Quoc’s Web Journal

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So, it’s more like 1 year, 1 month, 1 week and 4 days… free of all mind altering substances.  And of course I would do my check in at a time when I am experiencing sadness and a heart full of tears that need to be shed and shared…

What’s going on with me?  Well, I’ve been deeply connected with my Higher Power…  I have learned a new way of living that grants me freedom from any consequences of being deceitful and dishonest…  This is incredibly new for me…  I have been waging internal battles within my mind about various different quality problems… I need to vent and share some of them…  Of course they would be in the area of finance and romance… or otherwise known as dollar or d*ck or otherwise known as money or men!

First the finance…  I am actually in the midst of making a very very mature decision…  I am doing incredibly well in my job…  It’s scary being in a position of a decision maker…  I have a supervisor that I do respect and really knows his stuff… However, he comes off very very very very condescending… Well, at least most of the time when I am around him I feel sooo inadequate!  I know he doesn’t mean it all the time; however, intentions do not change the results from a person’s actions.  Sigh…

The other side of the coin is me visiting the campus on California State University, Northridge…  I have been pondering going to Grad school for my Master’s in Social Work or Master’s in Public Health… OR BOTH!  I’ve been feeling scared, insecure, old and well… IN FEAR of what is to come and what the right decision is.  I know there is really no wrong decision here…  I can’t help but feel some sense of fear of the unknown…  And indeed FEAR is based in the future!

Now the romance… 

So, God has been very kind in allowing me to explore that part of me which I feel is more broken than any other part of my life…  Allow me to reframe, romance and intimacy with others is one area in my life that I need to work on more than any other area in my life…  Lately, I have had opportunities to explore mutual intellectual, emotional and spiritual intimacy with a couple best friends…  It’s been amazing building that up…  Then all of a sudden I got busy and they got busy and then life started happening and the things that we did and hung out on a weekly basis as we used to…  I got scared since we haven’t hung out for over 2 – 3 weeks… I know it’s just as easy and just reconnecting again and catching up with each other…  We’ll be good as new in just one visit with each other.

In the area of physical intimacy, I’ve been blessed with having 1 consistent person I have been physically intimate with for actually over a year… I am not sure if it’s been over 2 years now!  Wow!  Anyway, we’ve been doing this regular thing… Little does this person know how much he’s help build my confidence in the time.  He’s incredibly HOT…  He’s physically beautiful and I feel our sexual chemistry works really really really well!  I am sooo incredibly attracted to him.  I have not allowed it to go beyond that.  Well, recently in the past couple months, we’ve been doing more than just the fleeting get togethers followed by him leaving…  There seemed to be time spent connecting on a different level after our “fun.”  That’s lead me to have feelings for him…  I want more than just what we’ve had for a couple years…  I don’t want to jeopardize it by going beyond the parameters that have been set for us since we’ve gotten together…  I also don’t know how to reconcile the feelings I have for this guy when we do get together…  The time we’ve spent together for the lack of a better phrase has moved from down south up to my heart…  I feel we’ve been connecting on a different level…  What I do know is that I am incredibly attracted to this man.  He makes me feel incredibly attractive.  The physical chemistry we share is AMAZING!  I don’t quite know how to proceed with him…

What I want is to actually be able to hang out with this guy like a bud and go camping and do fun things like go see a show or movie every now and then…  We wouldn’t lose touch of the physical fun we’d have with each other…  I’d like to say no commitments, but isn’t what I just described what dating is about?  LOL… 

In meditation, I keep hearing the following message…  Since I have developed feelings for this individual, it’s no longer just conjugal visits I am making with this person.  It’s gone beyond that.  I need to be honest with him and share with him that I want to “date” him.  Then after courageously and honestly sharing my feelings, what I get to do is respect the decision he makes, up and including him terminating our current arrangement if “other” things disrupt what we’ve had for awhile.  The other message I receive is that there is no way I can only be friends with him because I see and feel for him more than just as a friend.  I am physically and emotionally attracted to him.  This is by definition counters what a platonic friendship is.  So, if I am not willing to continue maintaining just a physical relationiship with him, then it’s time to move on and save myself from hurting myself by continuing to experience a partial of what I keep hoping will come about…

