Do you guys get those notifications on your phone every Sunday that tell you if you’ve spent massive amounts of time on your phone? Or maybe you’re a perfect angel and you spend healthy amounts of time away from your phone? Well, I fall on the former, and my goal as of recently has been to spend less time on my phone and more time engaged with people and reading books. This Sunday I got my phone Screen time down by 8%, so I’d say this week was a major success.
This week’s read was The Velvet Rage, Overcoming the Pain of Growing Up Gay in a Straight Mans World by Alan Down. This book centers around the struggle that gay men face in embracing authenticity, the rage that comes from watching straight people have seemingly “normal” or “functional” lives, and the work you can do to find love, joy, and integrity in your own life. This book provides ample validation for the gay man and just as equal and weighted truth that you contribute to your own well-being in relationships, and also tools to navigate finding what truly brings you joy in life so that joy can instead be the main focus.
Downs made me realize that a lot of this work to find authenticity is right in front of me if I so choose to take that opportunity. I have way more power and autonomy over myself than I think I do, and I guess now one of my goals in life is to empower people to embrace their inner strength that they think they might not have. It’s such a liberating feeling knowing that you’re in control of your life and actions, and I can speak from personal experience. Even if you’re not a gay male or female in the world, or whatever you identify as, the book is excellent to read because it reiterates universal themes of embracing who you are, regardless of sexuality. You are a beautiful human moving through space, and you deserve to have the recognized power of self.
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