I don’t always sit back and wait for the publisher to send me ideas. I still come up with some now and again. That’s how the article with WNBA All-Star Janel McCarville came up. Ever since I started writing for this magazine, I wanted to interview a WNBA player who was out and not afraid to talk about it. But no one was willing to come forward. In fact, the previous editor said it was nearly impossible to get someone from the WNBA to open up. But I felt that it just had to be the right player.

Enter Janel. I had a hunch that she was gay — it’s just an energy I felt. Some people call it “gaydar.” I always liked Janel as a basketball player. She was a hard worker on the court and it showed when she won the WNBA’s Most Improved Player in 2007. Last summer, she was suspended from the New York Liberty and the press painted her as a rebel. I knew there was more to the story. So, when the publisher told me that she wanted me to be Curve’s unofficial “sports editor” I saw an opportunity. I told her I wanted to interview Janel and ask her about being out and the suspension. She told me to go for it (though I think she was skeptical I could pull it off). So I went for it. Something told me that Janel wanted to talk about things. And you know what? I was right. We messaged back and forth on Facebook throughout the process, and she asked for a copy of the article once it was published. I’m happy to say that she thought it was “awesome.”

You can read the article below:

Janel’s Article

Those who have read The Trouble with Emily Dickinson, often tell me that Queenie McBride was their favorite character. And in the sequel, The Education of Queenie McBride, Queenie is the main focus. Readers will get to know Queenie on a more intimate level as she struggles to find her identity away from Sampson Academy and at Boston University. The sequel also focuses on a topic that is often overlooked, even in the gay community — LGBT teen homelessness. I won’t give too much away about the plot, but Queenie and JJ are definitely thrown into situations they weren’t expecting and are forced to grow and evolve. Queenie’s extremely independent and isn’t the kind of girl to settle down, but there just might be a girl out there for her after all.

The Education of Queenie McBride is currently in the “editing” phase of publishing. Once it gets through that whole process, a cover will be made and the book will be put together. I’m guessing late spring for a publishing date — but don’t quote me. I need to have some new head shots taken. It’s been so long that Curve (the magazine I write for) keeps recycling my old ones when they highlight contributing writers.

Anyway, keep an eye out for the sequel. And if you haven’t read The Trouble with Emily Dickinson yet, I urge you to get the new and improved version—available next month. Contact me and tell me what you think!

Next on the agenda would be the My Story Is Out deadline. We have decided to extend the deadline and keep it open until we get enough stories to fill the book. This means that if you haven’t submitted a story yet, you still have time! Many teachers, librarians and bookstore owners feel that this anthology is an important project. Help us make it happen. Spread the word in your school, on your Facebook page and in your Tweets.

If you read Curve magazine, I’ve had my fair share of articles lately. I recently wrote a travel piece about Buffalo, which was a first for me because I don’t write travel articles. It came out really well, and I was pleased with it. I posted a PDF of it on my “about” me page. My favorite Curve article thus far is coming out March. I won’t give it all away, but it’s a profile of a popular WNBA player. We’re on a first-name basis now. Well, at least we were when I was interviewing her.

Lastly, I should probably update my status. My last few posts (though honest) were maybe a bit too revealing. I don’t know. I wear my heart on my sleeve and I have no problem being vulnerable. The holidays were a roller coaster ride for me. But every emotional challenge allows for personal growth and evolution. I learned a lot about myself and about the disconnect between things I believe in and applying them to my own life. Sometimes it takes an emotional challenge to wake you up a bit. A friend of mine, who counsels people in nutrition and Chinese medicine, said it best—I’m in transition.

Christmas is usually my favorite time of the year. But this year it feels as though something is missing. It’s raining outside of my window instead of snowing. There’s no Christmas tree sitting in the corner of my house (never had a chance to get out and get one) and that magic Christmas feeling is severely lacking. The only thing that isn’t missing for me this year is the spirit of giving.

On Monday, my wife and I were out and about in the city. We had just eaten lunch and a man was sitting outside on a bench. He was obvious homeless, and all he  wanted was a sandwich. So we got him some lunch—Sushi actually. Out of everything he could have gotten to eat, he chose Sushi. Shrug. It was the highlight of the holiday season for me so far.

I’ve had a tough month since Thanksgiving. I guess you could call it a wake-up call. I have been talking the talk  but not really walking the walk. It made me realize that I need to make some serious changes in my life, and that I can’t keep believing in certain things and not living them. I always tell people to trust life, that things happen when they are supposed to and that everything happens for a reason.

