What I Did During My Queer Unemployed Summer Vacation

With Photographic Evidence!

This is Sitting Queerly, a newsletter focused on the late blooming queer experience, the lofty goal of opening up conversations and celebrating those who embrace their full selves.

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So, how is everyone? Summer going well despite unprecedented heat, runaway inflation and *checks notes* an increasingly unhinged, fraught and terrifying U.S. presidential election cycle?

Great!

While I’ve been publishing newsletters throughout the summer, I wrote many of them weeks before you saw them, albeit with some recent minor edits. Many of those newsletters concern things that happened long before I wrote them. Thus, they are largely detached from my recent experiences and circumstances (with the exception of one), not to say those of the queer community as a whole. And I’ve been running all over creation throughout all of this.

I’ve got a lot to cover so, let’s get started.

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My summer kicked off at the end of June with two transformative events: my layoff and resulting unemployment (boo) and my attending San Francisco Pride with my wife (yay!).

I wrote about my job/work situation just a few weeks ago if you missed it and want the back story. As of this moment, I remain jobless. Mentally, I am doing ok. This does not mean everything is ok but, as they say, stress over what you can control and let go of what you can’t. I have never been unemployed in my entire adult life and it is jarring to know that I do not know how my family and I will survive long-term. There are some frayed safety nets—meager savings, a small vacation time payout, unemployment benefits, the saving grace that we could transfer our health insurance to my wife’s job with the exact same coverage and relatively low costs. I acknowledge the extreme privilege that I have in these resources. But I still don’t know what the future holds.

And yet, my wife and I still managed to have an amazing time in San Francisco during Pride. We individually and collectively have deep ties to the city (I proposed to her on China Beach on Halloween many years ago) but hadn’t been back for a long time. To do so without kids (thanks in-laws!) was a dream come true.

It was an incredibly affirming experience for me, and having my wife right next to me I think helped us reconnect a bit. We both enjoyed visiting the Castro, watching the opening drag show, visiting all the vendors (we were both pleased to see our very progressive church denomination there supporting everyone), seeing the parade and just being around like-minded folk. I also bought my first harness, something I never thought I’d be brave or confident enough to do. At the same time, I still held myself back from some things, out of the shame and guilt I am still holding onto about my identity and how I express it. Clearly I still have work to do. Also got one of the worst sunburns of my life. Whoops.

Less than a week after getting back from California, our family went to the Oregon coast for several days with some good family friends. It was our first time back in two years and has always been a sort of “reset” button for us, just a time to stop, relax and not worry about itineraries or goals. It was also the first time I can remember feeling confident enough in a public space to expose my body. 

And more recently, I just returned from attending a family summer camp with my kids on the eastern shore of Lake Couer d’Alene in Idaho. Despite it starting off with triple digit heat and poor air quality from wildfire smoke pouring in from *gestures broadly,* it eventually cooled off a bit and the air cleared. The great thing about the whole thing is it provides me mornings to myself while the kids are doing crafts, swimming and exploring their psyches (read: making the camp counselors think about their choices).

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I have done very little writing throughout all of this. That’s got me on edge a bit since I no longer have a bank of already written posts to send out now. And while I have ideas for things I want to examine and write about, those take time to research and, though unemployed, it can be difficult to find that time while the kids are still off for the summer and demanding my attention.

Regardless, I have been doing a lot of thinking about the pieces I publish here. As much as I have relied on personal narrative to drive Sitting Queerly—and I have been humbled at the heartfelt responses and appreciation from many of you—I really want this space to be more than a personal journal. My story is not unique or monolithic. As much as I enjoyed telling you about my delightfully queer summer, I want to go further in exploring the broader issues facing late-blooming queers and the communities we are part of or those we should be supporting. I truly want to provide a resourceful and supportive space. And I want to avoid writing boring fluff, as the views for last week’s newsletter indicate.¹

At the same time, as I wrote at the end of May, I am looking at how to offer paid subscriptions to Sitting Queerly. As I said then, I will not be locking down posts or allowing comments only for paid subscribers. That would defeat the purpose of this publication. I have other tangible rewards in mind for those folks who subscribe, such as crafty things I made/make or just increased access to me and what I write here.

So. No heads up about what’s in next week’s newsletter. Because I don’t know yet. No idea what’s to come for the future of this publication. Because I don’t know yet. And no idea when to expect or if there even will be paid subscriptions with perks. Because I don’t know yet.

I hope you’ll stay tuned.

1. Sixty-eight views. Ouch. Haven’t had numbers that low since the first weeks of publishing on Substack.