In the area of working on building intimacy without physical intimacy…  I’ve been blessed with an opportunity to chat with a guy via a webcam who actually found me from reading this blog… We’ve been chatting for over 3 weeks now…  It’s been interesting getting to know someone who is pretty much halfway around the world…  It’s unlikely we’ll get to meet anytime in the near future… But getting to know this person in this kind of a venue allows me to get to know a person and experience mutual appreciation and correspondence with a person without the hang up of actually needing to meet someone…  So, I actually have to experience and practice all the other ways of getting to know a person without the physical stuff…  It’s been interesting…

Suffice it to say, there are going to be peaks and valleys in life… Today, coming home to my sweet and darling cat and petting him wasn’t enough…  I craved for physical attention with another human being… Sigh… 

So, betwixt missing my best friends, the stress of work and decisions that need to be made with school, and since mind altering substances are no longer an option, I am left with getting to be physically intimate with someone to be distracted… Now I haven’t even had that for a few weeks… Sigh…  Thus all these emotions coming up…

I feel fat… Out of shape… I am doing the right thing by honestly disclosing my HIV status and taking that chance of accepting rejection and being able to live with an honest life where another is just not comfortable with that…  I am living a very very courageous and new life…

I need to remember to tell my storm how big my God is rather than tell my God how big my storm is….

Q

14,290…

So… I sooo desperately need to vent today… I’ve had quite a terrible day… It’s been detiorating from the past week…  It pretty much started with me coming down with a cold last week… My cold finally caught up with me and came at me with a revenge on this past Saturday…  I got all the symptoms with all the trimmings: runny nose, stuffy nose, sneezing, coughing, itchy throat, lungs and sinus…

So, I spent all of Sunday pretty much chillin and trying to recover….  It was a pretty miserable existence as I had plans on visiting my Sis and my Brother In Law… I was going to bring my camera to the Bellflower home and snap some shots before they move out of the home that I pretty much grew up in from 1979 until just 2001?  That’s a lot of years to spend in a home… A lot of memories… So, I spent the day and evening just in bed… Sigh…  I did get some chores taken care of though… I got the dishes cleaned, some vacuuming in… then the bathroom and even the kitchen floor! Oh yeah, loads and loads of laundry were done.

I was going to call in sick on Monday… But I didn’t as I had to present during a Training that I couldn’t get out of…  I presented the afternoon long peace and went to my meeting afterwards… I then chatted with my new pal in Holland…  Then to bed…

I woke up on Tuesday feeling really really lousy from a night’s worth of coughing with all the other symptoms…  Those symptoms did not subside… I continued having the coughy sneezy stuffy nose symptoms…  I didn’t want to spread my disease so I stayed home and rested most of it…  I did manage to clean my apartment clean on Sunday… I was grateful because I needed to be bedridden all of Tuesday… I didn’t even go to my evening meeting… In the many hours of being in bed and sleeping on my side or sleeping with elevated head from too many pillows?  I don’t know… Somehow, someway I ended pulling my back right neck muscle AGAIN!!  It was very annoying!!!

Then Wednesday came…  I spent the morning at our company launch of a new campaign to distribute condoms nationwide!  It was very cool being at the House of Blues…  The restaurant/bar/night club was empty at 11 in the morning…  We stayed for the President’s yet another inspirational speech before heading off to enjoy some continental breakfast followed by lunch with my co-workers at a Thai restaurant in Hollywood…

Then I was non-stop until 7:30P…  I was exhausted, but was pressured by my supervisor to get a project done… I left almost disoriented because I was so tired!  I went to my meeting to give a friend a cake for an anniversary… I couldn’t not be there because he’s one of my best friends… I stayed for the meeting and shared what was going on…

