I'm gay, nice to meet you.

Coming out.

I recently came out to a bunch of my friends, none were terribly surprised and all have been extremely supportive.  I'm really fortunate to know so many educated, progressive, and caring people.  This has been a much easier, more freeing, and cleansing (really) experience than I ever expected.

The next group on my agenda is my family, which is going to be a little bit more complicated but not bad either, my parents and siblings are pretty cool people.

But where do I go from there?  How does a gay person get along in society, at work, in the community, etc. without having to let every new person they meet aware of their sexuality.  Not that I want to hide who I am anymore, not at all.  I've just been trained to not wear it on my sleeve like so many people do, that I'm not sure how to communicate who I am to others without an overt, obvious statement.

Sexuality is such an important component of everyone's individuality (or at least, my own) but I've been hiding mine for so long that I'm not really sure how to deal with letting new people know.  Some might think it's not really necessary to tell the world you are gay, but for me it has become about honesty and this (being gay) sets me apart (at least, to a lot of other people it does).  So how/where do I go from here?

I know this is not a political, environmental, military, etc. topic like most diaries on this site.  But I think that the readership of this site will probably have some sound advice for me.  So let me hear it.