What's in a name?

I'm not a very decisive person so it's a wonder I've managed to come up with a name for this blog. I started with something else, a title that my friend uses to describe me, but I changed my mind 'cause I'm not sure if it might come up in a web search and I'm not ready for people in my personal life to read this. Not that I will be writing a lot here. I'm not a huge fan of writing but I might stick up the occasional post. We shall see. One of my main reasons for finally doing this is I really enjoy reading blogs and I couldn't find a tool that tracks updates to blogs that wasn't part of a blog so I thought I'd give it a try.

So, to the name. My friend often refers to me as a *mainstream nonconformist*. I agree with her within the context of our lives. Neither of us up to this point has had much of a life outside of church. Our church is very conservative. Organ and piano only for music, hymns only for congregational singing, no hand held mics, ladies wear dresses, men wear shirts and ties if not a suit, etc... The reason I say within the context of our lives is because my nonconformity consists of wearing loud ties and questioning whether or not our deacons are actually a board of elders (for some reason Baptists seem to take pride in the fact that they have deacons and not elders when deacons in the NT were responsible for the poor and widows not governing the church like our “deacons” do). The mainstream part comes into play because while my tie may be loud, I’m still wearing a tie. Anyways, because of this my friend usually gets me a birthday or Christmas card along this theme. When I was going through boxes the other day I came across one of these cards. It had lady bugs all over the front and off to one side was a single blue one. Inside it said to my colourful friend. So that’s me, the blue bug in a sea of red.

I guess I’ve been doubting the nonconformist part lately because I’ve been exploring more outside of my circle. I’m realizing that I’m not as unique as I thought I was. It’s kind of like going from Junior High to High School. My life is pretty mainstream compared to so many of the lives I’ve been reading about on the blogs of other gay men. Oh, did I forget to mention that? Yeah I’m gay (a major influence on my nonconformist tendencies I think). At the same time I’m not really a mainstream gay either. I don’t get the whole Cher thing and I’m sure there’s a ton of other gay icons that I’m supposed to know about. I ‘m also not so much into the wild rampant sex thing, I don’t like alcohol or drugs, and drag queens make me uncomfortable. So I guess I can still be a mainstream nonconformist after all.