Happy Holidays

Regardless of who you are and what your beliefs, here’s wishing you the best of this holiday season with health, prosperity, and joy in the coming new year...

Now off to my dysfunctional crazy family -

pray for me

There is someone out there like me, but now what the hell do I do?

So there are others out there like me and I have no idea what to do.

When I started this blog my idea was to put myself out there in an attempt to “force” myself to be who I thought I was and to be the person that I wanted to be, and in doing so I began my quest to find others out there like myself. I must sound repetitious here but to be amongst others like you, to surround yourself with peers, must feel like a homecoming of sorts…

You would think that scanning the internet for my peers would be easy but it hasn’t been. I consider myself to be somewhat well-rounded - yes the focus of this blog seems to be geared towards freedom in a sense that a great many people wouldn’t subject themselves to and there is a great emphasis on complete freedom (or at least as much as a society will allow, coupled with my push to get just a little bit more and then some). As I searched for groups or individuals their focus didn’t always seem to be as blended as I thought mine to be - their needs seemed almost to be always specifically political, sexual, geographical, or individually motivated and I always thought my beliefs to be a combination of all of these things.

To be honest, the discouragement of being a man alone in his wants and needs almost became isolating.

And then I found them - the others like me.

I found them on the internet, tucked away in their own little corner, unadvertised and not promoted by pop-ups or annoying requests for my credit card number with the promise of discreet billing. Instead they were in a free little niche of the electronic highway and they seem to be a welcoming and somewhat diverse and accepting bunch.

As I rummaged around this site, overwhelmed that there are others with the same wants and needs, I found someone so like myself the resemblance was uncanny, almost scary - not so much in a physical sense although that is the first thing that caught my eye, but so like me in wants and needs and accomplishments that I couldn’t pull myself away from my computer. Here is a person that lives what I profess to want, and when there is a moment that you think goals and desires are unattainable and you see a reflection of yourself that has what you want, does what you want to do and looks content in doing so, you think that maybe you can and should be as true to yourself as you possibly can and pursue a life whether others qualify it as unconventional or abnormal.

I haven’t approached this group but I will - Instead of rushing in I want to savor the moment and revel in my find almost as if it were a treasure to be respected.

Now this group and myself, maybe we’re freaks, maybe we take things less seriously, maybe we all need to buck authority for some reason stemming from our pasts, at least we are still unique but not alone. I hope to make friends or at least learn how these people honor what seems to be the driving forces that I am comprised of - maybe someone is close to me or maybe not but I hope this group is as they appear - I’ll attempt to reach out to them and if I’m lucky maybe my mirror image, that person that seems to be so much like me that it bothers me may just reach back.

Stepping outside the box, or just why the hell am I in the hallway nekkid?

Being naked is nothing for a lot of people; it’s natural and easy and casual and means nothing other than an absence of clothes, while to others the discomfort of being naked means they cannot look at themselves in the mirror alone in the privacy and safety of their on home and when they do catch that awful glimpse it brings them only pain and self-loathing.

Negative self-image is a bitch.

Society is a bitch.

I am maybe the last person that should be advocating freedom like this - look at the picture and you can see a million reasons why I would never be selected as the poster boy for any naturalist/nudist/clothes-free/body-freedom organization and I know each and everyone one of those reasons and trust me, I repeat a number of these to myself every single day - if you feel the need to point any of these out to me via email or IM I’ve already beat you to the punch this morning when I got out of the shower so don’t bother.

Ok, so negative self-image is a bitch and society is a bitch and right now I’ve really stopped caring because I’ve cared for too long and quite frankly I’m rather tired of it and so should everyone else.

I hate the argument that “society dictates that…”. Now society dictates a great deal of good things: laws that protect our safety and freedoms, common courtesy, no nose-picking in public, but I guess that in some way it does dictate the premise that men should have no more than 5% body fat and women are too big if they wear anything bigger than a size 6.

I’m calling bullshit and so should you.

