I was struck by something incredibly brave that Barrack Obama said in his inauguration speech – that if we hold that all are created equal – the highest principle of American tradition – then mustn’t the love that two people feel to each other be treated equally as well?

I am not religious, though I firmly believe religion has a place. That place though is not to define the use of the word ‘marriage’ – a principle that extends far beyond religion. Religion has proven it cannot define marriage. What’s more – two men or two women marrying does not take anything away from a man and a woman marrying. It adds to it.

When the time comes and I want to get on one knee to my partner, why should I have to say “will you enter a civil partnership with me” why should the words I use be different when the feelings are the same? Why does my love have less value. – It doesn’t, and it won’t. – But it would be nice to know I am looked on in the same way by society. This is the first step.

Views will change. Religion will change. Slowly. In 50 years I have no doubt we will look upon this debate, as we have looked on equality debates in the past, and consider how archaic and backwards it is.

I hope our elected officials make the right decision today. For freedom. For equality. And most of all, for the fact that love is good and right for all people. And it deserves to be recognised equally.

One week into my thirties, the cards have come down and exhaustive searching for new wrinkles has briefly abated. It’s not so bad really, is it? Still. I’ve spent £50 on Clinique products just to be sure.

Those who know me will know that I have recently taken up climbing. For a relatively unadventurous, clumsy sole like myself, who’s a little scared of heights and a lot scared of not being in control, this might seem like a rather odd hobby. Indeed  once or twice when I’ve slipped off my perch 15 metres high and am dangling by a rather worn looking rope attached only to the sweaty hands of some bloke i barely know I’ve too wondered how I got myself into such a position. Still though, it’s important to confront your fears (unless they’re careening rollercoasters, but that’s another story). As the sign on my wall says, life begins at the end of your comfort zone. Very good advice that.

I’ve learnt some interesting things about myself climbing. Many people have problems with the getting down bit – basically you lean back, let go and hope to hell that the guy on the other end of the rope has a good grip. I’ve never had a problem with this. I guess it’s much the same as my complete lack of fear for a plane landing – you know it’s over one way or the other. It’s probably also indicative of the fact I trust people rather too easily. This insight could have saved me from much trouble in the past.

Secondly, the goal of a good climber is to plan their route, stop, think and make the most of anything available to them to get to the top. Well, I’m useless at the stopping and thinking bit – I have to hare to the top using all means possible, usually leading to total arm failure within an hour. I think many of my friends could have pointed out my impatience to me before climbing had to teach me.

Interesting metaphor for life though, climbing. Sometimes it starts off dead easy, and then you’re faced with a bit where you have no idea what the hell to do next. If you like, you can let go, be lowered down and other than a few minutes of gentle tutting, nobody will care but you. Of course you could stop, think and make use of all means available to you. Make a way, where there doesn’t seem like one, there’s always a path up there, but sometimes its not obvious, and sometimes you have to make it for yourself using the very incline of the wall and the hope that the magical force of friction can defeat the mystical force of gravity.

The best thing about climbing is that you have to rely on yourself because there’s nobody up there with you.

I eulogised at length over my misspent youth last time, so this is about looking forwards and upwards. Having faced and conquered several fears in the last few months, there’s only a few dragons left to slay, and I’m working on those. Best of all, this whole birthday lark has been a great opportunity to sit back, let someone else take the strain on the rope and evaluate where i want to be. You know where that is? Right where I am now.

So the dust has settled on my new decade. In the end it wasn’t a particularly grand affair – but thanks to some truly amazing people it’s been fantastic.

Of all people, my mother asked me what the most important thing I had learned on my thirty years on this planet was. I told her this: the most important thing is to find a way. And if you can’t find a way, make one.

Twenty-Nine…

Oh bugger it. It’s that very momentous of occasions.  I’ve spent a good twenty minutes double checking birth certificates, passports and other official documentation. I’m afraid there really is no escape, it is the very last hour of my twenties.

As I believe I’ve said before,  I could never actually imagine my life much beyond twenty-five. I firmly believe that it’s this total lack of future planning that’s stood me in such good stead. So I’m sat here in my newly decorated dining room pontificating and reflecting. And drinking green tea twig water. Wild.

I seem to remember spending the eve of my twenties in some hideous gay club, probably dancing to Steps, getting drunk on paint-stripper/vodka and totally ignoring the fact I probably should have been revising for my University second year exams. How times change. Not that I don’t like a bop to Steps now and then still – it’s just that it’s in the privacy of my own flat, with the curtains closed, and pumped through totally sound-leak free headphones.

