Cut the crap Google!

As you can see I am new to blogging. I have spent quite a while writting my articles and naturally I would like someone to visit my blog at some point, maybe even leave a comment or two.

So with this in mind I went in search of tips on how to increase the traffic to your blog. What stood out amoungst the tips was this:

Top get people to your blog you need to become part of the "blogoshere" for your subject and leave comments pointing you your articles where appropriate.

Clearly these seems like a good tip, so I jumped on to Google and tapped in some terms like:

Gay, personal stories, Gay Blog, Gay advice, My gay blog, personal gay blogs, top gay blogs

Needless to say I didn't get back what I was hoping for, I got a load of rubbish back. This mainly consisted of the following:

• Random news articles from so called blogs which are actually magazines and news sites which just so happen to have the word Gay in them.
• Links to blogs which are pornographic or link to other paid for pornographic sites.
• Blogs which have nothing to do with homosexuality or being gay but at some point have posted something on the subject and attracted a ton of comments, most of which are defamatory, negative and bigoted.

Needless to say after some prolonged searching and essentially hopping from blog to blog I did manage to find some really good blogs written by insightful people discussing their experience of being gay. I have posted some links to these on my blog.

I am however a little frustrated at how difficult it was to find these. It angers me that a young person or a parent wanting to find other people and sites sensibly discussing being gay and the topic of homosexuality will have to wade through this offensive crap before before they find the decent people out there.

The gay support group

At the age of approximately 23 I had been living away from home for a couple of years for work. Work itself was going extremely well. I was well liked, had been promoted and my pay was shooting up too. I lived in a great house with my housemates and I was out every friday and saturday night with either housemates or friends from work. From the outside looking in everything was perfect.

The last few years had been a bit of whirlwind, finishing uni, moving away from home, finding new friends and establishing myself in a new job has left hardly any time to thing about the problems with my sexuality which had caused me such distress at the end of university. That isn't to say I didn't think about at all. I probably thought about it every day. That also doesn't mean I wasn't still noticing all the sexy guys around me. I just found myself busy enough to not let those desires and affect what I was doing.

After about 2 years at work no matter how busy it kept me it started to become the norm. As you get promoted through a company the role changes, but the amount of work you do in a day, the place you go and the difficulty you find it doesn't really change. Once my new life started to become routine there was once again time in my mind to start pondering and exploring my sexuality.

Typically I knew no one in my life who was openly gay, but even if I did I am not sure that would have helped much at that time in my life. I needed to go and explore my feelings in anonymity, so that if (by some bizarre turn of events) I was wrong about all of this no harm was done. I needed to meet other gay people who I didn't know and who didn't know me so that I could learn what they were like and see how I felt in an openly gay setting.

After some looking around on the internet I found a group called Outzone. They are a charity established for the support of gay people between the ages of 16 - 25. Their website was fresh and vibrant, and made it clear that they were a fun group set up to help people make friends in a safe environment.

On the day that I decided to go I was full of nerves and excitement and unfortunately guilt. Nerves because I didn't know what to expect, introducing yourself to an established group of strangers is difficult in any setting. Excitement because whether it went well or not I had finally found a way to explore this aspect of my life a little and move things forward. Guilt, probably because I felt I was doing something I shouldn't. I could feel the questioning eyes of my parents, I felt as if everyone I knew would disapprove of what I was doing. I was actually about to do something "gay" for the first time, and that meant I was looking at myself from a different perspective.

When I arrived.......

[Ahh - my train is just about to pull into Guildford, so I will have to leave it there for today. You'll have to wait until my next post, bye for now x]

Did I choose the right name for this blog?

As you can see from the archive I have only just created this blog. I created it as a place for me to discuss and share with you something I know a lot about Struggling to come to terms with being gay. My intention was that others who are in the same position as me would read it and take comfort in the fact the others feel the same way as they do. My posts have been written from the heart, and are a true explanation of my feelings, they are not specifically written as help guides or advice columns.

Now I wonder whether I have done the right thing. For people who are out their looking for help and comfort is my blog too negative? Will it really help people to read this stuff or will it upset and hinder them? If that is the case I shall stop.

For me, being gay is a struggle. It has been a struggle to come to terms with personally, it has been difficult for me to plan the rest of my life in respect of it and the coming out process has taken me many years. Despite all these things I am getting there, and I now know I will be happy in the future. Hopefully my exploration of my own thoughts and experiences here will help you picture where you are on your own journey.

Good luck - head up xxx

Back in the closet for Christmas

Today is a day of mixed emotions. I have been back at my parents for the week of Christmas and today I will be returning home. It is a bit of a shame as it is the first step to being back at work after Christmas. I have enjoyed spending time with my family and have also enjoyed very much the time that I have had to think about things and get started with this blog.

What's great the first thing I will do is see my boyfriend and then I can return to being me! The bizzare disparity in my life as known to my parents against my actual life makes some aspects of Christmas a struggle.

Although I have told my parents that I am gay it isn't a topic that is discussed at all. I have said before that I think they are hoping I'll recover, anyway, going home for me requires jumping back in the closet.

The most difficult part of this is that I have to kiss goodbye to my boyfriend on Christmas eve as we both go back home to our respective parents homes. The one time of year when you should have all of your loved ones together and we have to spend it apart. Seeing him over Christmas requires sneaking upstairs and logging on to msn.

To deal with this we usually have our own little Christmas on Christmas eve. For the last few years we have stayed at each others houses, given presents and then gone out for a meal. It is lovely and I was actually looking forward to that part more than the whole of the rest of it. I can't help though feeling a slight air of sadness at this time, that 4 years into a relationship we still have to do this. Thinking about it again serves as a reminder that I need to be stronger and try harder to sort things out with my parents. It just feels like a mamouth (if not impossible) task and no matter what I say or do I have no confidence that we would all be spending next Christmas together.

Raising my sexuality with my parents now would almost certainly ruin their Christmas. Thinking about this in the context of my post on Lying, this shows as a perfect example of how I hide things and lie, experiencing pain myself so that they don't have to face up to the issue. I do wonder though how much longer I can keep this up for.

Something nice for new years day

There is no point in living with regrets, but when I read a story like this one it both makes me feel warm and bubbly inside and it makes me wish I had come out earlier. Still, I guess there is still all to live for.

Bless them...

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