Update

Things have been going better, I feel that after 7 Habits things have just started to click into place a little bit more. I am starting to see how to plan things out a bit better and I feel like 90% of the big things that I plan tend to work out how I want them to. This is a huge change from where things have been in the past. I get more done, even stuff I didnt originally plan for gets done as well. 

I have started to save, I feel much better about having money, I would like to get to the place where I could have 5k in savings and then still have funds to do things. That way I have a nice safety net. I have been told to save money and at the same time pay more on my loans, but of which I am trying to do which can be rough. 

I am not sure what the next 5 months are going to bring and what I want to do and where I will end up. Which is one of the main reasons I am trying to save as much money as I can, I want to make sure I am still able to meet bills, and be ok if I end up on my own with nothing. 

I feel like this year will set up where I will end up and move, and hopefully I will find a relationship and friendships that will help me grow. There is more than I want to write, but I am not sure how to write about it just yet. 

Things I want to focus on is, setting up my financial safety net, a plan for what the next 5 months will bring, a place to live, good friendships, and possible relationships. 

Influence and Concerns

I have come to a couple of conclusions.

1. No matter how many successful things I accomplish, there will still be those people who only focus on what I have not done right, or what I have failed at. I have started to realize that those people have started to matter less in my life, and I have started to give them less and less power over how they effect me.

2. Life is better, more full, and fun filled when I stop asking "why" all the time, and ask "why not?" I find that asking myself why not, instead of why helps me enjoy life much more.

I am glad that I have started to focus more on my influence areas and less on my concerns.

::Article:: A Trans Man’s First Year As A NYC Public School Teacher

Taken from Buzzfeed:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/rafeposey/a-trans-mans-first-year-as-a-nyc-public-school-teacher

This story posted by Rafe Posey (follow him on twitter https://twitter.com/ponyonabalcony) shows some great insight into this little talked about world.

"When I showed up at the junior high in Queens that Halloween morning, I was the fourth English teacher most of my students had seen that school year. There was no reason for them to trust me. The girls were starting to figure out how the world worked, for better or worse, and most of them had some idea what they wanted to be when they grew up. The boys, on the other hand, were chaos. 

They were thirteen and fourteen, moderately taller than I was, solid with muscle. They loved the Mets or the Yankees, and often dressed in Knicks and Rangers jerseys. They had vague, implausible plans for their futures. They were a bristling, nervy pack, with mediocre attention spans torn between their female classmates, the movement of light outside the classroom, and opportunities to prove their masculinity. They were horny and rank, on the threshold of becoming men. 

I, twenty years older, had recently arrived on that same threshold. Like them, I was dealing with a sensory blur, strange new crops of hair, unpredictable arousal. My skin hurt all the time, and my bones moved and flexed, trying to grow. I stopped at every mirror to see whether my facial hair had sprouted. My voice was changing, and when I raised it to quiet the kids, the result was usually cracked and squeaky. 

At first, I had no idea how to be a man or a teacher. The principal assigned me to a senior teacher who thought I was a butch lesbian the first few times he saw me. I had never been a butch anything, so this was a puzzle. I liked him, but the endless jokes about k. d. lang and strap-ons made me claustrophobic and wary. When I eventually confirmed my trans-ness for him, he wanted to know what kind of penis I had, and what my name had been. But he also helped me navigate the complicated maze of gender, culture, and religion at our particular junior high school. 

I came to New York for the usual reasons: romance, adventure, reinvention. When I applied to the NYC Teaching Fellows program, I was a woman. When they accepted me the first time, I turned them down, pretty sure that transitioning in front of the classroom would be a disaster. When they asked the second time, they knew about the transition, and I figured that if they were cool with it, I would go ahead and try. I thought that by the time I got to a classroom in November I would be done, or at least done enough.What I didn't know was that I would never be done. Even racing through the steps of transition, straying from the regimented pathway that governs most transitions, I hardly passed as male when I started my teacher training. My first day with the Board of Ed that September involved carrying my name change documents and a letter from my surgeon to each of the gatekeepers, trying to convince them that I was a man so they would change my paperwork. I nodded and smiled, pushing through their resistance with Bambi eyes and my sheaf of paper. In my training group, nobody knew what I was, so my classmates called me "he" or "she" interchangeably. 

