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Over the course of the Summer, I have had one catalytic experience over and over… and over again.

It started when I went back into counseling and we identified that my only sense of “core value” was in what I could do or provide for others. Which of course is also looking for others to approve or be grateful of what I can provide for them.

Having a core sense of value means I value myself just because I am me; that I am worthy of love, dignity, and respect simply because I exist. I am valuable because I was born to be the treasure, and completion, I seek.

Notice all the personal pronouns? I am trying to share my journey, not be some sort of horse-sh*t fake life coach passing along the fast food version of life-advice.

OH yeah, I was going to write about the repeated catalyst that has helped me to start seeing what all this means. That catalyst culminated in a very vivid dream not too long ago…

I dreamt about standing outside of a tomb (like what they portray were used back in the Bible days) where a body wrapped in burial clothes was waiting to be sealed in. It was a young adult. I spoke aloud a prayer to the Mother and Father (actually saw them together) to help this soul crossover from this realm to ours. Then three lights shaped in a pyramid came down and rested on me and I woke up.

I KNOW! Kind of trippy but I promise I was not micro-dosing anything…lol.

Now this is the real trip in the trippy. I woke up knowing exactly what it meant. I was insecure at first about it but over the course of the summer every relationship, every spiritual search all confirmed my interpretation:

• The dead person was the version of me I developed in my early adult life that had helped keep me alive but was in itself had become a hindrance to my core value.

• That the Mother and Father are actually my energy(energies). I have been told in pretty profound ways (my journals, counselor, and even a psychic) that my masculine and feminine energies are perfectly balanced. I have never doubted or been unaware of that in my life. Not sure how or why but that is at my core and something I have always sensed as true.

• And of course the version of me praying is the one that has emerged from the tomb with acceptance that I am no longer the version of me I need and have evolved into something more true and powerful

• The three lights were a blessing to say all this is true and divinely blessed.

I was praying to me to help me let go of an older version of me. ← that cracks me up… you have no idea how blasphemous that would sound to evangelical “exgay” Randy. Now it’s just a statement of fact.

I am Divine. So are you! We are all sparks of the Divine.

As a result of this turn I have just “known” what to focus on, rest and be nurtured in and let go. My artisitic efforts are gaining speed, I am reading actual books again, I’m cutting out a LOT of noise (news sources and online shenanigans. And sleeping a heckuva lot better.

Part of this transition (resurrection?) is this Substack. Instead of following a play book of writing schedules about topics I think others would be interested in or benefit from. I am going to use this Substack to do whatever I want to do with it. Like…

• Probably feature a lot more about my art

• I want to write some book/movie/music reviews. Especially ones with great symbolism.

• Dream/symbolism Interpretation(s)

• Whatever strikes my fancy

This time around I am not excited to create a “plan” wrapped around providing content others might want and that I am good at. It’s a peaceful acceptance that I can just focus on whatever is on my heart. If others benefit, great. But I am doing this for my benefit.

So this Substack is about to look, feel and read different :)

Thoughts? Please respond to the email that subscribers get with this post or leave a comment below.

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Back when I was a self-loathing pick-me Republican, I did get one thing right, Democratic leadership can be just as arrogant and self assured in all the wrong ways that Republicans can. Yes, back then I thought EVERYONE was arrogant (still do). Mind you, I have been a Democrat now for 11 years and the more I hope to see my now party change, I worry they won’t.

I worry they will keep insulting voters by calling them “lower educated,” “low information voters,” and “cult members”. Yes, some of the MAGA folks are but not all Republicans. And, then talk about how we accept everyone for who they are and value diversity, and THEY don’t. Then I watch the Democrats turn on each other while at the same time rejoicing over Republicans doing the same.

Point being, the beliefs are very different but the style and meanness look almost exactly alike.

I worry the Boomer elites will still live in idealism and not reality; that the younger generations will live in idealism and not reality of different flavors.

I worry Democrats think that they don’t have a version of the Republican “Good ‘Ol Boys” network without realizing their penchant for giving older leadership their “turn” to lead is basically the same thing with slightly less misogyny. I worry Democrats will look at successful local or state campaigns and turn them into formulaic talking points and action plans instead of actually meeting their constituents where they are at with an eye toward the greater good.

Not every community or electoral race should pattern themselves after New York City (even though I love NYC!).

I worry that we will not ever understand that the opposite of love is not hate, it’s apathy.

And while I love all the talk of a huge “blue wave” in November, we can’t take anything for granted. We have to be mindful, purposeful, not reactive.

The country is in a lot of pain. We need leaders to actually do the hard work of leading.

Welcome to Mugwump Ramblings, where once week I’m untangling decades of religious/political trauma, the next I’m laughing at myself, and somehow it all ends with coffee.

If you’ve ever felt like a ping-pong ball in a dryer, you’ll fit right in.

Come subscribe (free or paid, right now all content is free). We have stories, questionable life choices, and occasional moments of unexpected grace.

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We were the “first to go four” at Brentwood High School — the first freshmen to walk into a brand‑new building in 1982 and the first to walk out as graduates in 1986.

FORTY f**king years ago. Did you read that? FORTY.

It’s wild to think about how much life has happened since then, and how much of who I became was shaped by those four years — for better and for worse.

Brentwood back then wasn’t the polished, upper‑middle‑class enclave it is today. It was still half‑woods, half‑suburb, the kind of place where you could wander through thick vines with your dog and your brother and feel like the world was huge and wild. Those woods are mostly gone now, replaced by houses that cost more than my entire childhood.

The school itself did a fantastic job educating us. But it was also where I learned what it meant to be bullied, singled out, and scrutinized for something I didn’t even fully understand yet — my sexuality. Being perceived as “gay” in the mid‑80s wasn’t just dangerous; it was exhausting. Every hallway felt like a test I didn’t sign up for.

And yet, even with all that, I had three true friends who made those years survivable. I’m looking forward to seeing them again — and a handful of others I’ve grown close to over the past FORTY f**king years. But there are still a few who seem just as snotty now as they were then. Time may heal wounds, but it doesn’t always fix personalities.

I went to our 25th reunion in 2011 and had a surprisingly good time, even though I was deep in the far‑right/conversion‑therapy world. I’m sure it confused people. A few were probably relieved I had “found Jesus.”

Of course, I came out in 2015.

Since then, I made a comment on a classmate’s post about a non‑binary acquaintance who turned out to be a criminal. Some classmates unfriended me over it. Oh well. I’ll live.

But here’s the thing: most of my classmates have never met me as a healthy, stable, mature gay man. They’ve never met my husband. They’ve never seen the version of me that finally feels like himself.

So yes — I’m nervous.

I don’t want to walk in feeling judged or awkward, like I’m 16 again and trying to shrink myself to avoid attention. I don’t want to deal with lingering negativity from the Facebook fiasco. I’m concerned about homophobia from a few of the guys. I don’t want my husband or me disrespected. And I definitely don’t want to watch old social hierarchies snap back into place like a rubber band.