I’ll let you in to a little secret – the twenty year old Master A. Carson was rather an insecure young chap. When he went out, he hid himself behind his friends, and when anyone showed the slightest bit of interest, he usually ran a mile. It was probably the fact of his pretty isolated countryside upbringing, who knows? Many opportunities for random nights of empty satisfaction were no doubt missed to that lad. And that’s not necessarily a regret. He had no idea of the power of youth, the freedom of a total lack of responsibility to anyone but oneself and above all he was scared about a future he couldn’t see. Although he didnt really understand what the word scared meant, thank God he was scared, because it eventually made him work. And work he did.

Skipping forward, young Adam of 25 began to find himself. He found a pretty good job and was doing pretty well at it. He was growing confident in his interactions with others and the world. He’d lost his fear and began to see the world as his – the arrogance of the mid-twenties. Too stupid to know what the challenges really meant. Everything was about taking life and the world and bending it to his view. God I hate that quality in people. Again though, that’s not a regret – his occasionally reckless arrogance allowed him to make some massive leaps in his career. It helped him build some castles that could be attacked but not knocked down and those castles and friendships will always protect him.

Something else was about to happen to that 25 year old. Love. He’d felt love before, but hadn’t understood it. This was a different love. It was the love that would take his life and change the way he wanted to live it. It would make his future. Adam changed in almost every way, for the first time it wasn’t about him. When that Love came it crept up on him, took him over and shaped a new person completely. It wasn’t about him anymore. I will never forget that, and I will always be thankful for it, but then sometimes things aren’t built to last.

Late twenties Adam spent months crying on street-corners about a love he’d lost, partly through a stupidity of his own making. It broke him, and were it not for some friends he will never know how to thank, he has no idea how he would have made it through. I guess that’s yet another thing that’s not a regret. Sometimes people have to lose to know how to gain. Your walls have to be knocked down so you know how you can build them up again, stronger. And we all know that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, right?

As Adam approached his thirties and in the shadow of what he’d lost, he made some ridiculous decisions about the dishonest, using people he’d he’d give his heart to. And that’s the final non-regret. You have to know the really bad before you can find the good again. Sometimes someone really needs to mess with your heart to make it stronger.

So here I sit in the very last minutes of my twenty-ninth year, looking back. A good friend said to me recently that we learn more between 26 and 30 than we do in most of the rest of our life. I couldn’t agree more. I see it in others and it makes me smile.

Sitting in this flat, on my own, waving my notional youth goodbye I can honestly say I’m really happy. Life isn’t quite as simple as it was to that shy, insecure twenty year old. But I’m rather more self-confident, rather more wise and a whole lot more easy going. Above all, I know what and who I can rely on – and I know that sometimes you need to rely on others, because they’re the people that make your life worth living.

To be continued…

Many years later, life is still pretty complicated, but we establish our routines and develop our coping strategies. While it’s tempting to look back on teenage years as a simpler time, they were bloody difficult. As a young gay man coming to terms with that fact, life can be even more difficult. In a world where you’re bullied for wearing the wrong kind of shoes, differences are not embraced. I spent a great deal of time in my teens pretending, even to myself, that I was something I was not. I was scared beyond all reason that being gay would stand in the way of me having a ‘normal’ life.

I guess as you grow up you learn that there’s no such thing as ‘a normal life’.

I wish I could go back to my 16 year old self and say ‘worry less’, ‘be the person that you feel you are’ and that bullies are just small minded idiots, afraid of difference and stuck within their own pathetic boundaries. I have so much respect for young LGBT people who can stand up to that. It took me a few years, but I got there. And you know, my life is so much better for it. Yeah, I’m not married with 2 kids and a house in suburbia, but I’m good and successful, and I’ve made a person out of myself that the 16 year old me would never dreamed of.

You see, the choices we make in our youth will form us, and follow us for the rest of our lives. Its the most important time to be strong, but its the most difficult time to do it, sometimes with the least support. I have no hesitation in saying that there were times I wanted to give up. I never would, but that’s more about a lack of bravery than a lack of will. In truth, without realising it, I had an amazing support network – a great family and great friends. I wish everyone had the same.

For reasons of my generally pessimistic nature, and probably my fears of my own sexuality, I was always unable to consider my life beyond the age of 30. I found it really hard to contemplate the possibility of success, love and most of all acceptance.

