JNez@thirtydaes.2010

wow you guys are great. thanks for expressing your love and concern in the comments. it’s because of the karma that you send that the incident is now a distant memory. a lesson learned, still, but a distant memory. the iphone has been replaced (i have the best ex ever); for reasons selfish & unselfish, i’ve decided not to press charges; we’ll let karma deal with eddie. all i can say when i read over the account of what happened is “man…what was i thinking??”

truth is i don’t know what i was thinking because my thinking was clouded by weed, pills & alcohol. what i’ve been avoiding has steadily grown unwieldy: i drink too goddamn much. shit. i need to check that. but not now. it’s the holidays, new years eve & my birthday week, for goodness sake. i’m supposed to party!!!

i promise i’ll address all of this with the attention & priority it deserves once 2010 hits. i have big plans for 2010 that these holiday binges have nothing on.

thanks again for your karma, readers. it’s been said: god protects babies & fools. i haven’t been a baby for 37 years but man i’ve probably been a fool for the last 22…

fellow twitter fam 4eva_lex & i came up with twoddlers, an endearing moniker for twitter fam whose dob is after nightline’s profile of twitter on 2.25.09. welcome all twoddlers…pay attention to etiquette and we hope you all have a long, successful twitter life

my twitter d.o.b. is october 2007. i was as intimidated with the blank blue screen as anyone that first night i signed up. abandoned it after 2 or 3 days feeling overwhelemed when i saw how many followers people had. i had no clue of who to follow or how to go about finding them.

but i returned about 2 months later, using twitter as an echo chamber for my thoughts. eventually, by perusing the public timeline, i found more and more interesting people to follow, who would in turn reply to and follow me, which led to a growing twitter family that numbers nearly 1600 now. twitter encouraged me to start this blog here and after one year, i couldn’t have predicted the success i’d have

so thank you, twitter & all of you who have cared enough about my random thoughts to follow and stay with me on this here blog for one year. happy one year anniversary family & friends! and welcome twoddlers of all persuasions to twitter!

wow…thank you so much to everyone who reads and/or comments here on JNez@thirtydaes.com. We’ve just been named Best Personal Blog by the judges of the 2008 Black Weblog Awards!

somehow, I wanted to believe that there was an audience that could relate to my struggles as an HIV+ black, bisexual, single stay at home Dad overcoming depression by self-medicating self hatred (whew!). but to have each and collectively all of those dimensions of me validated by readers of this blog is indeed very humbling.

i admit that i blog, like many do, for validation. much of it comes in your comments or by measuring the number of visits. i offered my blog for nomination in the black weblog awards believing that it was unique in subject matter and in the diversity of interests that are chronicled in my posts. i was rather disappointed when the blog didn’t make the nomination cut, but resolved to continue writing regularly and honestly about my thoughts and my life, confident that there were readers out there who felt me and could relate on one or more levels.

as a newbie though, i imagined that my fellow bloggers eyed me suspiciously. in several posts i moaned about what i perceived as a lack of support or even acknowledgment from established bloggers that i’d reached out to. i tried not to take it personal but in the end i had to understand and accept that maybe it was personal. i’ve been known to rub a few people the wrong way: not everyone’s personality can mesh with my tendency to be direct, bullish, and a bit of an upstart. it has been these characteristics that have most often prevented me from receiving the respect of my peers that has been so important to me.

so knowing that this vote for best personal blog represents the respect of my peers by way of the enthusiasm of my friends and readers is a monumental affirmation of my objective: to be healed and help heal. thank you so much!

JNez