But I also know I’m being judgmental. Time has tempered a lot of things, including my own perspective. The class as a whole wasn’t as awful as I thought they were. And I haven’t exactly given them a chance to know me outside of the pain I carried back then.

They haven’t seen the healthy gay man I am today. And I’ve never interacted with them as him either.

Last week I wrote about struggling with a “core sense of value” — the belief that I matter simply because I exist, not because of what I can do or provide.

So I’m going to this reunion for one reason: Teen Randy deserves a champion.

He deserves someone to stand beside him and say, You were valuable all along. Those four years — not just school, but everything around them — stole any sense of safety and worth I had.

I’m rich now in all the ways that matter: love, relationships, self‑awareness, stability, peace.

Teen Randy deserves to be seen as an equal among his peers, even if I’m the only one who knows that’s why I’m going.

And my classmates deserve something too — the chance to be seen outside the lens of my old pain. Just like they haven’t met the man I am today, I’ve never met them without the armor I built back then.

Who knows? We may have an absolutely fantastic time.

Well, sh*t. Just gave myself another compelling reason to go.

Life is weird, people are complicated, and apparently I have a lot to say about both. Subscribe (free or paid) and I’ll deliver fresh stories, reflections, and the occasional bad joke straight to your inbox—saving you from having to remember to check Substack yourself.

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So, this is happening, is scanning us now. I don’t like it, but not alarmed by it. Should I be?

Substack has incorporated an AI detection tool called Pangram. So anyone can “Scan for AI” on any post submitted from yesterday(?) going forward. What is Pangram? Glad you asked:

• Pangram flags writing as human, AI‑assisted, or AI‑generated.

• It also claims to have precision it doesn’t fully have (well documented in the research I found).

• It misses nuance, voice, and context.

Creepy is the vibe. It’s a faceless-context-missing-judge watching writers. It will create labels that readers may not fully understand (example, AI assisted vs AI generated.) Plus, Substack is subversively pushing a narrative about trust and reinforcing an already existing bias that all AI use is evil or will produce evil.

For me, AI has been helpful but NOT my ghostwriter.

I write my own words, sentences, paragraphs, confusing metaphors and kind of tacky jokes with eloquent ninja-level cuss words. AI helps me with outlines (mostly bullet points), sometimes titles, and most of the graphics — speaking of potentially confusing metaphors, it sometimes (not all the time) is the article’s scaffolding, not the soul.

Oh excuse me, let me restate with an air of ninja-level cussing eloquence: it’s the f**king articles scaffolding and not the gosh dang it soul.

Trust comes from voice, consistency, and honesty. A machine‑generated badge at the bottom of a post isn’t going to make a difference but I don’t like it. That said, in today’s environment I do think writer’s need to be honest about how they use AI (if they use it). 1) to be transparent and 2) to displace the stigma with real helpful use-cases.

To be clear, I will keep writing the way I always have. You know my voice better than any detector ever will. If the Substack overlords want to scan my work, fine. Just don’t use it to “teach” the AI.

:::one eyebrow arched::: you hear me Substack?

And in the spirit of full disclosure, I use AI as a quick, collaborative tool that helps me sharpen ideas, shape article structure, and build the graphics (currently Copilot and Substack image generator). I write every word myself; AI helps my very random brain stay on track so I can publish my articles consistently… that’s it.

That said, my book WHY: A Memoir is 100% me and zero AI assistance.

What do you think about all of this? Agree, disagree, have strong opinions… all are welcome and encouraged to chime in.

I can’t promise answers, but I can promise questions worth wrestling with, stories that occasionally make people laugh, and the occasional sacred cow wandering into traffic. Subscribe free or paid and join the conversation.

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Carl Jung: "Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves." (This speaks to how the traits we vehemently hate in others are often unacknowledged parts of our own shadow self).

There’s a dude who lives in Oklahoma who is a real piece of shit work. I detest and have no respect for him. Shortly after I came out in 2015, he took it upon himself to “hand me over to Satan” and to give me a “final warning” before declaring that I was going to hell.

Back to the story…

I was so mad at Mr. OKC, that I rebuked his curses and prayed they would return to him seven-fold. I really wanted to see him crawling through the Oklahoma dust as all the negative energy he generates came crashing down on him with the “sudden destruction” he declared would happen in my life.

Yes, he really said that too.

As, I was slowly turning his life into a gay themed Stephen King novel in my mind I said to myself, “Self, what a horrible train of thought. You are no better than he is; one sanctimonious gremlin inspires another. Stop it!”

My higher self, and/or Holy Spirit (both?) pulls no punches. In that moment that was the very last though I wanted to hear running through my mind. But it did stop me in my tracks and ended the horrible reverie.

The truth is, as God as my witness, I really don’t want Satan to crawl up out of hell and drag Mr. OKC down into it. I don’t want destruction and humiliation to visit him. I want him to stop. I want him to accept God’s LGBTQ+ creation as equals. I do want him to learn difficult lessons because that is the ONLY possibility (that I am aware of) of breaking through his hatred and bigotry masquerading as love and godliness. I truly want that to happen without humiliation or destruction to him.

Simply, I want him to repent which, at its root, means to change his mind.

Don’t get me wrong. I still absolutely detest the asshole man. I just don’t want to become him by cursing him. There’s enough of that going on in the world.

::: sigh ::: So yeah, I still detest Mr. OKC. But he doesn’t get to live rent-free in my soul. I have lots of better things to do–live my life, love my people, and occasionally texting Lucifer Morningstar for insights into sanctimonious gremlins.

Life is weird, people are complicated, and apparently I have a lot to say about both. Subscribe (free or paid) and I’ll deliver fresh stories, reflections, and the occasional bad joke straight to your inbox.

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Yesterday I turned on my MacBook Air, logged in, and joined my online video therapy session expecting to process some of my “triggers” that happened this week and have the therapist tell me, “Yes, that is very insightful and you made a good decision in response.” Instead… you want to know what happened instead? Apparently I don’t have a “core sense of value.”

My therapist is an a**hole. A professional and a very good counselor a**hole.

Since then any free time outside of watching Avatar fiery ash people, I am obsessed with finding out what “not having a core sense of value” means :::le sigh:::

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Welcome back to the Micro‑Anxieties Olympics, the only global sporting event where every competitor is me, every event is unnecessary, and every medal ceremony involves me staring into the middle distance like a Victorian ghost.

This week’s games were intense. Records were broken. Sweat was shed. At least one judge (also me) cried.

Let’s recap the highlights.

🥇 The “Quick Question” Email Sprint

The starter pistol fires the moment an email arrives with the subject line: “quick question.”

My heart rate spikes. My soul leaves my body. My calendar spontaneously combusts.

It’s never quick.

It’s never a question.

It’s a quest.

A side‑mission.

A multi‑level boss battle disguised as casual correspondence.

I opened one this week and immediately needed electrolytes.

🥈 The 3 AM Mystery Noise Marathon

The rules are simple:

Hear a noise.

Panic.

Lie perfectly still like a possum pretending to be dead.

Was it the house settling?

A ghost?

A raccoon with ambition?

