Author: Nick Brobeck

Documenting Your Lives

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Call me crazy, but lately I have felt inspired.  Inspired to do more, to be more inspirational.  One way that I feel that we can do that is to share with the world how wonderful our lives are as a married couple.

To that effect, we have started a new YouTube channel!

Click here to visit the Nick and Greg channel… and you’d better subscribe too while you’re there!

But you may ask yourself, “Why are you doing this?”  I say why not?  Life is too short to not share the fun times you have.  I have held myself back too much lately for my own good and I think it’s time to let it all hang out.  We should all be proud of who we are and love doing it for every second!

Be proud! 🙂

Workout 4

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I got in 30 minutes on the Treadmill and 15 minutes on the stationary bike.  I feel good!

I also weighed in yesterday, I dropped from 379.3 to 377.0, I lost 2.3 pounds!  Awesome!

Summary:

Workout Day 2

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I’m getting there.  I need to do more than just treadmill eventually.  Gradual steps!

Back at it Sunday.

Workout Day 1

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I will start posting these as accountability for my workouts.  I’m gradually going to work my way up to where I need to be.

I had a great first go back at it, don’t you think?

Next workout on Thursday!

New Focus

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This post put simply is to get down my thoughts on my new focus in life.  I have a new positive outlook on things!  I want to share my story with the world in a way that I haven’t before.

I have an awesome life already. I have an awesome husband, and a great job.  What more could I ask for?

I have a voice, and I intend to use it for the greater good of all that is great and good in this world.

More to come over the coming days.  But, suffice it to say, I am changing every day for the better.

 

The Dark Times

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This will be a rather long entry, but I feel like there is a lot of backstory in my life that I need to put on the record:

There was a period of my life that, when I look back on it, could be a dark time to some who don’t know the whole story.  I was out of the closet, but I wasn’t happy with other facets of my life.

I had graduated high school in May 1997 and decided to go to Mountain Empire Community College the next fall.  I decided to major in Electronics.  I didn’t have a knack for the curriculum and decided to sit out the Spring 1998 semester and re-evaluate my career path.  I did not come back until a couple of semesters later and I changed my major to Accounting.  I took it slow and eventually I decided that this wasn’t the major for me either.  I decided after the Fall 2000 semester to take another break from college.  It was around this time that I was trying to sort out my sexuality as well, so that mattered a lot in relation to this decision.

Before I came out, I had decided to work for a while and see where that went.  I had a great job at my hometown cinema, Lee Cinema.  It was there that I met one of my best friends, Brian Bloomer.  We worked well together and made a great team, and he is a lifetime friend.  (We fell out of touch for a while, but we reconnected!)

In 2002, after I had come out to the world, I decided to move to Kingsport.  Here is where what I call my “dark time” began.  It wasn’t 100% dark, but there were challenges to make it so.  As I began to explore dating and finding somebody to love, I met several people.  Most of them ended up being flings and I did end up in a couple of relationships.  I had a job and lost that job (let’s not go back into that again…) as well.

One of these relationships was with a very weird guy.  He lived out in Sullivan County with his parents and had some interesting religious ideas.  Nothing wrong with that, until he met someone else and tried to make it a threesome.  That was when I called it off.

I apologize if that last sentence seems very sordid, but this is an honest blog.

Christmas was not a particularly good holiday for me during this period either.  I lost my father just before Christmas of 2001, and my beloved Great Grandmother on Christmas Evening 2002.  It was a very rough time indeed for my whole family.

In 2003 I moved to Gray and got a job at the major call center there.  (Those of you in the Tri-Cities will know what that is.)  It was around this time that I met two other lifelong friends who helped get me through dark times, Dan Darnell and Jon Hunter.  More or less, they were my buddies that I would go to New Beginnings with just about every weekend.   Dan helped me out a lot when things got really challenging for me, he even let me spend one Thanksgiving at his house when I couldn’t go home to be with my family.  I had a couple of bad bouts with kidney stones around this time, and Dan and his grandmother came and helped me get home from the hospital after the second bout.  I can’t thank them enough for being so helpful to me it a bad time.