The final straw was some crazy homeless guy… I mean LITERALLY CRAZY guy tried to get change from me, but when I didn’t offer any up, he grabbed me pretty firmly… That really upset me!!!  Not cool man!!!  If I weren’t so disoriented, I would have dropped kicked it butt and then made amends later… I am glad I didn’t act on that…

Suffice it to say, I came home exhausted… With a pain in my neck to the point where I can’t move my head.  I am physically exhausted and dehydrated… I am sooo grateful I just cooked chicken soup in a crockpot for over 10 hours… The meat is falling off the bone and the bone is actually incredibly soft too!!!  Yum!!!  I love chewing the marrow!!!  I had 3 big helping bowls of it with a little rice…  It really helped rehydrate me…

So, now I am about to go to sleep… I just got done chatting with my bud in Holland… This whole webcam thing is a bit addictive…. It’s cool to be able to chat with someone around the world… See them and hear them and talk to them… This is the first time I’ve ever purchased a webcam… I kinda like it!

Anyway, I needed to vent a little bit as it’s been an interesting few weeks… My life has indeed become sooo full, I find little if any time to blog anymore…  My life has indeed become rich and meaningful and full of activities and people to hang out with and activities to do!  It’s quite fantastic actually…. The bummer part of it is that it’s all blog-worthy stuff to write about… Except that I find myself too tired at the end of each day to record the thoughts and feelings from days past…

Here are highlights… I turned 1 year sober this past July 21.  I got to make a list of people places and things I owe amends to and actually take the steps in doing so… I got to spend time with an old buddy and his son…. They reunited after many years of not knowing the other person existed…  I got a cat: BK = Burger King… He was originally named Baby Kitty, but for whatever reason, whenever I heard BK, I thought Burger King… So that’s his name…  I am too tired again to really write all the fantastic experiences I have had…

Alas, it’s time for me to go to sleep already again… I just needed to vent a little though… Thanks for listening all…  It’s been this long since I’ve had a bad day!!!  That’s fantastic!!!

Cheers,

Quoc

NUMBER 1: 365 days of continuous sobriety = no mind altering substances in my body!!!

2) There no power in being a victim; today I choose not to be a victim!

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Hello family!  May each of us remember to celebrate and honor liberation from bondage of our personal battles in our daily lives!  What did you work hard to fight for and now get to take a moment to celebrate and honor?

Happy 4th of July all!  Make it a safe one!!!

Quoc

13,113

So, I have been in pain in the past couple weeks…  Allow me to explain this emotional pain I have been experiencing…  I recently was gifted with an individual who sought me out as a spiritual guide…  I just willingly agreed to help him with hopes that he would receive the same opportunity at a different life as I have…  What I learned is that I can’t want “sobriety” for another person more than they want it; it simply doesn’t work that way.

I have been re-visiting my character defects of needing the person I am helping to validate me as someone who does have something to offer in helping save a life…  The truth is that I am not powerful enough to carry another person; I am only powerful enough to carry a message via my experience with hopes that the other individual will take to that and try what has worked for me and countless others…  The gift of getting to help another person is the guarantee that I get to stay sober as a result of helping another; not get them sober!

So, the past few days, this individual has verbally resolved to do whatever it takes to grow spiritually; his actions however told of a different story.  He has demonstrated lack of respect for the power of an insidious disease which wants nothing to do with spirituality as it finds spirituality poisonous and toxic!  I have been experiencing pain as a result of racking my brain in trying to get him to do what I am doing to grow spiritually… 

In calling my great-spiritual guide for help, he shared with me the following:  First and foremost to give thanks for the gift of this individual to teach me and show me the defect of characters I get to work on letting go:

1) Control = trying to control this individual when I don’t get to be controlling and make this person do anything!  I am powerless over that…  All I get is a healthy perspective of the power of this disease that separates me from a connection to spirituality and also the consequences of lack of gratitude for the help that others who have more spiritual maturity give to those in need of help.  What I get to do is pray to God to release control of that individual and just make myself available to assist him if and when he wants the solution to that very thing blocking him from the sunlight of the spirit… I ask God to help me “accept that all those in my life belong to our Higher Power and that person I am trying to help is not my personal responsibility to TEACH, CARE FOR, CORRECT OR CONTROL!  The ONLY responsibility I have to all other people is that which my Higher Power dictates for me!!!”