My brain insisted on a full investigation. My body refused to participate. Elite athleticism.

🥉 The “Hey…” Text Balance Beam

A single “hey…” with ellipses is emotional parkour.

Are you mad?

Are you pregnant?

Are you outside my house?

Why the dots?

Why the suspense?

Why am I sweating?

I performed a full routine on the balance beam of overthinking.

Honorable Mentions

• Self‑Checkout Judgement Trials — the machine knows I didn’t “place item in the bagging area.” It knows.

• Doorway Effect Relay — walked into a room, forgot why, walked out, remembered, walked back in, forgot again.

• Did I Lock the Door? Pentathlon — I did. I always did. I still checked twice.

Closing Ceremony

By Friday, I had collected enough imaginary medals to open a small anxiety‑themed museum.

But here’s the Thrive twist:

These micro‑anxieties are ridiculous, yes — but they’re also proof that we’re doing our best in a world that keeps throwing tiny emotional dodgeballs at us.

We’re still here.

We’re still laughing.

We’re still competing at an Olympic level in events no one asked us to enter.

Happy Friday, friends!

May your weekend be free of ellipses, mystery noises, and checkout machines that judge your bagging technique.

I can’t promise answers, but I can promise questions worth wrestling with, stories that occasionally make people laugh, and the occasional sacred cow wandering into traffic. Subscribe free or paid and join the conversation.

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This morning’s commute turned into something far more harrowing than the usual rush‑hour grind. I became a first‑hand witness to a violent collision that unfolded almost in slow motion right beside me. A massive commercial truck barreled down the road, ignored a red light, and tore through the intersection with terrifying force. I saw him coming early enough to stop, but the car next to me didn’t have that chance. The impact was catastrophic: the front of the car was nearly completely crushed, the vehicle spun violently, and it came to rest facing the opposite direction just feet from my door. My own car escaped with only a few scratches from flying debris, but the scene itself was anything but minor.

The driver who took the brunt of the hit was an elderly man, and the moment I saw him, the gravity of the situation settled in. His injuries created pain/tingling all over his body, and the shock on his face was something I won’t forget. In the seconds after the crash, everything felt suspended—sound, motion, even thought—until instinct took over. Because it was rush hour, dozens of people had witnessed the collision, and as soon as it was safe, we all moved toward the wreckage. Actually, I was already there and just had to get out of my car. It was remarkable how quickly strangers organized themselves without speaking, each person stepping into a role as if guided by some shared understanding of what needed to happen.

One person immediately called 911. Another knelt beside the injured man, urging him gently to stay still until paramedics arrived. Someone else began explaining what might be happening medically, offering calm in a moment that had none. I checked the damaged vehicle for fire risk, then spoke with the first police officer on the scene, relaying what I saw and confirming that the engine wasn’t burning even though it smelled like something rubbery was burning. The coordination was instinctive, almost automatic—an impromptu team formed out of urgency, empathy, and the simple human impulse to help.

Now, sitting on the couch after work, the adrenaline has faded but the clarity remains. I keep replaying the moment I noticed the truck wasn’t slowing down, the split‑second decision not to turn out in front of him, and how narrowly I avoided being part of the wreckage myself. Gratitude feels like the only appropriate response—gratitude for awareness, for instinct, for the strangers who rushed in without hesitation, and for the simple fact that I am unharmed. My car scratches can be repaired; the man who was hit will need far more than that.

Experiences like this remind me how fragile the everyday really is. One moment you’re thinking about your morning plans, and the next you’re watching lives change in an instant. Today, I’m holding onto the awareness that things could have gone differently, and the responsibility that comes with witnessing something so serious. I’m grateful to be alive, grateful to have been able to help, and hopeful that the man who was injured receives the care he needs.

Life is weird, people are complicated, and apparently I have a lot to say about both. Subscribe (free or paid) and I’ll deliver fresh stories, reflections, and the occasional bad joke straight to your inbox—saving you from having to remember to check Substack yourself.

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Couldn’t even wait two weeks after July 4th, our 250th birthday and we gotta get all twisted in a knot about someone dying? Of course! America loves a spectacle — even in death. The moment Lindsey Graham’s passing hit the news, the internet lit up like a stadium: half mourning, half mocking, everyone convinced their reaction was righteous. And honestly? I get it. The man spent decades weaponizing policy against people like me. He earned the contempt. But still — I couldn’t join the victory lap whole heartedly (even though some of the memes made me chuckle).

I couldn’t stand him. I detested his politics. I found his moral flexibility nauseating. He was the kind of man who could look straight into a camera, lie through his teeth, and still get invited back to Sunday morning shows. So when he died, I understood the catharsis. I understood the memes. I even understood the laughter. But I couldn’t participate.

Not because I’m noble. Not because I’m forgiving. Because celebrating the death of a sitting US Senator feels like bad patriotism — the kind that confuses vengeance for virtue.

Yeah, I know. I’m the old guy, standing on my lawn the neighbor kids CAN play on holding my sparkler, waving my flag, sipping some spiked lemonade while reciting the bill of rights...

I can’t rejoice in the death of the wicked without feeling like I’ve betrayed the version of America I still, somehow, believe in. The one that’s supposed to be better than its worst instincts. The one that’s supposed to hold space for accountability without losing its humanity.

And that belief — fragile, bruised, stubborn — is the only kind of patriotism I have left.

Let’s be clear: I’m not defending him. I’m not rewriting history. Lindsey Graham’s legacy is a masterclass in hypocrisy. He spent years enabling cruelty, then tried to rebrand it as “principle.” He helped build a political machine that chews up truth and spits out grievance. He made life harder for people who were already fighting to exist.

So no, I don’t mourn him. But I also don’t dance on his grave. Because the minute I start celebrating death, I start mirroring the same moral rot I’ve spent years calling out.

That’s the hangover — the one that hits after the fireworks fade and the hashtags die down. The realization that patriotism isn’t necessarily about loving the flag; it’s about refusing to become the monster you fought.

And listen, I’m not judging anyone who did celebrate. Some folks have every right to feel relief. Some have scars that never healed. Their reactions are theirs. Their patriotism, whatever that looks like, is theirs. I don’t get to police that.

But mine? Mine’s wired differently. It’s stitched together from too many nights spent believing this country could still grow up. It’s the kind that whispers, “Don’t lose yourself just because everyone else is doing their thing.”

Now, will I maintain this moral clarity when Trump eventually goes?

Let’s not kid ourselves. My patriotism might need a sabbatical that day. F**k Resident Clump. But even then, I suspect I’ll land in the same place — relieved, not gleeful… well … not totally gleeful ;). Because I don’t want to become the thing I escaped.

Patriotism, for me, is restraint in a culture that rewards rage.

It’s refusing to trade integrity for applause.

It’s believing that America can still be redeemed — even when its loudest voices make that belief feel naïve.

Welcome to Mugwump Ramblings, where once a week I’m untangling decades of religious trauma, the next I’m laughing at myself, and somehow it all ends with coffee.