I had a friend who was much the same. He often cruelly, and always inarticulately helped me to come to terms with myself. To my eternal regret, I was never able to help him come to terms with himself, and when my heart became too unsalvageably tangled in him, I had to walk away and stop trying. He was me. But he was the me that could never really accept what his brain was telling him.

In the lazy sunsets, and beer fuelled evenings we had many immature ponderings. Perhaps one I now remember most significantly was a talk about living fast and dying young. A vile cliché. Well I’ve never lived that fast to be honest, but I have almost made the magical 30. Sadly, he never will.

It’s really important to always remember – it gets better. Ask for help, because there’s always always someone to help. And perhaps above all, with everything in this world, be the person you are.

Don’t just dream it. Be it.

You may have heard of the “It gets better” project - In their words - it sets about to provide hope for lesbian, gay, bi, trans and other bullied teens by letting them know that “It Gets Better.” It’s well worth a visit to their site. 

Of course Christmas Shopping on a weekend in December is, ostensibly, an obstacle course. First, you must swerve passed the bearded socialists, profiting unmitigated doom. Next you must take the long route to avoid the embarrassed looking schoolchildren corralled by a prozac-uppered school teacher into singing “Santa Claus is coming to town”. Then, and I offer you this advice as a friend, if you reach the sports shop blasting from its doors a seemingly random collection of bass-y sounds loosely veiled as music, turn back at all costs. You won’t like what you see inside. You won’t like it at all.

Of course, to prevent your passage around the obstacle course you have the crowds. A meandering heard of apparently brainless slow-walkers, hindering direct passage to anywhere you might want to go. Where the hell do all these people come from? In my opinion, to mitigate the force of the crowds, Christmas shopping is best completed following an unhealthy quantity of mulled wine.

In the midst of the festive obstacle course there’s usually the gripping panic of the “What am I going to buy them” reflex. It’s the thought that counts, but it’s not really is it? What counts is the gifts appropriateness, size and relative sparkliness. And in the case of some of my close friends I don’t only mean sparkliness metaphorically.

And then, like a revelation the idea comes – you know the perfect gift. Relief, delight and joy. You don’t care how much it costs – it is what you must get. So you set about to purchase it.

Can you then find the damn thing? No. You battle the obstacle course, apparently always against the flow of people traffic, to go in every shop from one side of the city to the other. The simplest of items evades you. Panic renewed you resort to Amazon, not available, or must be shipped from a small island off the coast of Western Africa, arriving in the third week of February. I like to refer to this as “The simple present idea curse.” You just know that in January every single shop in the country will have the item in it’s window, reminding you of the 2 trains, 3 buses and a boat you had to get to buy the thing in December.

I’m not going to patronise you by saying Christmas is an over-commercialised waste of money (which it kind of is I guess, blah, blah, blah, Scrooge, Humbug etc.) I actually genuinely think it quite nice that once a year we show our appreciation to our friends and loved ones by buying them a (sparkly) token of your affection. I just don’t really enjoy the process of getting there, unless of course buffered by friends, festive food and fine booze. Mainly fine booze.

This year, I learnt a Christmas trick: no forward planning, a visit to John Lewis and TK Maxx (but don’t tell my friends the TK Maxx bit) and a congratulatory glass of Prosecco afterwards. You can probably see an alcohol-related theme emerging from my Christmas shopping. Finally I’m feeling slightly festive.

I wish you all the best with your Christmas shopping. Season’s Greetings, and please leave your excessively sparkly gifts for me under the tree.

I mean what kind of question is that for a rainy Wednesday morning? I very much make it my aim to not get into a contentious subject before at least my third caffeinated beverage of the day.

“Not really.” I reluctantly retorted, hoping that my non-verbal signals, which are about as subtle as a neon elephant, were heeded. There was a long and most appealing pause. I sipped slowly on the brain awakening coffee as I flicked through messages on the blackberry, desperately avoiding question-welcoming eye-contact.

“So, no then?”

I sighed. I’ve never felt very comfortable with the concept of fate. To me, the belief that everything is mapped out for you makes life seem rather futile. In fact, it makes me want to go to bed and stay there indefinitely. Particularly half-way through coffee number one on a rainy Wednesday morning.

As a species, we do seem to have trouble accepting things we can’t explain. Fate and religion seem to be symptoms of this shared grievance. I’m not saying these things can’t or don’t exist of course (I always like to remain slightly non-committal on the higher concepts) – but it is rather neat to pin the unexplainable on some unseen force that can neither be proven nor
disproven.

