Do You Know Where You're Going To?

After all of the drama of the early years, what have I been doing since then? Back then while East Coast/West Coast was still hot bloggage, I told Choire that I was tired of navigating the online fame and that I wanted to quit while we were still ahead. The timing was universally in synch. He had been approached to move on to even greater online superstardom by replacing Elizabeth Spiers over at Gawker.com. While I didn't feel like writing anything personal anymore, Nancy and I had some conversations about how much the gay media sucked - and Queer Day was born. We were hoping it would become the one-stop-spot for all LGBT everything on the web.

It wasn't long before the site was doing incredibly well in terms of traffic, but what was bringing it in was the celebrity gossip, not the news about the lesbian teen who was ran out of her Christian high school on a rail or the developmentally disabled gay man who had been in jail for years for coming onto his male friend. People wanted to know if Clay Aiken was gay, which was understandable, but Nancy was disappointed and eventually she got a new job that required all of her focus and she moved on. Now my fame wish hadn't really disappeared at all, it was simply waving a rainbow flag from behind a curtain and being left alone at the helf I did everything I could to try and make the site number one. The problem was that no matter how big it got it was never enough - which says a whole hell of a lot about me, my dysfunctional family programming and the incredibly unrealistic expectations I'd had of myself, in everything. It wasn't just happening online. In my work life I was working extra hours to save everyone in the county from HIV. In my non-profit volunteer word as Board President I was actively working to reach everyone in California spending most of my weekends traveling to places like Modesto and Yucaipa. My expectations of myself were completely unrealistic and I was killing myself slowly in the process. I'd become a "Human Doing" rather than a "Human Being." No matter how great the results I wasn't happy and that's why everything had to change.

In early 2006 I'd finished up my term on the non-profit board and quit my day job. I put Queer Day on hold, something I thought would be temporary, and decided to do what so many San Franciscans before me have done, find myself. What the hell was going on? What did I want? What did I need? Where was I going and if I didn't like the road ahead how could I change it? Here on philohagen.com I'd imported all of my previous online writing and it felt good to have it all in one place. I was managing to make just enough postings here too for people who were really curious to know that I was okay. I became hooked on a daytime reality television show called "Starting Over" where all these mostly middle aged housewives were living together under one roof with two life coaches who were helping them dismantle their presents for shiny new futures. I'd assign myself many of their personal exercises and life was indeed getting better all the time. It was about that time that philohagen.com's web hosting company suddenly disappeared taking not only all of my years of writing with it (I didn't have a backup), but they did more than just shut down on a dime and run. My monthly payment was linked to my ATM card and they drained every last dollar I had from my bank account as well. They stole my identity as well and soon I was being contacted by creditors I'd never heard of. While it took quite some time for the financial wreckage to get turned around, what hurt the most was losing all of my writing. Only recently have I truly been able to realize that it all simply needed to go. There wasn't any room to hold onto the past on my new road less traveled, and Suzanne was passing before my eyes.

If anyone here in San Francisco qualifies as family in my life, Suzanne Walley most certainly had been that and then some, my California "Mom" as it were. When I was fired from that law firm in 1990 because it looked like I had cancer and Michael and I had broken up and I was a total emotional wreck, she appeared in my life. It's not an exaggeration to say that Suzanne has carried me through many of my darkest hours in the eighteen years we knew one another. She was also there celebrating my brightest as well - urging me to let more light in, to grow and expand and redefine and challenge myself. She knew the most intimate details of my day-to-day life, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and loved me unconditionally along the way.

When she was diagnosed with cancer I was given the sad, but welcomed opportunity to be there for her as she had been there for me. Over time, failed surgery following failed surgery, the cancer progressing in spite of our prayers and best efforts to thwart the disease, we got the final word that her battle was over. There wasn't anything else the doctors could do. I drove her down to Bakersfield to see her mother even though she was so sick. Then back at home there were errands to run, laundry to wash, fears to listen to, and as her time grew less and less, our relationship grew more and more. Moving her into hospice care close to my house, I tried to visit as often as I could and we'd have the best conversations, just as we always did, when she was awake and well enough to have them. Death was with her, lingering in the room, and I learned a few things about death and dying at Coming Home Hospice along the way.

They told me that after a period of much sleep there would most likely be an unexpected day of normality, and oddly enough it came in the most textbook way. Suzanne was awake and having conversations with unseen visitors who were already arriving from the other side. "He's going to Miami in the morning," she turned to tell someone I couldn't see. "Philo is, that's why I have to talk to him now, ok?" Then she turned to me and I sat and stroked her frail back and brushed her hair and we told each other stories as she time traveled in and out of the present, telling me about a box of kittens she had found one moment, offering advice the next. Then she quietly said, "Do you see it Philo? It all opens outward. Do you see?" I told her that I did, even though I have to admit that I didn't. "You have to really look, but if you do you can see it, can you see it?" I knew when I left her that night, flying to Miami the next morning to speak at a convention there, that it would be the last time I would see her alive.