If you’ve ever felt like a ping-pong ball in a dryer, you’ll fit right in.

Come subscribe (free or paid). We have stories, questionable life choices, and occasional moments of unexpected grace.

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Every publication eventually develops that one room where the conversation changes. You know the one. It’s after dinner. The dishes are mostly done. Someone says, “Can I ask you something?” Suddenly you’re talking about the stuff nobody brings up at brunch. Marriage. Sex. Therapy. Getting older. Faith. The weird things we believed. The even weirder things we believe now. That’s what After Hours is going to be. Think of it as the living room after everyone else has gone home and we’re all a little too comfortable to keep pretending we’ve got life figured out. If you’re looking for polished answers, this probably isn’t your room. If you’re looking for honest questions, welcome.

Over the past year, I’ve realized that some of the most meaningful conversations I’ve had with readers have happened in private messages and emails after an essay was published. People don’t usually write to tell me they agreed with my take on politics. They write to say, “Can we talk about what you said about marriage?” or “I’ve never told anyone this…” or “I thought I was the only one.” Those conversations have convinced me there’s a place for essays that are a little more personal than what I typically publish. Not because they’re scandalous—they’re really not—but because vulnerability deserves a little more intimacy than the open internet sometimes provides.

So yes, we’ll talk about marriage. We’ll talk about sexuality. We’ll talk about what it’s like to navigate life as a gay man who has lived enough different lives to qualify for some sort of frequent-flyer program. We’ll probably talk about therapy because, at this point, my therapist (past and present) has earned honorary co-author status. We’ll talk about aging, desire, embarrassment, joy, disappointment, and all the wonderfully awkward moments that remind us we’re still gloriously human. My promise is simple: I’ll tell the truth as best I know how, even when that truth is still unfolding. Especially then.

Now for the important announcement: this is the only post in the After Hours category that won’t have a paywall. I know, I know. Somewhere on the internet someone is already typing, “I can’t believe Randy is monetizing vulnerability.” To which I would gently reply, “Friend, have you seen the price of coffee lately?” More seriously, paid subscriptions help keep this publication going, and they create a smaller, more trusting community where these conversations can happen. Besides, if you’ve made it this far, you’ve already invested several minutes of your life in me. I’m simply asking if you’d like to make it official.

So, if you’d like to keep wandering through Mugwump Ramblings, Wayfinder, and Thrive, they’ll continue just as they always have. But if you’d like a seat in the room where the conversation gets a little quieter, a little funnier, a little messier, and a lot more personal, After Hours is waiting. Pull up a chair. The coffee’s still hot, the lights are low, and I have a feeling we’re going to tell each other some good stories.

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The other day someone called me “bro.”

Not ironically. Not sarcastically. Just a simple, friendly, “Thanks, bro.”

I smiled, replied in kind, and went on with my day. Then, about thirty seconds later, my brain finally caught up with the conversation and thought, Wait a minute… did someone just call me “bro?”

I’ve decided this is one of the stranger milestones of getting older.

I know exactly what the word means. It’s not really “brother.” It’s a handshake in verbal form. It’s a way of saying, “You’re good. We’re good.” It’s warm, casual, and strangely inclusive. Complete strangers can become “bro” within seven seconds of meeting each other, and nobody seems to question how that happened.

I actually like it.

What makes me laugh is that every time someone calls me “bro,” a tiny part of me wonders if I’ve been accidentally adopted by a younger generation that’s just trying to make the old guy feel included.

I realize that’s ridiculous. Nobody is looking at a fifty-eight-year-old man thinking, “Let’s make Grandpa feel welcome.”

At least… I hope not.

When I was younger, we had our own vocabulary. Everybody was “man.”

“Hey, man.”

“Thanks, man.”

“What are you doing, man?”

We managed to use one word to express greeting, confusion, sympathy, celebration, disappointment, and occasionally mild annoyance. It was remarkably efficient. Somewhere along the way, “man” quietly packed its bags and moved out, and “bro” bought the house.

Language does that. It evolves while you’re busy paying your electric bill.

One day you’re speaking perfectly normal English. The next day you’re reading an article explaining phrases like “it’s giving,” “mid,” or “no cap,” wondering if you’ve accidentally stumbled into a graduate seminar on ancient languages.

The funniest part is that I genuinely enjoy watching language evolve. Every generation invents its own shorthand. My grandparents were probably baffled by things I said in high school. My parents certainly were. I distinctly remember hearing, “Is that what the kids say nowadays?” more than once.

Now I hear those words coming out of my own mouth, and I don’t appreciate the role reversal nearly as much as I thought I would.

Every once in a while, I get brave enough to try using “bro” myself. It never goes well.

It sounds natural when a twenty-three-year-old says it.

It sounds… rehearsed when I do.

The words leave my mouth, and somewhere in the distance I can hear my knees making sounds they didn’t make twenty years ago.

The truth is, I don’t mind getting older nearly as much as I expected I would.

Sure, I have reading glasses in more rooms of the house than I’d like to admit. I make noises every time I stand up, and I’ve reached the age where a good mattress feels more exciting than a sports car. Those are simply the terms and conditions of the membership.

What surprises me is how much freedom comes with aging.

When you’re young, there’s enormous pressure to know what’s cool, wear what’s cool, listen to what’s cool, and somehow always be one step ahead of whatever everyone else is doing. It’s exhausting.

Somewhere along the line, that pressure quietly evaporates.

I don’t need to understand every trend anymore. I don’t have to know every slang word or every viral dance or every social media platform that appears out of nowhere and disappears six months later. I can simply watch it all unfold with curiosity and a healthy sense of humor.

That’s a pretty wonderful trade.

I’m fairly certain today’s twenty-year-olds will experience the same thing someday. Forty years from now, some bright-eyed kid will greet them with whatever futuristic version of “bro” exists in 2066, and they’ll smile politely while wondering whether humanity has finally given up on complete sentences.

Then they’ll catch themselves laughing.

Because that’s really what aging is if we’re lucky. It’s not becoming disconnected from the world. It’s becoming comfortable enough with yourself that you don’t mind if the world changes its vocabulary without asking your permission.

So please, keep calling me “bro.”

I’ll smile every time.

Just don’t be offended if it takes me another thirty seconds to realize you were talking to me.

If this made you laugh, you’ll probably fit in around here. Subscribe (free or paid) for weekly essays about life, faith, aging, healing, and whatever else my overthinking brain wanders into. No promises I’ll ever be cool… but I’ll always be honest.

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I spent a surprising amount of my life waiting for permission.

Not permission to do something reckless or irresponsible. I was waiting for permission to ask questions. Permission to admit I didn’t know. Permission to change my mind. Permission to disappoint people I loved. Permission to leave places that no longer fit. Most of all, I was waiting for permission to become the person I was slowly discovering I already was.

The strange thing is that I honestly believed someone else would eventually grant it. A pastor. A mentor. A therapist. A parent. Maybe even God. Surely, if I prayed hard enough or proved myself faithful enough, someone would finally look me in the eye and say, “It’s okay. You can live your life now.”