I like men with pot-bellies and would prefer they have more body hair than a boy waiting for the onset of puberty. I think that women should have curves and that means hips and ass and thighs and I am not lying when I think as both sexes get older that wrinkles exhibit character and strength, showing the world years of joy, accomplishment and pain that we all traverse yet should wear as a badge of honor as we overcome obstacles and grow stronger from having done so.

So I stepped outside the box and went into the hallway naked.

Small step but I felt like I was saying that I accept skinny calves, a sagging ass and average penis size as something that I am and nothing short of a miracle is ever going to change those things. I am 46 and I think that it’s high time I stopped worrying about society’s perception of my physical being, learn to accept it, and spend more time improving my inner self. I want to be loved by friends and family for my humor and grace in the face of adversity and my willingness to help pick someone up when they fall and not for any physical quality whether god-given, purchased or earned with blood, sweat and tears.

I just threw out my last copy of Men’s Health and I suggest you throw out any magazine that makes you feel inadequate or ugly and promise to only make changes for your health or well being, not because you think society says you have to have 6-packs abs to get the job or spouse of your dreams.

Now, I would still consider trying to get 6-pack abs if it’d get me laid but that is a whole other entry some night.

Screw looking good naked, trying liking yourself instead.

Remote testing day, or how I got to work naked this Wednesday

I love the company that I work for. Great product, fun and intelligent people in a fostering environment, good pay, and a stellar boss who supports me in every way - all of which makes me extremely lucky and I hope that everyone I work with or for knows this. Now working in Denver, this company also has to be prepared for poor weather and has provided employees with remote access; in the event of extreme weather we can open all of our systems and even accept calls in the comfort of our homes - there is nothing I can do in my office that I can’t do from my dining room table, with the exception of throwing koosh balls at the back of some poor unsuspecting sap’s head.

Now I have to admit I like to go to work - I love to chat with my co-workers, some of which have become my closest friends and know more about me than my family, and I really have to be honest that I like the coffee there too. The fact that I can suck gallons of the stuff for free all while being with people I care about and doing a job that I like is pretty damn good, when you figure that every two weeks they fork over a fair amount of dough to me for doing this.

But then I got to work naked.

On December 3rd we tested our remote access by having all mission-critical employees work from home. On December 2nd I walked into my home and suddenly realized that for the next 36 hours I’d get to be naked.

The bliss set in.

When I got up on December 3rd I took a shower, brushed my teeth, and that was the end of getting ready for work. I talked to co-workers, answered emails and did other work stuff all naked. There were a couple of funny comments on my office IM message which read “No Pants Remote Day” and was accompanied by a picture of an empty pair of jeans, but nothing else was abnormal in my dealings with my buddies as they couldn’t see me, although a good number of them knew that my IM statement was most likely not an inaccuracy. I ate lunch naked, I typed naked, and most importantly I didn’t have to worry about getting the inevitable coffee stain out of shirt at the end of the day (when you drink gallons of this crap you always end up wearing some) but there was no shirt to be dealt with.

I have to admit I missed the personal interaction I have with my friends - people who every day give 100 percent because we believe in what we do and who we do it if for and who we do it with, but it was also really nice to not worry about pressing a shirt, shiny shoes and whether pleated pants show that I am reticent to cross over to plain-fronts because the make me look anorexic. Social nudity would cut down on dry-cleaning and I for one think that anything that cuts down on dry-cleaning costs is damn swell. I also have to admit it was just too cool to hop out of the shower and into the work day with not much preparation in between the two tasks.

Could I work remote from time to time and get this feeling more often? I bet my boss would let me but I would miss her and my best friend and cohort in crime too much, and for what I would save in dry-cleaning I’d lose in my bulk purchases of Dazbog Svoboda blend coffee in order to fuel my addiction.

Working naked would be nice, I would just have to find an office that would allow it and had the same caliber of people - I’ll never find that and a place that lets me drink that much premium coffee without charging back on my paycheck, so I guess I’ll have to stick with 36 hours of being unencumbered whenever remote testing day rolls around...

P.S.

Best friend and cohort in crime: You know who you are and I love you.