As a student teacher, I wore a jacket and tie every day, but I was still too short, and my feet were too small. My mentor teachers didn't know what kind of woman I was, but they agreed that I was no kind of man. Using the staff men's room was a trial that required me to show my manly new driver's license to the security desk every time. When student teaching ended and I went to a job fair at the end of October, the junior high school's assistant principal liked me. She said I seemed kind of maternal, which she thought would help the students. She didn't know that sometimes I missed being Ms., instead of Mister, because when I was Ms. Posey, a teacher aide in Chicagoland, I could nurture the kids. I was pretty sure that Mr. Posey couldn't nurture, that a certain standard of hands-off masculinity would have to be achieved. 

Over the course of that first year in Queens, my feet exploded from men's seven to ten and a half. I was hungry all the time, and when I ate I found myself tearing at my food, wolfing it like the boys did in the cafeteria, trying to get enough. Dubious whiskers began the slow creep up my jaw and upper lip, but refused to conform into sideburns. My voice settled down. Meanwhile, I tried to keep my classroom together, surrounded by young men and women whose bodies were as combustible as mine. 

Adolescents want to know everything about their teachers, but they don't like to think about the details. My kids were no different. They watched me change. Sometimes they commented on it. Every now and then I would catch them looking at me as if they could almost see who I had once been, or who I was trying to stop being. They made a lot of hobbit jokes, especially as they got taller and I, falling off pace with them for once, did not. 

There were also kids who watched Maury or Jerry Springer, who had seen men like me on their TV screens. One of them tagged a desk in my classroom: POSEY IS A TRAVESTITE. I panicked, started to make a scene, pulled myself together. By the end of the day, I was more annoyed by the misspelling than by the threat of exposure.By the end of the year, I'd helped students through pregnancy scares and problems with their parents, the disappointments of the NYC specialty high school application process, and a bewildering array of standardized tests. I had also taught them about books and language, and the tools that words could be. Meanwhile, my assistant principal told the kids that I was a Navy veteran (I am not), and so they expected me to be strong. They said arm-wrestling was manly and so of course I accepted their challenges, even though I knew there was no way I'd win. I wanted the rush of contest. I didn't want to embarrass myself, but in the end I was no match for those boys. I made a mental note to think about going to the gym, and went back to talking about books. 

The school year went on. We all grew up. As I looked more like a regular man, I realized that I cared much less than I had about what everyone thought I was. Passing was a luxury that I was no longer sure I wanted. By the end of that year, I was out to some of the other faculty. My mentor colleague expressed his concern that people would try to collect me, make me their token trans person, if I outed myself much more. I didn't want to be collected, but I also didn't want to hide. 

When I was a very young lesbian, I had a bumper sticker on my car with Audre Lorde's immortal quote: "Your silence will not protect you." My mother used to argue that silence was absolute protection, that hiding somehow equaled survival. For me, though, it was the opposite. I believed ACT UP when they said that silence = death. I believed Lorde when she said that silence was not safety. For the most part, it's harder to hate a group if you know people who are part of that group. When colleagues took time to get to know me, I made a point of coming out. In my apartment, after all, there were no secrets. I'd kept pictures of me as Small Girl, and my past was not especially distant. With colleagues to whom I had little or no connection, I let gossip take care of the situation and decided I didn't mind what they knew or what they thought. When they liked me, I was glad, but I didn't especially care when they shunned me. 

Looking back, I believe that going through my second puberty while my students were going through their first lent me insights that most teachers are denied. The girls appreciated my calmness about their periods, and the boys valued my empathy for their fractured attention. The last of my secondary students have finished high school now, and many of them have gone to college. Many of them are out and proud as queer. At least one has transitioned. At the end of my third year in NYC schools, having transferred to a high school in Brooklyn, I'd become the faculty advisor for the GSA. I wore a rainbow bracelet; it was hard to figure out how to be out as trans, so I relaxed into letting everyone think I was gay. Because this was also true, it felt, most of the time, like a reasonable compromise. 