That moment never came.

I grew up believing maturity meant becoming more certain. The people I admired seemed so confident. They had answers for every question and convictions about everything that mattered. Doubt was given lip-service but wasn’t really considered part of a healthy faith; it was usually treated as evidence that something was wrong with you. If your beliefs were solid enough and your commitment deep enough, certainty was supposed to follow.

When it didn’t, I assumed the problem was me.

That belief followed me into adulthood and eventually into my work at Exodus International. Looking back, I can see I wasn’t just trying to do my job well. I was trying to earn approval from everyone who mattered. I wanted pastors to approve of me. I wanted donors to approve of me. I wanted board members, fellow leaders, and the broader evangelical world to see me as faithful, trustworthy, and “healed.” I wasn’t simply working; I was performing, constantly trying to prove that I belonged.

I don’t think I realized how exhausting that performance had become until my mind and body finally refused to cooperate.

The pressure eventually drove me back into counseling for the third time in my life. It was there that I received a diagnosis I never expected: complex PTSD.

At first, it made no sense to me. Complex PTSD was something soldiers experienced. Survivors of war. Survivors of horrific accidents. I hadn’t been through anything like that—or so I thought.

My counselor helped me understand something I had never considered. Trauma isn’t always the result of one (or more) catastrophic event. Sometimes it also accumulates over years of living in fear, shame, hypervigilance, and the constant pressure to be someone other than yourself. I had become so focused on earning approval that I had almost completely lost sight of the person God created me to be.

That diagnosis didn’t magically heal me, but it gave me language for an exhaustion I had never been able to explain. It also quietly changed the question I was asking. Instead of wondering how I could earn everyone’s approval, I began wondering whether I had been living for the wrong audience all along.

I don’t blame the people who were part of that chapter anymore. Most of them genuinely believed they were helping me. Many of them loved me. They were living out the beliefs they sincerely held, just as I was living out mine.

But somewhere along the way, I stopped asking them to write my life story.

That became even more important during the years leading up to my coming out. People are sometimes surprised to learn that I wrestled with my sexuality privately for several years before saying anything publicly. I didn’t share that journey with many people in my church world because I already knew what most of them would say. I could practically quote the conversations before they happened. I knew which Bible verses would be mentioned, which warnings would be offered, and how disappointed people would be.

When I finally came out, many people responded exactly the way I expected.

It hurt, but it also brought an unexpected kind of freedom. After years of fearing other people’s reactions, I realized I had survived them. The catastrophe I had imagined never arrived. Relationships changed. Some ended. Others deepened. My life became more complicated in some ways and much simpler in others.

The fear had been carrying more weight than reality ever did.

I’ve noticed that almost every meaningful change in my life has disappointed someone. Leaving ministry disappointed people. Changing my theology disappointed people. Coming out disappointed people. Even today, my husband and I continue discovering that marriage isn’t something you finish figuring out. Like every healthy relationship, it keeps inviting us to grow. We aren’t questioning our commitment to each other, but we are learning that authenticity sometimes asks different questions than certainty ever allowed.

I’ve slowly come to believe that living honestly and pleasing everyone have always been mutually exclusive goals.

That doesn’t mean we should become careless with people. Kindness still matters. Listening still matters. Humility still matters. I hope those qualities continue growing in me for the rest of my life.

But I’ve also learned that making other people’s comfort the measure of my faithfulness is a burden I was never meant to carry.

One of the unexpected gifts of getting older is discovering that the adults who seemed to have everything figured out were improvising far more than I realized. I’m approaching sixty now, and I can let you in on a secret: most of us are making the best decisions we can with the understanding we have at the time. Some people simply look more confident while they’re doing it.

Oddly enough, I find that comforting.

It reminds me that I’m still allowed to learn. I’m still allowed to change my mind. I’m still allowed to apologize when I’m wrong. I’m still allowed to grow into someone my younger self couldn’t have imagined without feeling obligated to defend every version of who I used to be.

These days, friends often come to me looking for advice. They tell me about careers they’re questioning, relationships they’re trying to understand, churches they’re thinking about leaving, or dreams they’re afraid to pursue. The older I get, the more I realize that most people aren’t really asking me what they should do.

They’re asking whether it’s okay.

Sometimes I can reassure them. Sometimes I can offer perspective. But I also know that my permission isn’t the permission they’re ultimately looking for.

Sooner or later, each of us reaches a point where we have to sign our own permission slip.

Not recklessly. Not selfishly. Not without listening carefully to wise people who have earned the right to speak into our lives. But with the quiet confidence that this one extraordinary, complicated, unrepeatable life is ours to live.

There will always be people who are more comfortable with the old version of you than the person you’re becoming. There will always be voices insisting that growth is betrayal or that changing your mind is weakness. If you wait for unanimous approval before becoming who you’re meant to be, you’ll spend your entire life waiting.

I know.

I did.

And if you’ve been sitting on the edge of a decision, hoping someone else will finally tell you it’s okay to ask the hard questions, to begin counseling, to leave what is crushing your spirit, to heal, to start over, or simply to become more fully yourself, let me save you a few years.

The permission you’ve been waiting for was never theirs to give.

It has been yours all along.

Life is weird, people are complicated, and apparently I have a lot to say about both. Subscribe (free or paid) and I’ll deliver fresh stories, reflections, and the occasional bad joke straight to your inbox—saving you from having to remember to check Substack yourself :).

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I’ve lived in enough places to know that every state has its own personality. Some are reserved. Some are polished. Some are convinced they’re more important than everyone else.

Florida, on the other hand, is the eccentric uncle who shows up to Thanksgiving wearing flip-flops, carrying a pet iguana, and insisting he has a foolproof plan to grill the turkey during a tropical storm.

You laugh at him.

Then, somehow, the turkey turns out amazing.

I wasn’t born here, which may explain why I still notice things that lifelong Floridians hardly acknowledge anymore. The first time I saw an alligator sunning itself beside a retention pond in a suburban neighborhood, I thought someone should call Animal Control. The people walking past me barely looked up from their phones.

“Oh, that’s Gary,” they seemed to be saying. “He keeps to himself.”

The wildlife here has absolutely no respect for personal boundaries. Lizards sprint across sidewalks like they own the deed to your property. Sandhill cranes stop traffic because they know they can. Ibis patrol Publix parking lots with the confidence of organized crime bosses collecting protection money in the form of dropped French fries. Even the squirrels seem unusually confident, as if they’ve figured out humans are mostly bluffing.

Then there’s the weather.

I’ve lived in places where meteorologists carefully explain approaching storms over the course of several days. Florida’s forecast is more spontaneous.

At three o’clock the sky is brilliant blue. By three-fifteen it looks like the opening scene of an apocalypse movie. Rain falls so hard you begin wondering whether someone tipped the Gulf of Mexico sideways. Lightning cracks with theatrical enthusiasm, palm trees bend dramatically, and every outdoor plan you’ve made dissolves into a puddle.

By four o’clock the sun is shining again, someone is mowing the lawn, and your neighbor is grilling burgers as if none of it ever happened.

