. I no longer question my attractions and readily admit to being attracted to men. However, when my dating prospects dwindle I do often stare longingly at the other side of the fence and wonder what I would experience were I to try the larger heterosexual dating pool.

I'm still not sure what this blog will look like. I'll certainly blog about my dating exploits, and perhaps write about things that are on my mind, whether they be in my own life or in current events.

Until next time!

Cal