The only higher concept we seem to allow ourselves to accept is love.

Love is a disastrously over-used term, totally unacceptable to describe an overpowering feeling for which there is no name. It once crushed me, and now it makes me rise again. I have never felt that I’m at my best without that perfect someone to share my life with, and I’m well aware that’s a deeply disturbing character fault in myself. But that is me.

The answer to the question I was asked is “No”.

There is no fate, just the fates we make for ourselves from the endless choices – and they are choices – that we make every day. To put everything down to some pre-planned path is lazy. We fall down, and we pick ourselves up, that’s just what life is.

I once flippantly described the PR profession as “champagne and misdirection” much to the disgust of my many PR related friends. When you think about it though, isn’t it also a pretty good metaphor for life?

In a long passed memory, for reasons which need no great explanation here, this weekend was to have been very different. That’s not a bad thing, or a good thing. It’s a fact. Things often don’t work out how we plan them to.

Sometimes, we forget who we are. In a haze of misdirection from our own experiences we get lost. The thing is though, it’s not wrong to get upset. It’s not wrong to think about the past, we all have one and it’s what makes us who we are – not fate. Sometimes though, if you’re lucky and make the right choices, against all the odds, an unexplainable combination of factors come together. Something amazing comes along you let down your defences and life and love can begin again.

Stop thinking. Start dreaming. Be who you want to be. And never stop drinking champagne.

This act of outrageous defeatism on my part stems from my hard-learnt but simple realisation in recent times that there are some battles you just can’t win, and moreover, there are  some battles that aren’t even worth fighting. For someone as obstinate and opinionated as me, that is quite a realisation. While that might seem simple, obvious even, I can’t help but think that if a few more people had that realisation a fair few wars might be spared. Should I write to someone and let them know?

It’s curious that a foolish thing such as the location of a bin can cause so much irritation, maybe that says more about me than anything else, but it didn’t half work me up when I walked into my office every morning. Now I have formally signed my instrument of surrender, I no longer walk in and get irritated. The bin can be wherever the hell she wants it to be. I am liberated.

Odd that – you can sometimes be happier with something you didn’t think you wanted than you can by fighting to get what you thought you did want.

It’s always good to reflect on a metaphorical thunder storm and know that we can learn more about ourselves, our friends and the world around us in one bad day than we can in a hundred good days. As Oscar Wilde, or someone similar, once said – it is from our mistakes, not our successes that we move forwards. In my opinion that is excellent news, as I have made a fair few. I must be moving at quite a pace.

The sad thing about life is that you have to go through a hundred battles to understand when the right time to walk away is. But then sometimes thats the easy bit, sometimes it’s even more difficult to have the wisdom to know when is the right time to stay and fight.

Dear Stephen,

Many thanks for your letter of 29th March 2010, regarding the cancellation of my skyhd TV subscription, account number as per the subject line.

I was curious to read the sentence “if there’s anything we can do to change your mind, and you’d like to get back all of the great entertainment available on sky, all you need to do is call.” I’m curious on the basis that I made the ‘any more you can do’ very clear to your customer services team.

I am currently unable to use sky in as much as my box is broken, crashing and freezing pretty much hourly. Your technical support teams seem clear that I require a new box, although clear also that I must pay for the pleasure of having the required equipment to access the subscription service I have paid over £1000 in the last few years to enjoy.

This being the case the ‘more you can do’ is providing me with the replacement box. This seems like small Benefit for the many years of loyalty I’ve given to sky. It would be wonderful to be shown some loyalty in return, although I know that returning loyalty is really not in the vocabulary of most service companies in these difficult times. I wonder if it is in sky’s?

Incidentally I complained about this issue last week, but your complaints team have not yet deemed it appropriate to acknowledge or respond to my issue.

I look forward to your response.

Warm regards,

Adam

So how can I summarise 2010? I lost, I progressed, I learnt that sometimes you don’t know what you think you know and I reinforced the fact that I have some of the best friends it’s possible for a person to have. Just an average year then.

As regular readers may have deciphered, I’m often a person that spends too long looking back and not enough looking forward. That’s great at this time of year because I can legitimately get away with it. Even as we speak I’m wheeling in an orchestra with a disproportionate number of strings to provide the backdrop to a reflection of woe.

Whoa. On second thoughts lets not go there.