If Florida has taught me anything, it’s that life can completely fall apart for twenty minutes and then unexpectedly become beautiful again.

That’s not just true about the weather.

It’s true about people.

When I first moved here, I wasn’t looking for Florida. I was looking for whatever came next.

Like many of us, I’ve lived several different lives. I’ve been certain about things that later unraveled. I’ve built careers that eventually ended. I’ve held convictions that no longer fit the person I was becoming. Somewhere along the way, I stopped thinking life was a straight line and accepted that it’s more like wandering through an unfamiliar city without a map.

Florida turned out to be an appropriate place for that kind of wandering.

It’s difficult to take yourself too seriously in a state where hurricanes are given friendly first names and everyone debates whether bottled water or peanut butter is the more essential emergency supply. Floridians prepare for natural disasters with a curious mixture of common sense and optimism.

“We should probably keep an eye on this storm.”

“Absolutely.”

“You think it’ll hit us?”

“Hard to say.”

“Want to go to Publix?”

Of course we do.

Publix deserves its own chapter in Florida history. Somewhere between the bakery, the deli, and the impossibly cheerful employees asking if they can help you find something, it became more than a grocery store. It’s practically a community center with better sandwiches. I don’t know what they put in those chicken tender subs, but I’m fairly certain they’re responsible for maintaining statewide morale during hurricane season.

And speaking of hurricanes, there’s something oddly comforting about the way Floridians face them together. Neighbors check on neighbors. People share generators, chainsaws, and bags of ice. Complete strangers help one another clear fallen trees. For all the jokes about “Florida Man,” I’ve encountered far more Florida kindness than Florida craziness.

Maybe that’s true everywhere. The headlines just aren’t interested in ordinary goodness.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that the places we love aren’t necessarily the most beautiful or the most exciting. They’re the places where our lives quietly unfold. Home isn’t built from postcards or travel brochures. It’s built from favorite restaurants, familiar roads, neighbors who wave, sunsets you’ve watched a hundred times, and ordinary Tuesdays that slowly become the story of your life.

Florida is where I continued writing after I wasn’t sure I had a book in me.

It’s where I met the man who became my husband.

It’s where I’ve laughed with friends, buried old versions of myself, started therapy again when I needed it, and slowly discovered that healing isn’t usually dramatic. Most of the time, it looks like living another ordinary day with a little more honesty than the day before.

Looking back, I realize I didn’t simply move to Florida.

I grew into it.

Its unpredictability made me a little more flexible. Its storms reminded me that bad weather doesn’t last forever. Its beauty taught me to pay attention, because some of the most breathtaking sunsets I’ve ever seen arrived only after skies that looked impossible an hour earlier.

Maybe that’s why I feel at home here.

Florida isn’t polished. Neither am I.

It’s a little loud, occasionally misunderstood, stubbornly resilient, surprisingly generous, and just eccentric enough to keep life interesting.

Come to think of it, we’re probably good for each other.

So go ahead and make the “Florida Man” jokes. I’ll probably laugh right along with you.

Just don’t expect me to live anywhere else.

After all, every family has that one delightfully eccentric relative who embarrasses everyone at reunions but would also drive across the state at two in the morning if you needed help.

America’s just lucky Florida is ours.

And I’m lucky it’s mine.

Happy 4th of July—and happy 250th birthday, America!

I’ve had the privilege of visiting every major U.S. city...

...except San Francisco.

Which, considering I’m a gay man, feels like admitting I’ve never been to Palm Springs because I have never been there either!

One of my favorite things about traveling this country is discovering that every state has its own personality. New York thinks it’s the center of the universe. Florida is basically America’s group project where nobody is supervising. Texas would like you to know it’s Texas. And every small town has at least one diner that serves pie capable of healing emotional wounds.

America is weird.

Beautiful.

Infuriating.

Generous.

Loud.

Contradictory.

We’ve done incredible things. We’ve also done things that should haunt us forever. Slavery. The treatment of Native peoples. Japanese internment. Plenty of wars we should have thought longer about. And yes... we’ve occasionally elected people who make you stare into the middle distance and whisper, “Well... that’s certainly an evil WTF choice.”

Some of y’all know exactly who I’m talking about. The rest of y’all think I’m talking about someone else. That’s kind of the point.

But here’s what keeps me hopeful.

This country has repeatedly reinvented itself. We’ve changed the world through science, medicine, technology, music, literature, entrepreneurship, aviation, space exploration, and enough cultural exports to convince half the planet they need blue jeans, barbecue and a pet dragon.

Freedom has never been something America perfected. It’s something we’ve argued about for 250 years.

Sometimes we’ve expanded it.
Sometimes we’ve restricted it.
Sometimes we’ve forgotten who it was supposed to belong to.

And somehow, despite all our spectacular ability to make a mess of things, we keep dragging the conversation forward. And for me…

That’s worth celebrating.

Not because America is flawless.

Because America is unfinished.

Happy 250th birthday to this loud, complicated, occasionally embarrassing, often inspiring experiment in democracy.

May we keep arguing, keep growing, keep laughing at ourselves, and keep becoming a country our great-grandchildren won’t have to apologize for.

Now somebody explain to me how I’ve managed to visit every major American city except San Francisco.

I really need to fix that. 🇺🇸

If you enjoyed this ramble, consider subscribing. I write about faith, politics, sexuality, culture, mental health, travel, and the wonderfully messy business of being human—with equal parts humor, honesty, and the occasional side-eye. Subscribe for free to get new posts in your inbox, or become a paid subscriber to support my work and help fund the coffee, questionable life choices, and stories that somehow keep turning into essays.

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To celebrate America’s 250th birthday, I’m rolling back my subscription prices... well, at least a little.

For a limited time:

🇺🇸 Monthly Membership — $2.50/month
🇺🇸 Annual Membership — $25/year
🇺🇸 Founding Member — $75/year

Whether you’ve been reading since day one or you’ve just wandered into this strange little corner of the internet, I’d love to have you along for the ride.

Expect thoughtful essays, honest memoir, humor, stories from life after the exgay movement, faith that asks questions instead of demanding certainty, and the occasional rabbit trail that somehow ends up making sense.

Think of it as celebrating 250 years of free speech by supporting one guy who uses it a lot, like enthusiastically a lot. And, sometimes it is even eloquent :)

Thanks for reading, for sharing, and for being part of this community.

Happy Independence Day! 🇺🇸

If you haven’t read Matthew Vines’ recent guest essay in The New York Times, it’s worth reading before you read my response:

Original article: Matthew Vines: “Queer Politics Has Failed Gay People”

Matthew Vines’ essay argues for a vision of gay identity that is more familiar, more stable, and ultimately more acceptable to the broader culture. I understand the instinct. We’ve spent decades trying to convince our neighbors that we’re not so different after all.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was reading a different version of the Christian legalism many of us spent years trying to escape.

Legalism doesn’t always sound religious.

Sometimes it simply sounds certain.