Well, it’s time for me to take my own advice. I believe that the challenges that happened in my life recently happened for a reason and that reason is for me to make some positive changes in my life. Sure, I was clearing out some deep, deep (DEEP) emotional baggage, but I also realized that there are some negative thought patterns in me that I need to address and change as I move forward.

I like the saying, “there’s a rainbow in every storm.” It reminds me that the tough stuff is only temporary and that there’s always something beautiful to be found in it. Even when I’m down on my knees, crying hysterically and shaking from the inside out, something keeps me hanging on. And it ain’t mistletoe.

I don’t know what it is, really. But I can describe it as a sense that everything is going to work out. Somehow, it’s going to be okay. And I just need to keep hanging on.

On that note, Merry Christmas. I hope that it’s full of love, light, snow, giving, receiving and even mistletoe.

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I’m not going to go the route of blaming my parents. I’ve been in enough therapy to know that forgiveness sets you free. And I’ve already worked through my feelings with them. Now that I’m free, I can take responsibility for it instead of blaming. I can be there for myself. I can learn to handle stress.

Last month, I reached another level of healing, another peeling away of the onion. So the past few weeks I’ve had to work through some tough emotions. My energy therapist was thrilled, even though I was not. She told me that it’s not a step backwards, but another leap forward.  I joked with her about it, because everyone else is walking around and living life while I’m having a mental breakdown.

“I’ve been working on myself for years,” I told her. “Yet I’m looked at as the crazy one!”

If I had known how difficult the path of healing was eight years ago, I probably wouldn’t have started it. But I was in such a rough, sad, dark place. It makes me wonder where I’d be if I hadn’t.

Recently, I’ve started to feel more like myself again. So today I went through some story submissions for the anthology series I am working on. One of the contributors submitted a story about coming out to his sister. He talked about how he was so afraid to tell her that he was gay, and how all these tragic “what if” thoughts ran through his head. I knew exactly how he felt. I still have negative “what if” thoughts all the time, and it’s something I want to change to help me cope better with stress.

Well, at the end of his story he wrote about how wonderful his life had become since coming out to his sister and how she had accepted him right away. And, looking back on the torment he felt before coming out to her, he wondered why he never had the thought: “What if she accepts me and loves me for who I am?”

How wonderful is that? What a twist! Imagine that “what if” can actually be a friend instead of a foe?  This afternoon, I wrote out a list of positive “what ifs” to some of the most stressful thoughts that I think. It made me feel empowered.

What if this is a new beginning?

I think that what happened at Penn State can happen anywhere. A man (or woman) of authority commits a crime and others refuse to listen to their conscience, because protecting the reputation of the individual or institution is more important. How backwards is our society when a football program is valued higher than the wellness and safety of children?

I’m not a parent but I would like to have a family. Joe Paterno has a family. He has a big family, in fact, with lots of kids and grandkids. How could he not relate or feel sickened by the information he was given about Jerry Sandusky? How could he not pull Sandusky aside and question him face-to-face? How could he not call the police? If one of the victims had been his own child or grandchild, you can bet that he would have done more. But I could say the same thing about the athletic director and the university president. They have kids and families, too. And still, they did nothing. They pretended that it didn’t happen or maybe they just didn’t want to believe that a man they knew, and interacted with day in and day out for so many years, had done something so horrendous? Either way, their failure to do the right thing led to eight more years of abuse.

Nine victims have come forward so far and I am sure that a few more will follow in their footsteps. This whole mess makes me sick to my stomach, not just because of what happened but also because there is a deep wedge of awareness and non-awareness in our world. The crazy keep on getting crazier. Yet, I am hopeful, because at the same more people are waking up.

It’s an interesting time to be alive. There’s a fire rising below the surface and you can literally feel things shifting (not just because of the earthquakes, either). Old institutions (both physical and non-physical) are beginning to crack and waver. It won’t be long before they come falling down.

As for the recent football follies at Penn State—there’s not much else to say. ESPN has covered it inside and out, so has Yahoo! Sports and Sports Illustrated. The common theme in all of the coverage seems to be the same:

How in the world could this have happened and what does it say about us as a society? 

The thing about spiritual enlightenment is that it happens differently for everyone. It’s not something you can achieve simply by reading a “how to” article. In reality, it’s not even something to be achieved. It’s simply a matter of waking up. There are some people who just “wake up” overnight (Byron Katie, Eckhart Tolle) but for most of us, it’s a lifelong journey. Even Byron Katie and Eckhart Tolle went through periods of intense human suffering before their egos (the manmade self) literally burned themselves up.

