So, I received some news last week and it is... interesting.

[OldBaldy1701E]

As I have stated here before, in my opinion, and in my life, without any validation of one's efforts or intentions, a person will become convinced that they have had no effect on reality at all. Which can add to one's mental state, since some professions and some 'life callings' pretty much require that for progress and for acceptance that one has done something good and positive in the world. (Which is what we all should be doing, to be honest... doing good and positive things in the word.) When one is trying to do this, and yet one never sees any results or even hears that anything they have done amounts to any progress, change, or enlightenment... well, that tends to create either people like myself, or people like Stephen Paddock ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Las_Vegas_shooting ).

So, last week a friend was talking about his friend (whom I knew through that first friend, but we were not 'friends' ourselves) who had passed away a few weeks before. (There is evidence that his employer, upon hearing his complaints about gut pains and so on, decided that just taking him home would be good enough. The man died in his house and no one found him for four days. There are official inquiries being made about this.) The guy who had passed was someone who considered themselves 'Christian', and followed those doctrines as devoutly as he could. Such a person is usually known to be... shall we say... anti-gay. And, this guy was no exception. Not that he was one of those rabid people who obsess over other's lives because their own is so pathetic, but he believed.

So, my friend tells me that, a while before he died, the guy admitted to him that he was always one to believe that homosexuality was a sin, and that those who live that life are going to hell and that they are 'wicked' and so on. Bear in mind, of course, that he did not know any LGBTQA+ persons. Then, he met me about twenty-five years ago. I was not living in the area, so it was during visits to my friend that we got to hang out. This dude tells my friend that, he had always believed what he was told about people like myself and had never questioned it. But, after hanging out with me over the years, he had decided that maybe what he had been told was not accurate. He told my friend that he had changed his outlook on the topic because he did not see in me what those preachers had been telling him for decades. This caused him to question what they had been telling him.

So, it seems that I have done one thing good and positive. This knowledge helps me. That is the thing that people don't seem to understand about what I have been saying. I help others all the time and never see what becomes of it. But, knowing that something I did had an effect and had a tangible result... well, that helps me deal with my failures and desire to stop wasting everyone's time with my continued existence. It has an effect. Knowing this also has an effect, one that needs to be felt more often. Now, I get to feel it and it will help me (maybe, I think I am too far gone, but we will see).

It is nice to know that I got at least one thing right after 62 years on this fucking blue marble.