June 26th, 2006
No, not the endings of this website, sillies. *glares surreptitiously at all the space-stealers trying to make a move in on Renay and flaming-monk* OTHER kinds of beginnings and endings.
Today was my last day of work at Build-a-Bear Workshop. Well, okay, I’m on call tomorrow, so it might not have been my last day, but at least symbolically, it was. 
My first day of work was July 21st, 2005 - so I’ve worked at the bear store for almost exactly eleven months. It’s been a lot of fun, and even though there have been times when I’ve been stressed by it (and by trying to schedule my life with a job!) and when people have joked about it, it’s been an amazing place to work. For all its sillyness, I have met some of the nicest people and had a lot of fun. <3
The other ending is that by the end of this week my family and I must be out of our house! “Time to be gone!“, as one resort up north used to cheerfully exlaim. The moving-people come Wednesday to pack up all our stuff, and then the 30th we head out to visit some family and friends. I’m going to live with my brother Paul in his new apartment (with six other people!) for a week, and then for a week we’ll all travel our east before we can get into our new house July 15th! 
Then July 19th-30th I’m going to Ireland with the Irish Youth Choir that I have been a member of for a long, long time (this is my fifth, and last year with them).
So for all these reasons, I am placing this blog on official hiatus for the month of July. No, this isn’t like the unofficial hiatus I’ve been on for a little bit. The difference is, during July I won’t feel guilty all the time about not posting, because I’ll know I have a lot to post when I get back! 
And there’s one more big change that’s going to take place when I come back in August (besides my 18th birthday!).
For the (almost) four years that I’ve have this website, it has been both a blessing and a curse, because, being so separated from my offline life, it allowed me to live somewhat duplicitously, having friends on both sides who never met, and being able to whine candidly about my “real” life in this space. However, it also caused a fair deal of paranoia, especially back in the “I can count the number of people who know I’m gay on one hand” days. What if someone found my site? What if one of my friends read something bad I wrote about them? (That actually did happen once or twice. Eep.)
Well that’s going to change. I want to integrate this website that has become such a big part of me into the rest of my life. No, I’m not planning on giving out the address to every Tom, Dick, and Meryl that I meet. But I’m also going to stop keeping it a secret from my closest friends, namely Jeff, Ethan, and probably Cid (all of whom you have heard oodles about over the years). I still need a place to vent and reflect upon my life - I pray it never gets to a point where I need to censor my self-expression for fear of offending. But “integration” is the key word here.
Good Lordy, this has DEFINITELY been one of my longer and more rambly posts. Thank you all for listening. Here is a fun map of my life over the next couple months, and I’ll see you all in August!