“THAT RESPONSIBILITY IS TO RELEASE THEM; TO LOVE THEM AND HOLD A POSITIVE FOCUS FOR THEIR HIGHEST GOOD!!!  I ask God to take full and complete care of them.”  What I get to do is model what it is to be a spiritually fit mature and wonderful man named Quoc with hopes that will be attractive enough for them to want what my Higher Power has graced me with.

2) Need for validation…  I shared with my great-spiritual guide that this person’s lack of action and follow through makes me feel ineffective and a bad spiritual guide in turn.  He shared with me that this issue is not about the person I am helping; rather, it’s all about me and my need this person’s “success” to give me validation that I am a good spiritual guide and have something to offer.  I get to ask God to remove this need to seek outside validation in turn for internalized pride and to seek that self-validation from within and from being a good role model and carrying the message despite the successes or failures of any around me.  I get to carry the message and remember that God does not do to me or do for me; GOD SHINES THROUGH ME…  God gets to shine through other people if they choose to let God shine through them.  When I am trying to reflect that light shining from others, it’s but a mere fascade and light from them and not God radiating from within myself!

I had such a powerful moment in hearing these things… So God, I give thanks that you brought this person in my life to help me identify my defects of needing to control and to need validation from others.  I ask that you remove the desire to control others and want of validation of others in return for PRIDE for the work that I have done in growing spiritually within myself… I ask that you remove my need to control other people and do what I think is best for them.  Please do not remove this person from my life until that person has taught me what I am here to learn from them!

The other unresolved parts of my life are this deep sense “grief” revisited for the loss of my Mom…  Mom’s 4 year anniversary of her passing is coming up on the 26th of June… I can’t believe it’s been 4 years already!!!  I can’t help but yearn and want to lay and sit back lazily on that couch in Bellflower and watch TV while the sweet delicious aroma of home cooked chinese/vietnamese food permeates the home… I would hear the clang of Mom’s cooking utensils against her oversized cast iron wok…  You can hear the sizzle of hot water and oil as it hits the hot metal as delicious vegetables and meats are instantly cooked as hot water, oil and food meat the searing hot wok…  These are the things I miss… My birthday is coming up in August…  I want to wake up to Mom surprising me with my annual bowl of soup filled with a chicken leg and noodles for long life and scallions to keep me clever…  I miss the smell of oil of olay that mom puts on her face and skin walking around the house after taking a shower… I miss the especially clean aroma that Mom gets the laundry (especially the bedsheets and pillowcases)… I can never reproduce what she created…  Sigh…

Then, I sit her feeling like a big tub of lard from many months of lack of exercise while continuing to pay month after month of my gym membership…  My stomach has finally umbrella’d over all my pants… This includes my fat pants!!!  It’s tragic to think that someone like me who stands 5′5 has gone from a waist size of less than 28″ over six years ago would surpass 32″ at present day!  I feel and look as unhealthy as ever…  Instead of challenging that self-disgust with action, I meet these self-deprocating thoughts and feelings by stuffing myself with more food matched with apathy…

In the last month, I just realized that I have also been stuffing my feelings by aimlessly spending money without regard to my income matching the expense… Goodness knows I still have thousands to pay off from my car repairs made back in January is it?  It is going to take incredible frugal spending for me to financially break even by December of this year…. This didn’t include the surprising additional thousand dollars I spent this past month.  I mean, WOW!!!  I really was spending as discreetly as possible but giving myself a chance to have a little fun in the past month…. How easy money is spent by me…  Sigh…  And this is without any other expenses from vices such as smoking cigarettes or eating out too often!!!  I am just bumfuzzled as to how quickly money bleeds out from my own pocketbook at any given moment…

