Transitions

Okay, yeah, once again I've been kinda sparse on the updates, but I have a pretty good reason for not posting last week. My parents are spending two months in Utah, and I'm housesitting for them while they're away...which means much time this last week was spent helping them finish packing, and then settling in. So...not a lot of free time. Even less than usual, I mean. (Well, I actually did have quite a bit of free time on Friday and Saturday, I guess, but after all I was dealing with earlier in the week I...okay, I don't have a good excuse for not posting on Friday or Saturday.)

My parents have gone on and on about how much they appreciate my help, and how they don't know what they'd have done without me...and in a way, it's kind of awkward, because I can't help wondering whether they'd see things differently if they knew I was an atheist. Probably not, in the long run, but I'm sure it would be a shock. I'm not ready to tell them just yet, though.

Incidentally, my mother is increasingly often asking me direct questions about whether or not I ever intend to get married. Being unmarried at my age is, well, for a Mormon, very unusual, and she's clearly not happy about it. She's even said that if I'm not seen dating soon people might "start to wonder" about me. I don't have the heart to tell her just yet that what people would presumably be wondering is in fact precisely the case. (I'm pretty sure, though, that people are not, in fact, wondering--aside from my mother, who I suspect is on some level wondering, but is reluctant to admit that to herself.)

Speaking of, well, the thing I've been alluding to all through the previous paragraph without ever explicitly saying it, which is kind of pointless since I've already explicitly said it in a previous post...I'm really feeling like I ought to be telling people about that. Not everyone; certainly not my parents or the people I know at church. But at least some close friends, who I think I can trust to, well, support me. My friend David, with whom I spoke about my atheism, maybe...though I don't want to make him feel like I'm just using him as a sounding board for my catharses. And my current role-playing gaming group, or now former gaming group...I consider them all good friends, and I've mentioned my atheism to them, and I'm sure they'd be supportive about this too, especially considering that, well, one of them is bi.

(I say "now former" because, well, the group is splitting up; two of them are moving to Florida this week, and another (the bi one, FWIW) to San Francisco in a month. Today was our last meeting before the move. Though we're still going to be keeping in touch.)

It's just...yeah, I'd been keeping that secret for fifteen years, and I don't like living a lie that long. As I said, I'm not ready to tell everyone, but I feel like I ought to tell someone--and an anonymous confession to people whom I've never met and who don't know my real name or anything about me other than what I write here, while definitely a step in the right direction, doesn't completely fit the bill. (I had guessed that some people I knew from the Center For Inquiry whom I'd told about my blog might read that post--though I certainly hadn't written it with that intention--but as it turns out, I don't think they have. Both the people who had been reading my blog happened to be very busy with other matters at the time of that post, and I'm pretty sure they didn't read it--it seems likely they would have commented or said something if they had.)

Anyway. I've gotta go, and I guess there's not much of a coherent point to this post. Now that I'm settled in at my parents' house (well, more or less; I'll still be commuting to L.A. for school and acting and other things), I should have more time this next week, and I'm going to try again to make a post a day and maybe catch up on the backlog of posts I've been meaning to make but haven't. So, tomorrow, expect a post about webcomics. And Tuesday, a post about monkeys. (Well, really more about apes...but "monkeys" is just more fun to say for some reason.)