Jon is just a friend with a heart of gold.  He would hang out with me when most other people wouldn’t.  He would come and pick me up and we would go to Newbies or Pharaoh’s (remember that place?)

These friends mattered to me a lot, because I was very, very depressed under the surface.   I look back on this entry from June 2003 and it brings back a lot of strong feelings.  I would lay in bed and cry myself to sleep.  I didn’t know where life was taking me at that time and the lack of a meaningful relationship was taking its toll on me.

Fortunately, my friends were there for me, so I rebounded and got my life on track.  I discovered what I truly wanted to do, and set out to do it.  As you can see in the image I chose to accompany this post, in December 2004 I was really feeling better about myself.  And, if I may say so, I was very, very handsome too. 🙂

I don’t have to tell the story of how I grabbed the bull by the horns and got to college, that story was well told on my LiveJournal at the time (which has been preserved here, of course.)

Forgive me for being so reflective, but sometimes one reflects on where they are to remember how fortunate they are.

Sleep Update – July 20th

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I have been using my CPAP machine for two weeks now.  Every night seems to be a little better than the previous one.  Most nights so far, I have had to take a pill to help get me to sleep.  Nothing prescription strength, just either Diphenhydramine or a generic Unisom.

Last night, I was finally able to get to sleep on my own without the need of a sleep aid.  I slept for a good 7 hours.  I woke up feeling a little groggy, but otherwise in great shape.

I can’t begin to tell you how much the sleep therapy has helped me out so far.  I’m finally able for the first time in at least 10 years sleep in a bed lying down.  That in and of itself helps me out tremendously to getting my life back on track to where I need to be!

As I continue to get more comfortable with using my CPAP machine, I can only imagine that I’ll eventually sleep a full 8 hours soundly.

The Power of a Movie

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A couple of weeks ago, Greg and me attended a screening of “E.T. The Extra Terrestrial” at the beautiful Tennessee Theater in downtown Knoxville.  Seeing this movie for the umpteenth time just proves how much you love classic movies.  This one in particular is always a top 10 favorite for me.  In fact, it’s the earliest movie that I remember seeing at the age of 2 in 1982.

(Side note: I am planning to do a series or articles sometime in the future highlighting my top 10 favorite movies of all time.)

I think it’s safe to say that the true measure of how a film does is how much it pulls you into the story, engages all of your senses, and especially your emotions.  This film in particular gets the best emotional response out of me.  When E.T. is dying, it always breaks my heart and I feel like a little kid sitting there instead of a guy in his late 30s.  You can’t help but feel heartbroken for Elliott.

Then at the end of the film when Elliott and E.T. have to say goodbye, the emotions swell up again, all the way through the powerful ending with the ship speeding away and leaving a rainbow behind.  Combined with John Williams’ awesome Oscar-winning soundtrack just hits every time.

I remember back in 2002, when I was working at Lee Cinema, we got to screen the 20th Anniversary Edition on its opening weekend.  Every night I worked for the next couple of weeks, I was sure to peek my head into the theater for that final scene, and the same emotions came up and enveloped me time after time.

*That* is the measure of what makes a film a true classic.  If a movie can do that time after time after time and never age or never wear off, it will last forever.

That is what that movie meant to me.  I cried at 2, 22 and 37.  I’ll probably cry again when I’m 42 and the film turns 40 years old.

 

Getting to Sleep

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Last week, I got my new CPAP machine.  This is taking some getting used to!  The only difficult part for me is getting used to a bed that I am not used to sleeping in.  Believe it or not, that is a big factor in how I sleep.

I think it’s going better with each night.  The machine definitely helps me breathe and keeps me asleep.  I can surely say that it is a great aid in getting me a better night’s sleep.

After I get fully adjusted, I am going to move on to the next challenge of my life:  exercising and losing weight!