Surprised to have not gotten the call during the convention, I'd missed my return flight to San Francisco because my ride had been late getting me to the airport. None of the standby flights had worked during my day spent loitering at Miami International. A storm in the Northeast had thrown a wrench into everybody's plans. Phoning the committee in Florida that had brought me there to let them know that my chances for the day were gone and I was stuck at the airport, they secured a room at the Deauville Hotel for me for another night, my same room on the 17th floor high above the surf. The phone call came while I was riding in a taxi returning to Miami Beach. Suzanne Walley was gone. Walking into the hotel again, all semblance of the thriving lively convention now removed, the giant empty hotel lobby provided a sadly surreal landscape for the night I had long been dreading.

Three things that Walley would routinely ask me were, "What are you doing for fun?" and "Are you writing?" and "Have you gone to find out about becoming a cab driver yet?" They were all connected, the fulfillment of the plan we had devised to pursue a dream. And yes, I did finally start working on the novel that I had been wanting to write since that day in seventh grade when my teacher, Jo Rosner, talked to me after class about my short story, telling me that she thought I had talent. As for how to best connect the financial dots to allow time in my life to transcribe these words, I eventually found myself at Flag-a-Cab Taxi School and after passing my city exam, got my professional driver's license. A few weeks later I had signed my lease with Luxor and two nights a week I've been all over San Franciscan transporting people in need to the destinations they desire. One night while driving I met my literary agent. We hit it off and she asked, "What do you do when you're not driving?" I told her and she gave me her card. I mentioned her name to someone who knows the literary world here who couldn't quite believe that she had given me the invite. In letting go of the reigns of perfectionistic over achievement driven control, there has been such synchronicity and flow, something I have been able to see quite clearly in my life behind the wheel, just as I have within the circle. Yes, I'm talking about hooping. While I haven't been blogging on my primary sites for some time, I've been blogging consistently and quietly doing so for Hooping.org Magazine. I never would have invisioned it, but hooping has turned into the most delightfully unexpected chapter of my life. Not at all unlike my good times in Blogville, Hoopville has brought friendships into play that I wouldn't have imagined and it has connected me to people all over the world. I've also become a Hoopologist, making and selling custom made artisan hoops.

One of the greatest tools that has allowed me to finally become content within myself while creating a creative life to call my own is a book by Julia Cameron called "The Artist's Way." It's a twelve week spirituality based program for unblocking your creative self. I tried working my way through it for the first time in the late 1990's - and wound up at the Berkeley Psychic Institute around week 6 - and that was the end of The Artist's Way. Nevertheless it was a powerful tool then and after Suzanne died, philohagen.com and my money were gone, having given up the previous external identities I'd used so consistently to validate myself as a person, Ariane and I started working through "The Artist's Way" together. She quit her job as a result and is finishing her first book. As for me, it's had all sorts of unexpected impacts on my life, like changing my room set up and redecorating, going through old photographs and getting frames for them and putting them on display, going through all of my clothes and purging everything that I don't love, that doesn't feel like me in present time - and selling them all to Crossroads Trading Company, the clothing exchange. Doing that resulted in a $250 trade slip, which resulted in new clothes that feel like me today. I'm loving my room now more than ever before and it really looks and feels like I live in it. The best part of all is I feel truly comfortable here. I wake up and smile looking around. One of the many facets of The Artist's Way had me evaluating how I used my time, given me a crystal clear vision of how I have overcommitted myself to causes and projects and others and lost myself in the process.

One of the tools of "The Artist's Way" is called morning pages. You write three pages of brain drain every morning when you wake up. During one of these sessions after a night of watching paranormal television programs, it dawned on me that I'd love to be doing that here. A week later I was having lunch with Anita Brey and Christina Cha, two of my Berkeley Psychic Institute classmates that now live in the neighborhood. Coincidence? I think not. Christina in particular was excited about the idea and together we've started San Francisco Paranormal Investigations and have been spending late night hours in haunted houses trying to scientifically document spirit while reading energy - and quite often healing their homes.

Do I know where I'm going to? In the sense that my life is full and vivid today and chock full of the most unexpected things I must honestly say I haven't a clue. But in turning it all over to the care of the Spirit of the Universe on a daily basis I know that where I am going to today is no longer happening at anyone else's expense. It's perfectly designed for me on a daily basis in a way that can be of service to others, but doesn't sacrifice me in the process. It puts me in the right places at the right times for moments that let me know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Universe is conspiring in my favor. Finally, after a period spent stumbling around in the darkness running into walls and furniture, there is light.