One of the lasting wounds from my years in the ex-gay movement wasn’t just being told what to believe. It was being told there was one correct way to understand complex human experiences. Every question had a definitive answer. Every gray area had to become black or white. Every mystery had to be solved before anyone could belong.

I hear echoes of that certainty whenever someone insists they’ve discovered the “mature,” “healthy,” or even “biblical” way to be gay.

Matthew Vines has spent years making the biblical case that loving, committed same-sex relationships are consistent with Scripture. I respect the courage it took to challenge the theology many of us inherited, and I know his work has been life-giving for countless people; including myself.

But in reading his latest essay, I found myself wondering whether the framework itself has changed as much as the conclusions. While he rejects conservative answers, he still seems to be searching for the correct Christian model—the faithful pattern against which other expressions of LGBTQ+ relationships are measured.

That’s the part that gives me pause.

Having spent years inside evangelical Christianity, I’ve grown wary anytime someone claims to have finally discovered God’s blueprint for complicated human lives. I don’t care whether the conclusion is conservative or progressive. The instinct feels familiar.

It’s the instinct that says, “We’ve finally gotten the interpretation right.”

To me, that’s simply another form of Christian legalism.

Legalism isn’t defined by the conclusions it reaches. It’s defined by the confidence that there is one divinely sanctioned answer for everyone—and that faithful people should all arrive there.

The irony is that many LGBTQ+ people fought for the freedom to escape rigid categories, only to find ourselves creating new ones.

I don’t particularly care whether someone calls themselves gay, queer, lesbian, bisexual, or something else entirely. Those words are useful until they aren’t. They help us communicate, but they should never become fences that define who belongs and who doesn’t. Language evolves because people evolve.

What concerns me more is the assumption that there is one ideal expression of LGBTQ+ relationships.

For centuries, marriage itself has been anything but static. It has been economic, political, patriarchal, romantic, egalitarian, sacramental, contractual, and countless combinations in between. Even heterosexual marriage has changed dramatically over the last hundred years.

So why, after finally winning the right to marry, would we assume there is only one acceptable model for gay marriage?

That question isn’t theoretical for me.

My husband and I are living in that in-between space ourselves. We aren’t questioning our marriage. We aren’t questioning our commitment to each other. If anything, we’re more committed than we’ve ever been.

What we’re questioning are some of the assumptions we inherited about what marriage is supposed to look like—assumptions shaped as much by modern Western culture and patriarchal traditions as by any timeless understanding of love and commitment. We’re discovering that building a healthy marriage may require more curiosity than conformity.

I don’t have neat answers yet. In fact, I’m intentionally resisting the urge to have them.

We’re in the middle of a conversation about what expressions of marriage and sexuality help us become healthier individuals and a healthier couple. It’s still very much a work in progress. Frankly, I think that’s exactly where growth happens—not in certainty, but in curiosity.

Don’t worry. This isn’t the prelude to an announcement. It’s simply a growth opportunity for both of us, and one we’re navigating together with honesty, respect, and a great deal of love.

Maybe that’s why I found myself pushing back against Matthew’s essay. I appreciate his desire to ground LGBTQ+ relationships in Christian faithfulness. I simply no longer believe there is one biblically prescribed template for healthy gay relationships—or for healthy marriages in general.

I’m living proof that real marriages don’t always fit tidy categories. They evolve. They ask new questions. They invite us to keep learning about ourselves and each other.

The moment we begin insisting there’s one faithful pattern that everyone should follow, I worry we’ve wandered back into the same certainty that wounded so many of us in the first place.

Some couples embrace traditional roles. Others intentionally reject them. Some structure their relationships around strict monogamy, others around negotiated openness, and many find themselves somewhere in between. Healthy relationships aren’t measured by how closely they resemble a mid-century suburban ideal. They’re measured by honesty, mutual care, consent, and the ability to flourish together.

Too often our public conversations reduce these questions to binaries: respectable versus radical, gay versus queer, traditional versus progressive. Real life refuses to cooperate with those categories.

Perhaps that’s because human beings are wonderfully untidy.

I’ve become increasingly suspicious of anyone—including myself—who claims too much certainty about how other people should build meaningful lives. The older I get, the more convinced I am that humility is a better guide than certainty.

I spent enough years believing God had handed us an instruction manual for every complicated question. Experience taught me otherwise.

Maybe the healthiest communities aren’t the ones that agree on every definition or every model of marriage. Maybe they’re the ones spacious enough to admit that faithful, loving, flourishing lives can take more than one shape.

That isn’t moral confusion.

It’s intellectual humility.

For most of my life, I confused certainty with faithfulness.

Today, I suspect humility may be the more faithful posture.

I don’t know exactly what the future of marriage will look like—for straight couples, for gay couples, or even for my own. I’m finally okay admitting that.

After surviving certainty, humility feels like freedom.

I can’t promise answers, but I can promise questions worth wrestling with, stories that occasionally make people laugh, and the occasional sacred cow wandering into traffic. Subscribe free or paid and join the conversation.

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I used to think consistency was one of the highest virtues—that if you believed something on Monday, you should believe the same thing on Friday, and changing your mind meant you were compromising, backsliding, or being deceived. Looking back, I realize how much energy I spent trying to stay the same, even when life was inviting me to grow.

I’ve lived enough lives now to know that growth almost always looks suspicious to people who aren’t growing in the same direction.

One of the more amusing parts of getting older is discovering that your younger self would probably argue with your current self—and lose spectacularly. At least I hope he would. Although, if I’m being honest, younger Randy had the confidence of a man who’d read three books and was prepared to explain the universe to anyone who accidentally made eye contact.

That last paragraph is cringe and chuckle-worthy all at once :)

These days I’m far less interested in winning arguments than I am in understanding people. That’s not because I’ve become soft. It’s because life has a remarkable way of sanding down the sharp edges of certainty.

I’ve buried people I loved. I’ve watched marriages thrive and others quietly unravel. I’ve celebrated extraordinary joy and sat beside heartbreaking grief. I’ve learned that real life stubbornly refuses to fit inside tidy theological systems, political slogans, or inspirational coffee mugs.

Experience has a way of humbling us—if we let it.

There was another lesson I learned the hard way.

When I came out, a lot of people were shocked. To them, it seemed like I’d changed overnight. They couldn’t understand how someone who had spent years in ministry and leadership could suddenly announce something that, in their minds, came out of nowhere.

What they didn’t know was that it hadn’t come out of nowhere. I’d spent several years wrestling with questions I wasn’t ready to share. Those years were lonely, painful, and often confusing. I kept that journey to myself because I already knew what many of my church family would say. I didn’t need to imagine their responses—I had spent enough of my life saying some of those same things to other people.

When I finally did come out, they said almost exactly what I expected. It hurt, but it didn’t surprise me. In an odd way, keeping my journey private had given me time to prepare for that moment. I wasn’t trying to deceive anyone. I was trying to survive long enough to tell the truth.

That experience taught me something I hope I never forget: when someone’s life seems to change overnight, it almost never has. You’re usually seeing the final chapter of a story they’ve been quietly living for a very long time.

