I love Alan Ritchson and the weirdly lovable college football quarterback, Thad Castle, he plays on SPIKE’s new scripted comedy “Blue Mountain State.” Who wouldn’t love seeing Ritchson running football drills in a jock?

A couple weeks back, I announced that I planned on deleting my Facebook profile. A few people asked why, so here’s my response.

I’ve had a difficult time deciding who to “be” on Facebook. For example: do I accept friend requests from my clients? How much do I want my professional and personal life to overlap? In many ways, I’m a pretty private guy. This overlap necessitates a certain amount of self-censorship, and that bothers me.

Facebook provides lots of ambient knowledge (via status updates) but I don’t feel that I actually process the information very effectively. And how important is it to have all this knowledge, anyway? The site is supposed to help us “connect and share with the people in your life” but often, I feel isolated on Facebook, with most interactions lacking much depth.

My mom’s death last month sharpened my focus on a lot of things, one of them being my desire to make an effort to spend more quality time with the people in my life who matter most. I have hundreds of friends on Facebook, but really I’ve got eight or 10 close friends who I interact with on a regular basis. My intuition says that when I quit Facebook, my close relationships will have a pretty strong uptick in quality, via phone calls and real “face” time.

This quote is on our fridge: “Find life experiences and swallow them whole. Travel. Meet many people. Go down some dead ends and explore dark alleys. Try everything. Exhaust yourself in the glorious pursuit of life.”

My mom loved her laptop, but she never joined Facebook. She was too busy knitting, hiking and having friends over for dinner. I too, want to do more yoga, hike the Grand Canyon, bake more cookies, travel, laugh with friends, and go on more adventures with Bronson. I’m pretty sure that when my time comes, I won’t wish I’d spent more time on Facebook.

I welcome your thoughts.

And thanks for four great years.

I am grateful for the surgeons who aren’t assholes. I am grateful for Taxol and Carboplatin and painkillers and radiation and CA-125 markers and carrot juice. For clean windows and Tylenol and singing penguins. For poppies and Subway and walks around the neighborhood. For candles finally lit, for losing our expectations. For flat rate boxes and black licorice scotty dogs from Trader Joe’s. For the O-VAX and the Hamster Dance, peach salsa and Seinfeld. For long talks with grandmothers. And mothers. For the friends who ask “how’s your mom?” and for those who don’t, because it’s too much to explain again, anyway. For Skype and Sha Sha, and her friend Kathy, and that high school friend who takes her out to lunch sometimes. For picnic lunches, heirloom tomatoes and flax muffins. For hand sanitizer and urgent care and shopping at Costco in a surgical mask. For e-mails from survivors and free nights and weekends. And I’m grateful for “good” days; really grateful for those. I pray for more days of getting sandwiches and driving to the park and watching clouds fly and wondering if we should buy a kite? I pray for a trip to Cheyenne and for a rodeo somewhere so that she can see me dog a steer. I pray for time.
Protect her during this time of magical thinking.
I am grateful for butterflies.

I look into the window of my mind.
Reflections of the fears I know I’ve left behind.
I step out of the ordinary
I can feel my soul ascending.
I am on my way…
Can’t stop me now.
And you can do the same.
What have you done today
to make you feel proud?
(It’s never too late to try).
You could be so many people
if you make that break for freedom.
What have you done today
to make you feel proud?
-Heather Small (more…)

Our homemade ad for marriage equality is literally votes away from becoming a finalist in “Project: Pushback” … but we need your help. Would you vote for us?

All you have to do is click on the “HEART/I LIKE” icon on the vid below (or here), or pass it on to a few friends.

Just Like Anybody Else from Project Pushback on Vimeo.

First Look: at my shortened marriage equality spot. I submitted it to Project Pushback. You can also help by embedding or forwarding the ad using the tools in the player below.

Thanks everyone!