I’m at a point in my spiritual journey where I can clearly recognize the ego in me and the craziness that it causes. I also am fully aware of my destructive patterns of thinking. The hard part, or what I find most difficult, is catching the ego in the moment and changing the thought patterns. The thought patterns are so deeply ingrained in me that it doesn’t take much for me to get lost in them. This is where patience is so crucial. The ego has been around for eons. And the undoing of the ego takes time.

October was a whirlwind for me. But as tough as it was, I know I needed the experiences for my spiritual growth. One of my favorite quotes is this:

“Love nothing but that which comes to you woven in the pattern of your destiny. For what could more aptly fit your needs?” - Marcus Aurelius

How true is that? Why do some things happen to other people and not us? This quote is the answer. Each one of us experiences whatever we need to bring us closer to the truth and the reality of our existence.

Do I sound preachy? Maybe I am being a little preachy. But it helps me to write this stuff out. It helps me to make sense of everything that is going on in the world, and within my own mind. If you’ve read my columns before then you know where I stand. You know that I believe that I am no better or worse than anyone else. We’re all just people here, trying to make sense of our existence. Some of us have it figured out, others are on their way and even more are completely lost in the illusion of the world. I like to think I’m one of the individuals who are on their way. Even though I may get lost now and then.

I’d love to tell you that I was very open-minded about the whole thing and that I didn’t freak out. But I’d be lying. I freaked out. Well, maybe not as much as I would have in the past. See, the thing is, I found the lump on Friday night. It was about 4:30 p.m. and my doctor’s office was closed for the day. So I was left to speculate about the lump for the entire weekend.

The mind is a funny animal. It makes up things and tells us what they “might” be or mean, yet we believe these things to be reality. I desperately fought through the fear that my mind/ego created, but it was hard at times. I tried to distract myself, which I am horrible at because I’ve never been one to pretend things aren’t there or put things off. By Sunday evening, I had to excuse myself from a family dinner and go have a good cry. What was I crying about? I don’t know. I still didn’t know what the lump was. But all of the pent-up fear that I felt needed to come out. Man, I was scared.

The concept that we are here temporarily and that eventually we all go back “home” is easy to believe on paper. But when faced with the thought that I might actually have to pack my bags early, my ego fears came rushing forward. There are still so many things I want to do and experience, so many people I have yet to meet, and certain people I still hope to run into again for my own selfish reasons. I’m not ready to go anywhere yet. Is anyone ever ready?

I finally went to the doctor’s this morning and the doc thought it was a cyst. She sent me to get a mammogram. I’ve never had a mammogram before. It’s a surreal experience. The waiting room was dimly lit and soft rock was playing in the background. Coincidentally, I flipped open a magazine to an article about a celebrity who was dealing with breast cancer. I closed it right away.

Once they called my name, I was taken into a narrow hallway with mini dressing rooms the size of hall closets on each side. Each dressing room had a curtain. I went in, stripped from the waist up (I kept my ball cap on the entire time) and put on a pink smock. After the mammogram, the nurse came in and gave me a pink carnation. “What’s this for?” I asked, thinking that maybe they give you a pink carnation if it’s bad news. (Nothing like being positive, right?) “Everyone gets one,” she said. “Oh,” I smiled.

I sat down and waited some more. They wanted to do an ultrasound just to make sure. A different nurse came in and ushered me into another room. Naturally, I struck up a conversation. The nurse was young and personable, and I found out that we had graduated from the same high school. As we were talking during the ultrasound, she looked at the screen and said, “I don’t see anything. There’s nothing there.”

My reaction? “Shut. Up.”

“I’m serious,” she said, laughing. I asked about the lump and she said that it was just hardened breast tissue. Hardened breast tissue! Seriously! I told her to shut up again for good measure and swore under my breath in relief. Once she was done, she consulted with the doctor on staff and came back to give the news that I had already known all along—I did not have breast cancer.

All weekend, even through the anxiety I felt, I knew in my gut that I was OK. I’ve always followed my gut. Why couldn’t I just trust my intuition about this? I don’t know. I’m still working on that. Looking back, I can see that I gave meaning to the lump when in reality it was just a lump and nothing more. We give meaning to everything we see, feel, hear and experience. Even lumps.

Next time something comes up, I think I should probably take a second look at it and say to myself, “It ain’t nothing but a lump.” Maybe then I’ll be able to just let it be whatever it is without projecting meaning on to it.

Maybe.