My work tonight overlapped with my dinner, which means my two whiskey sours overlapped with a couple of glasses of Garnacha rosé. After making my minimum target word count this evening on the manuscript of Star Trek: Seekers #1, I scribbled this mess on Facebook. Now I re-post it here for your reading enjoyment.

***

Forgive me, folks, I’m a few drinks into my evening.

For some reason, I was just reflecting on the ignorant, sheltered youth I was 26 years ago when I first moved to New York City to attend NYU film school.

When I first came to NYC, I was the product of a blue-collar, western-Massachusetts upbringing. I was more conservative than one would expect of a “Tax-a-chusetts” native. Though I didn’t realize it back then, at the time I was a homophobe, and a misogynist, and a chauvinist, and a giant fucking asshole. (I can already hear a few of you: “Was?” Shaddup.)

Fortunately, I made friends of smart people with good souls. People like Glenn Hauman, and Carol Pinchefsky, and Jeff Willens, and many others, who, through their better examples, saved me from the worst parts of myself and showed me a better way to live. They showed me the man I could be, if I was willing to work at it.

In the years that followed, living in New York City became the best teacher of tolerance (and, later, acceptance) that one could hope for. I made friends with people of many different beliefs and ideologies, different ethnicities, sexualities, gender identities, and philosophies. I learned that no matter how different people might seem from myself at first, in the end, they weren’t that different.

We all want to lead lives of purpose. Do work we believe in. Love people and be loved, and not be judged for it. Share ideas and reconsider our own notions without being called flip-floppers or hypocrites. We all want to be treated fairly, and be able to trust our friends, and be trusted in return. We want to be remembered.

We are all human. We all deserve to be loved and respected. None of us should have to explain ourselves, as long as we live in ways that respect one another’s privacy, sovereignty, and dignity.

I’ve learned to love all manner of people as my brothers and sisters. The only thing I can’t learn to accept is hate. Blind hate, no matter the excuse, is a critical failure of the human potential.

In the end, I think we should weigh our lives not by our financial worth or worldly successes, but in the measure of love and respect we share with those whose lives exist beside ours, and whose lives will follow ours.

I still fail sometines. I know I need to do better. I will try. I hope you’ll all help me, and not give up on me when I fuck up.

I am a work in progress. Thanks for sticking around while I work out the bugs.

That’s all for tonight. I think I’ll go watch old TV shows on Netflix now.

***

You’re welcome. You may now talk amongst yourselves.