Visibility is important, and my resume has more trans on it than I ever would have expected, but being visible at a secondary school is harder than being visible at a college, or on the lecture circuit. Although I never go into class and announce myself as trans, it's out there on the internet, in my list of publications. Many of my former students found me on Facebook or Twitter after graduation. I often post trans items on social media, and sometimes they click like. They also search out links they think I will like, and ask me to comment on their writing. Their interest, and the occasional note of appreciation for my teaching, makes that baffling first year feel like a success – everything I learned helped me be more effective at the high school and college levels. I don't know how it would go, if I started over in secondary schools again, but sometimes I would like nothing more than to find out. I miss being the go-to guy for the queer kids and misfits. And I miss being the teacher who teaches his kids about their power…even when it means I have to arm-wrestle."

::Article:: My Virus, My Husband, And Me

Story from Buzzfeed
http://www.buzzfeed.com/michaelbroder/my-virus-my-husband-and-me

Written by Michael Broder
Check him out on twitter (https://twitter.com/MichaelBroder)

My marriage is haunted by ghosts. Ghosts of boys I loved and lost long before I met my husband. Three boys I loved, to be exact, died of AIDS-related complications by 1996. They visit me in my dreams, waltz into my poems unannounced, add their two cents to conversations whenever they see fit. 

The first to die was Marcos Betancourt, whom I met in my HIV support group weeks after I tested positive in 1990. He was an aspiring dancer from Long Beach, California, followed to New York by his ex-boyfriend, Ron, who no longer had any illusions but just wanted to keep an eye on him, because he still loved him and knew the kinds of trouble he could get himself into. Marcos always said having sex was how gay boys shook hands. He would meet a guy at a bar on Thursday night, shake hands with him over the weekend, and by the following Wednesday I'd be hearing all about the breakup. Marcos and I only got to shake hands once, but I loved him all the same. I don't know exactly when he died, but he phoned me in 1993 from a hospital room in Los Angeles, where he was being treated for cryptococcal meningitis, to tell me he was excited about publishing his memoir. I don't think that ever happened. 

Randy Snyder was my first-ever love and the last of the three to die; I'm so angry with him, for so many reasons, that I still haven't managed to write a good poem about Randy. 

In between, there was Anthony Ibrahin Salinas, better known as Tony, rock bassist and all around vodka-fueled bad boy who was, most likely, my source of infection. Truth be told, booze killed Tony before the virus really had a chance, but that's another story. 

Actually, each of these boys is another story, but here I just want to honor their names briefly. I also want to give you an idea of the ghosts my husband has to live with: My husband, Jason, the one who didn't get away, the one who wouldn't let me go, the one who proves that not only love, but even lifelong commitment, is more than just possible for gay men living with HIV, it's a hard-fought, hard-won reality. 

My relationship with Jason is not only an amazing love story; in some ways, it's historic. I thought about this while watching the Season 5 premiere of RuPaul's Drag Race in January, during which Logo aired an HIV-awareness "Puppet Service Announcement" (PSA) starring characters from the Broadway musical Avenue Q. In this one-minute video, Rod (the conservative banker puppet) and Ricky (the muscle gay puppet) are just back from a date, and Rod is inviting Ricky up to his apartment for the first time. Ricky is surprisingly demure. When a distraught Rod presses the issue, Ricky discloses that he is HIV positive. Rod assures Ricky that he still wants to have sex and is fine with condoms. Overjoyed, Ricky explains that he is on medication and has an undetectable viral load, which means his risk of transmitting the virus during protected sex is extremely low. Rod and Ricky rush into a smoochy embrace. 

As we watched the PSA, Jason started to cry. "I've been waiting my whole life to hear that message," he said, hugging me closer as we sat on the sofa with our two languid kitty cats. Indeed, it seemed that decades of fear, ignorance, silence, and stigma were finally ending. Maybe gay men could once again be judged not by their HIV status, but by their character (or by how many times a week they go to the gym). 