I’ll say this though, another cliché, life is a funny thing. People come and go, some we choose to grab hold of, and they grab back, while others slip from your grasp or just float right on passed. Holding on to the right people is a difficult skill, but those who are important will stick around. And if they don’t, then I guess they’re not worth it.

In my life, particularly maybe this year, I’ve made some pretty horrendous mistakes. I’m so sorry for those, but I don’t intend to live within them – and I tell you something – we learn a hell of a lot more from our mistakes than our successes. Or at least we should.

Maybe New Years’ isn’t at all a legitimate time to look back. Probably it’s a time to look forward. So what will 2011 bring – well I’ll tell you – I have absolutely no idea where, who or what I will be at this time next year. And that’s great. I’m fed up of fucking melancholy, reflection and drama. It’s time for a change.

As the year ends, there’s only one thing I really want to say. To Gemma, Ed, Max, Carmel and the many other close friends who have literally saved me from myself and a horrendous 2010, always been there, and put up with far more than you could ever ask people to put up with, I thank you more than I have words to express.

Minimising my exposure to hassle that is until a very intimate frisking by security at St Pancras, not to mention a near denial of reentry into the country yesterday by a man who seemed to take great pleasure in interrogating me. All that was missing was a giant spotlight and some kind of torture implement. A music video by Jedward perhaps?

Despite the bitter chill this week, Bruges is an Amazing city. So much history and amazing sights. I consumed what HM Government would probably say was an inappropriate quantity of Belgian Beer, ate what my gym instructor would certainly say was an unacceptable quantity of food and laughed at such inanities as sliding off the bed and snapping an umbrella in what may have been Bruges’ worst hail storm for years. Don’t ask me how you snap an umbrella.

I could go on like some bespectacled 58 year old showing his holiday slides to his friends while they curse his existence under their breath and wonder why they hadn’t been washing their hair instead but I fear I’d lose you. So I’ll stop before my voice fades into a background hum. Visit Bruges though, it’s not quite as violent as in the film.

I realised yesterday that a lot of people don’t know something fairly fundamental about me – I’m half American. In fact, if we’re being perfectly honest I’m three quarters American. Shock. I know that conjures certain connotations for you through-and-through Brits, but I can assure you  my British accent is highly fine-tuned, I’ve never had a tom’Ay’to and I have serious doubts about US foreign policy. Basically, I’m a dual national – I was born and have always lived in the UK and am American mainly by way of blood. I’m fortunate enough to have two passports, can vote in two general elections and consider myself a ‘British American’.

Being a yanky Brit, I could hardly let one of the most important holiday’s in the US calendar pass by without comment. I think Thanksgiving is a great occasion – and, now Christmas has completely lost itself to absurd and incomprehensible commercialism, one that many here in Britain would do well to take to their hearts.

Now I don’t want to sound trite or uppish, but I honestly don’t think many people are particularly thankful for what they’ve got. In fact I don’t think many people even understand what they have, and how that puts them in a better position than millions of others. As I’ve got older I appreciate myself and my world more, and I’m so grateful I have fantastic friends, a good job, money and the ability to laugh at my own mistakes.

As I give thanks for what I’ve got there’s a tinge of sadness too.  Thanksgiving is a time for families but I’m single, my sister now lives in the States and my parents have just bought a flat there too. As me and my friendship group slide quietly into our 30s many have now coupled off and married, and I’m so pleased they’ve found their happiness. At this time of year though, that can leave you feeling lonely.

Another thing many people might not know about me is that I was engaged for years. When you have planned your future and it all disappears you begin to question everything about yourself. I haven’t ever regained what I lost there, and I don’t know if I ever will. I’m increasingly cautious with my heart and who I allow close, perhaps overly cautious. As I watch those I grew up with form their own families, I smile but I fear that I will never have one of my own.

It’s been a challenging year, maybe time is a healer, maybe love always wins. Maybe now is the time we should let go of our pasts and get on with our futures. For me,  I don’t know yet, but I’m certain that lives are for sharing and that hearts and minds work better in pairs.

We all win some and we all lose some. Thanksgiving is about recognising and thanking for the things you’ve won. Despite the obvious deficiencies, life is good. So, I pay thanks for the things I’ve won – a great job, a close if geographically distant family, all of you for reading this and the many great experiences I’ve had along the path so far. Above all I’m thankful for my friends, who will never let me fade into a hum in the background. Let the slideshow commence.

Happy Thanksgiving.