Dear Family and Friends,

Now you know I am what I am, and I have finally chosen to accept myself, love myself, and live my life as G-d created me to be!

Your love, affection, and friendship over the years has meant the world to me and words cannot express how I feel right now knowing that I am finally living a truly honest life with those most important to me knowing the real Adam.

Welcome To Stand Straight and Step Forward!

Stand Straight and Step Forward is my story. Over the last few months I have been blogging about my life and experiences. The primary reason for keeping an online journal was personal and therapeutic. I needed to change, and I was too cheap to pay for a therapist and too stubborn to ask for help. The secondary reason was my hope and desire to at some point be able to share my life again with you. From the outset, I wanted to provide you with a deeper meaning of who I am and what I’ve been going through these last few months. So it is with a great deal of respect and love that I share my journal with you today.

However, sharing Stand Straight with you has as much to do with me as it does with you. I look at it as part of my therapy in being completely open and honest with all those I truly know and care about. So please don’t feel an obligation or need to necessarily read it. It is certainly your choice. If you do choose to read it, I believe you will find posts that run the gamut from deeply personal to narratives of experiences. You will also find images of guys that I find extremely hot. This has been the most difficult thing I've had to deal with in my life and I’m extremely proud of how far I’ve come and I’m neither ashamed nor embarrassed by anything that you may view. I’m now an open book, make that blog, and I hope this demonstrates my sincerity when I told you that I wanted deeper and more meaningful relationships. I truly believe this is a start.

I also felt it was important to bridge my online world, which has been my anonymous gay world, with my real world. Both worlds have been extremely important to me in bringing me this far in my life but I will no longer live in two separate worlds. I will only live in one. It is that world, the real world, where I hope we will continue on our journeys together.

So with all of that said, here are some tips if you would like to read further.

My online name is Adam, clearly not the name you know me as. So if you ever choose to comment please keep that in mind.

I would recommend that you start from the beginning. To do that you need to go to the right side of the blog, scroll down to the archive, and start in May. The best way that I’m aware to do this is to click on the month heading and then scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page for the oldest post. Then scroll up as you read. (this way you don't have to click on each individual post)

When there is a You Tube video attached it is because, in mostly all cases, the song is very meaningful and extremely well written. (the meaning is the song, not the video itself) The words of the song convey a message which compliments and speaks to, in most cases, the message of my posts.

And one final note, Stand Straight may be a specific story about the changes I’ve made in my life based upon the uncontrollable aspect of my being gay, but when you think about it, the story is more than that. It’s really a story about all of us making positive changes in our lives with the goal of finding true happiness. (and I learned that important lesson from many of you through the years so thanks)

So here’s to leading our lives instead of life leading us. G-d willing, let our adventures continue!

Love,

Adam

Angels and Airwaves-”The Adventure”