Jason was way ahead of the curve on serodiscordant relationships (meaning when one partner is poz, the other neg). On our second date, walking through Columbus Circle after a disastrous dinner and a bad movie, I said there were two things I had to tell him: One, I had a boyfriend; and two, I was HIV positive. "You're not getting rid of me THAT easily" was his response to these twin revelations. That was in 2000. Treatment was pretty good but not as good as it is now. The idea of Jason's dating a guy with HIV freaked out the friends in whom he confided. But he was undaunted, continued to date me, and soon enough, pried me from the clutches of my boyfriend. 

But the fact that our relationship has survived and thrived (we were among the first men to get same-sex married, on the beach in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in June 2004) does not mean that HIV has not complicated things every step of the way. You might think I'm referring to not being able to have unprotected sex without risk of infecting Jason. But in fact, that may be the least of our concerns. Bigger issues are things like maintaining my health insurance; wondering whether my medication will continue to work; thinking about how our lives will change if I become sick; and for me, raging at the fact that Jason does not get my Social Security check when I die, because under the Defense of Marriage Act, the federal government is barred from recognizing our marriage. (The Supreme Court will have something to say about this in just a few months, so we shall see.) 

On the other hand, HIV has occasioned some comic moments for Jason and me over the years; or perhaps I should say, moments we have to laugh about because the only alternative is to cry. When we first met, I had to take my medicine on an empty stomach, with no food for two hours before or one hour after a dose, three times a day. Start thinking about the clock, and you'll realize there were nine hours a day when I could not eat and fairly limited "windows" when I could have breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Jason's parents and kid brother came to New York to meet me after we'd been dating for a few months, and we did not initially tell them I was HIV positive. 

Seeing as how we could not hide the fact that their 23-year-old son was dating a man 15 years his senior, we thought disclosing the fact that I could give him a life-threatening disease was probably not the smoothest move right off the bat. The game plan was for them to meet me at Film Forum, where we were going to see Kiss Me Kate (minimal opportunity for face-to-face interaction for a good two hours), then have dinner at Sammy's, a Chinese place on Sixth Avenue and 11th Street, and a gay- and family-friendly favorite. We had to plan the whole evening around my "dinner window" so we could glide seamlessly from movie to dinner to good-night hugs and kisses without ever having to mention my HIV-related gastrointestinal constraints. Fortunately, it came off without a hitch. In fact, Jason's folks adored me. 

By the time we were winging our way to San Antonio to see his family again (for his dad's retirement ceremony after 20 years in the Air Force), I was on a new regimen with no food restrictions, but one of the meds had to be refrigerated. How were we going to pull this off without tipping our hand? In fact, we didn't quite. Jason told his mom about my HIV status before the trip. They did not initially tell his dad, but with his mom in the know, the whole pills-in-the-refrigerator thing provoked a lot of dread, but no actual disaster. Six months later, I switched to yet another regimen that did not require refrigeration or any other inconvenient restrictions. Life was good. 

By the time Jason's dad learned about my HIV status, I was a known entity who had proven my reliability and commitment to their son many times over. Like Ricky and Rod, we assured his folks that we always used condoms and that my medication kept my virus undetectable, making the risk of transmission during protected sex virtually nonexistent. If they harbored secret fears, they were too tactful to share them with us. Jason's mother quilted the chuppah (traditional canopy) for our wedding, and his father, a trained and experienced cantor (Jewish liturgical singer), performed the ceremony. 

All of this happened a long, long time ago, especially in gay years. But while HIV is now considered a chronic, manageable condition (as long as you have access to health care, you can tolerate the meds, and the meds work for you), it still looms over gay sex, dating, and relationships. More than a million people are now living with HIV in the United States. One in five of them (20%) do not even know their status. The spread of HIV in the gay community, once on the decline, is now back on the rise. The rate of new infections among young gay men is alarming, and among young gay men of color, it is staggering. 

Thirty years into the epidemic, community memory is waning, and the internet, along with smartphones, has made it easier than ever to hop into bed with a stranger. This essay is a personal reminiscence meant to entertain and inspire, but I urge you to get informed and do everything in your power, regardless of your status, to live well, protect yourself, protect your partners, and make informed choices.