Imagine how different our friendships, families, and communities would be if our first response to someone’s growth wasn’t, “But that’s not who you used to be.”

Well… I certainly hope not.

I don’t want my fifty-eight-year-old self to be trapped inside the worldview of my twenty-eight-year-old self. That wouldn’t be faithfulness. That would be emotional taxidermy.

And let’s be honest. None of us wants to be preserved like a mounted deer head hanging over someone’s fireplace. We were made to breathe, to wander, to question, and occasionally to discover we’ve been spectacularly wrong.

Preferably before posting about it on social media. #learnedthehardwayrepeatedly

Change isn’t always improvement. People can become more fearful, more cynical, or more rigid. Growth isn’t automatic just because the calendar keeps flipping.

But healthy change usually leaves clues. It produces more compassion than condemnation. More curiosity than certainty. More peace than performance.

I’ve found that the people who are most comfortable allowing others to evolve are usually the ones who’ve given themselves permission to do the same. They know what it costs to rethink old assumptions. They understand the courage it takes to apologize, to learn, and sometimes to begin again.

Maybe that’s why grace matters so much.

Grace isn’t pretending our past didn’t happen. It’s refusing to chain someone to it forever.

I don’t expect everyone to agree with who I’ve become. Frankly, there are days I’m still getting acquainted with him myself. But I hope I’ve become someone who’s quicker to listen, slower to judge, and much more willing to admit when I don’t know something.

That feels less like losing my convictions and more like finally growing into them.

If someone in your life is changing, resist the urge to freeze them in an old photograph. Get curious instead. Ask questions. Listen to their story. You may not end up agreeing with every conclusion they reach, but you’ll probably understand them better.

And if you’re the one who’s changing, don’t apologize simply because your journey makes someone else uncomfortable.

We’re supposed to change. Trees do it. Rivers do it. Caterpillars have built an entire public relations campaign around it.

Maybe becoming isn’t a betrayal of who we were.

Maybe it’s exactly what we were created for.

Life is weird, people are complicated, and apparently I have a lot to say about both. Subscribe (free or paid) and I’ll deliver fresh stories, reflections, and the occasional bad joke straight to your inbox—saving you from having to remember to check Substack yourself.

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I almost didn’t go.

It was my first Pride after coming out, and I spent far too much time trying to think of reasons to stay home.

What if someone recognized me?

What if I didn’t belong?

What if everyone else looked like they knew exactly who they were while I wandered around looking like a tourist who had taken a wrong turn?

For years, I had lived inside a world where Pride wasn’t something to celebrate. It was something to warn people about. Something to debate. Something to fear.

And now I was driving toward it.

Terrified.

I wish I could tell you I arrived full of confidence and immediately felt at home. I didn’t. I felt like an imposter. Like someone who had accidentally wandered backstage before the show started.

The funny thing about fear is that it rarely tells the whole story. Because somewhere in the middle of that overwhelming, noisy, colorful day, a man asked if I’d like to get coffee sometime. That man is now my husband.

Life has a wicked sense of humor.

The place I had once been taught represented everything wrong with the world became the place where my future quietly introduced itself. Not with fireworks. Not with a choir of angels. Just with coffee.

…

Looking back, I realize my fear that day wasn’t really about Pride. It was about identity. For years, I had believed the greatest act of faith was protesting the very person I was. I didn’t stand outside Pride with a picket sign. I carried something much heavier.

I carried the belief that if I prayed long enough, surrendered hard enough, and obeyed faithfully enough, God might someday make me someone else. I wasn’t protesting gay people. I was protesting Randy.

…

These days, when June rolls around, I think about that frightened man walking into his first Pride carrying more fear than confidence. If I could find him in that crowd, I’d probably put a hand on his shoulder and tell him to breathe. I’d tell him that healing isn’t nearly as loud as fear makes it sound. I’d tell him that one day he’ll stop negotiating with God over whether he’s allowed to exist.

And then I’d smile and point across the crowd. “See that guy over there?” “Go have coffee when he asks you to.” You never know how God is going to answer a prayer.

Sometimes the answer isn’t becoming someone else.

Sometimes it’s finally becoming yourself.

Welcome to Mugwump Ramblings, where one week I’m untangling decades of religious trauma, the next I’m laughing at myself, and somehow it all ends with coffee.

If you’ve ever felt like a ping-pong ball in a dryer, you’ll fit right in.

Come subscribe (free or paid, right now all content is free). We have stories, questionable life choices, and occasional moments of unexpected grace.

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There’s a particular kind of clarity that only comes after you’ve been doing something the hard way for long enough.

You don’t notice it while it’s happening. You’re too busy figuring out plugins and category IDs and whether your featured image is the right aspect ratio and why the block editor just ate the last three paragraphs you wrote. You tell yourself this is just part of it. This is what having a real blog looks like.

And then one day you sit down to write something that matters to you — something personal and a little raw and maybe even important — and you realize you’ve spent forty-five minutes on formatting and approximately eleven minutes on the actual words.

That’s the moment.

I built a space on WordPress because I wanted ownership. Control. The ability to make it mine in ways that a platform couldn’t take away. And those things are real. WordPress delivered them. I’m not here to throw shade at a tool that did exactly what it promised.

But here’s what I didn’t fully account for: I am a writer. Not a webmaster. Not a developer. Not someone who should have strong opinions about DNS settings or plugin conflicts or whether the mobile version of my site is rendering correctly on a Samsung Galaxy S22.

I have opinions about words. About stories. About the particular kind of honesty that only happens when you stop performing and just tell the truth.

WordPress is a fantastic platform for people who want to build a website that also has a blog. Substack is a platform built for people who want to write, full stop. And somewhere along the way I forgot which one I actually am.

So here’s what’s changing. All of it.

Mugwump Ramblings. Wayfinder. Thrive. The whole operation has moved to Substack. Every vertical, every category, every post I write from here on out — it’s all happening there.

No more block editor. No more plugin drama. No more spending a Tuesday afternoon troubleshooting why my featured image looks fine on desktop and completely unhinged on mobile. Just writing. Actual writing. The kind where the only thing standing between a thought and a published post is whether I have something worth saying.

And honestly? I almost always have something worth saying. You know I am right… right? I mean really, like all the time :).

Substack does something WordPress never quite cracked for me: it makes the relationship between writer and reader feel like a relationship. Notes. Replies. The sense that we’re in a conversation rather than me shouting into a website and hoping the algorithm decides to tell you about it. You’ll get the posts in your inbox like letters. You can write back. We can actually talk.

That’s the version of this I’ve wanted all along.

So what happens to randyscobey.com?

It becomes what it probably should have been for a while now — an archive and a home base. The memoir page stays. The about page stays. The years of posts stay, exactly where they are, not going anywhere. But the living, breathing, weekly writing? That’s moving to Substack, effective immediately.

Glad you are here! Subscribe. Tell a friend. Bring snacks.

The duckknuckles have migrated, and there’s plenty of room.

randyscobey.substack.com

Thanks for coming with me. The next chapter’s already started.