The First Entry

This is always the hardest part. I'm not as clever as other bloggers, and I don't have nearly as much to say. And chances are, if I start something, I'm not going to follow through with it. I sometimes get bored or lose steam in mid-sentence. Nevertheless, I think I'm going to give this, an actual honest to goodness blog, a try.
I tried livejournal back in the day, and I just didn't like its way. I have a facebook, but it's pretty much a vehicle for playing Scrabble (or Lexulous, as it's called) with a handful of friends. I do have a blog on MySpace, but I'm pretty sick of being inundated with pleas to "Join My Mafia" or some other silly application. So, I'm trying to move away from the MySpace zombies.
So, anyway. Here I am, once again, at a new blog. I wanted to start a new one because I want a fresh start. On MySpace, I've pretty much only talked about personal things. So now, if I were to branch out into other territory, it would feel out of place.
My intentions with this blog are pretty broad. I want to use it to write about personal things and events in my life. But things that aren't so personal or intimate that I'd be embarrassed about airing them in public. I want to write opinion pieces about things I witness, hear about, or that just bother me or intrigue me in general. And I want to occasionally talk about things like music, movies, video games, books, television shows, and other aspects of entertainment media.

Now, an introduction.

My name is Jason Welch. I'm 33 at the time of this writing, though my birthday is next month. I am a gay man. I came out of the closet in college, back in 1995. Since then, I've been open and out at every job and in every social situation, because I feel like I've earned that right. Coming out is the most difficult thing I've ever had to do, and until you've been through the process, I don't think you can truly understand what it's like. You can, intellectually, know that your friends will accept you. But emotionally, it's hard to see past the fear that coming out will destroy everything. And, sadly, for some people it does.
I am a college dropout. I was around 9 hours shy of my English degree, but my education was derailed by a combination of social issues and emotional issues that took precedence. I was very focused on academia in high school. I worked and studied and excelled. But I was socially awkward and mostly friendless. I had no real social integration. When I went to college, the first closet I had to escape was my own shyness and awkwardness. I always tell people that I got nothing acedemic out of higher education, but it did grant me a social life. And an opportunity to start becoming more like myself.
By my junior year, I was so bored of school and apathetic that I added Theatre as a second major. It didn't work, and I stopped going to classes. At the same time, I was coming to realize that I had to come out or quit the world. It was like an emotional pressure cooker. I first knew I was gay when I was eight or nine years old. I had resigned myself to the fact that I'd always live the lie. But by the time I was 20 years old, it was becoming unbearable. I remember sitting alone in my room and thinking, "either stop living the lie, or stop living." Clearly, the more attractive course of action was to come out. So I did, on September 11th, 1995.
By the time I finished the coming out process, I had stopped going to all my classes, and instead spent my days playing video games and having fun, enjoying my newfound freedom. My GPA dropped from 3.6 to under a 2.0. I left school at the end of the school year in 1996. Now, in retrospect, it's really easy to look at it with fresh perspective and say that I made some poor choices. I should have stayed in and finished my degree. But at the time, I couldn't see that as a viable option. And, honestly, if I could go back, I wouldn't change anything. Who knows what kind of long-term effect that would have?
Eventually, after college, I moved to Midtown Kansas City, Missouri, where I began working at a porn store. Within a week I was Assistant Manager. Within three months I was Manager. And it was one of the best experiences of my life. Through the porn store, I found a degree of self-confidence I'd never felt before. I met the love of my life. I met one of my best friends. I have interesting stories that I'll be able to tell for years to come. I might talk about the porn store in more detail in a later entry, but for now, suffice to say it was the best job ever.
These days I work in a hospital, in the Heart Institute monitoring cardiac telemetry. It's a pretty good job, but a little stressful at times. It's never far from my thoughts that death is a real possibility for some of these patients, and I'm part of the first response team that works to save lives. It's a pretty sobering responsibility. But for the most part, it's easy, fun, and I enjoy my co-workers. And if it isn't necessarily what I want to do with my life, it's still decent for the time being. And since I have no clue what it is I want to do with my life, it's going to have to do for the foreseeable future, as well.

So, the me today...

I am a horrible underachiever. I'm content to do just enough to get by.

I have little to no ambition.

I have unrealistic goals and dreams. Growing up, everyone had an answer to "what do you want to be when you grow up?" My answer was always "a superhero" or "a wizard." Little has changed.

I spend more time daydreaming than experiencing the world around me.

But...

I'm a pretty funny guy, sometimes. I like to hear people laugh, and I love to be the reason.

I'm fairly witty. Of course, it doesn't matter how quick-witted you are, the best comebacks are always way too late to be of any use.

I may be a bit of a shit-stirrer, but at the same time, I'm always a good listener. I'm fairly sensitive (unless I'm stirring the aforementioned shit) and I think I'm pretty compassionate.

So, like most people I'm a mix of good and bad, and I try to lean more to the good. I hope that I can entertain people with this blog. But if I can't, I know I can at least entertain myself.