So, here I sit concluding this blog so that I may commence upon a goal to assess my current financial standing and how to adjust my budget to pay off all debt as quickly as possible so that I incur the minimal amount of interest from the loans on my credit cards… I also am trying to incorporate what Suzie Orman suggested as an 8 month emergency cushion… I always thought it was 3 months… 8 months of emergency funds is indeed a much more realistic and safe cushion to fall back on if I should get in trouble and lose my job… Goodness forbid that happen aye?

Would be nice to make more money… I know my value is worth more than twice or triple what I am currently earning.  Now, how do I get creative in realizing that internal feeling of worth?

Before I go on babbling some more… Let’s stop and get my current budget in order and on-track to being balanced…  I still continue to share gratitude for your continued love and support… I know some of you who read it, but the remainder of the 100 or so blog hits from you folks every other week, I still am totally clueless…

Ciao,

Quoc

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I am finding that many of the men that I meet are deeply profound…  Then there are equally as many men who are sooo shallow that I can barely wade in…  Of course since I live in LA, there are just as many who are just plain ol’ profoundly shallow!!!

Of course there would be those sparse few who have that lovely balance of naivete and curiosity for life, but enough experience to make them wise in decision making…

SUFFICE IT TO SAY, life is in full swing with me… I have been grappling with changing the whole nature of this blog as I have recently discovered that what I have been writing has been breaching a time honored tenet and tradition of a spiritual group I belong to… Again, I don’t even know why I am being so cryptic about it when I have been so blatantly open in past entries for many years…

So how does one undo so many years of a time honored tradition of not “promoting” the very spiritual program I am living by sharing my personal experiences?  Expecially when these experiences good and bad hopefully will help inspire or motivate another person to become a better person?  Goodness knows I have been down many paths that don’t work and can share those with you so that you need not go through what I went through.  Guess I get to pray on this as well as ask those who have a lot more time in the group than I do for their guidance…

This is not the main reason why I haven’t blogged folks…  Between, weddings, sailing, helping others, work work work, and just having an incredibly full life I find myself too exhausted to blog as therapeutic as I know it is for me… Sigh…  What is a boy to do!!!

Last blurb is that I have been suffering from some mild grade of circumstantial depression…  Perhaps it’s stress from a lot of work and new responsibilities… Perhaps it’s because I am about a month away from a very important sober anniversary of not having shoved any mind altering substance into my body…  Perhaps it’s because it’ll be 4 years since Mom died this upcoming week…  Perhaps it’s because I have been “slowly” purging my life of the very clutter that is keeping other people away from my home…  IS THERE SUCH A THING AS EXPERIENCING A THIRD LIFE CRISIS?

Well, either way, I wouldn’t have been able to do all this without your unconditional love, support, thoughts and prayers…  May your journey be as interesting as mine is going…

You may reach me via e-mail at quoclam@gmail.com.  I have a blackberry now and able to receive messages and reply very quickly.  I find most correspondences from viewers here asking me about different points of interests like directions to the Hollywood sign… Again, who knows what purpose this blog site serves… Heck, I have been doing this for so long, it’s just become a rather regular part of my life to share those highlights with you…

I strongly support you in finding me in my new hobby and “addiction” facebook…  JUST LOOK UP “QUOC LAM” and friend me.  I think there are few enough Quoc Lam’s on facebook for you to easily find me.  Don’t take it personally if you do request to be a friend and I ask “who the heck” you are as I do truly have over 600 friends I have actually met and know personally!  Very very cool!

Until I check in again… Don’t forget to pause in the pursuit of happiness just to be happy!  See you here, on facebook via e-mail or heaven forbid I get to see you the way that we used to… IN PERSON!!!

Always in love & service,

Quoc