Life Goes On

Making + Remaking Friends After Being A Long Time Gone

One of the biggest realizations I’ve had since coming out of my agoraphobic “cave” is that most of the people I knew before didn’t even know I was missing.

And honestly? I get it.

We’re all the heroes of our own life stories, charging through our personal plotlines, managing our arcs, surviving our cliffhangers.

The rest of us are merely supporting cast. Featured guest stars if we’re lucky.

It’s humbling, really. I disappeared for years, and the world kept spinning.

My social circles rearranged and reformed without me. Text threads I once lived in went silent. Invites stopped coming. And may never start again…unless I restart them.

Still, life went on for everyone…including me.

Most of my dears, nears, and/or queers were, as it turns out, people I was meant to know for a reason and/or a season.

That realization stung at first, but now it feels freeing.

There’s a strange kind of peace in knowing not every friendship is meant to last forever. Some simply do their job—teaching us, healing us, holding us—and then quietly exit stage left.

What’s left now are the forever friends. The ones who kept checking in even when I couldn’t respond. The ones who didn’t take my silence personally. The ones still here to cheer me on, lend me a hand, and continue to point and laugh as I keep trying to learn how to dance and date again.

Re-entering the world has been awkward and beautiful, usually in equal measure. I’m making new friends, rekindling old ones, and remembering what it feels like to be part of something larger than my own four walls.

Because life goes on.
And, thankfully, so do we.

Keep calm and live on!
Clint 🌈✌️

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ON THIS DAY = OCTOBER 15

BIRTHDAYS

• 70 BC = Virgil = Roman poet 🌈

• 1836 = James Tissot = French painter and illustrator

• 1844 = Friedrich Nietzsche = German composer, poet, and philosopher 🌈

• 1858 = John L. Sullivan = American boxer, actor, and journalist

• 1900 = Mervyn LeRoy = American actor, director, and producer

• 1904 = Marty Mann = American writer and Alcoholics Anonymous founding female member 🌈

• 1920 = Mario Puzo = American author and screenwriter

• 1924 = Lee Iacocca = American businessman and author

• 1924 = Warren Miller = American filmmaker

• 1925 = Tony Hart = English painter and television host

• 1926 = Michel Foucault = French historian and philosopher 🌈

• 1937 = Clark Polak = American businessman, publisher, journalist, and activist 🌈

• 1937 = Linda Lavin = American actor and singer

• 1938 = Marv Johnson = American singer-songwriter

• 1943 = Penny Marshall = American actor, director, and producer

• 1946 = Richard Carpenter = American singer-songwriter

• 1953 = Larry Miller = American actor and comedian

• 1953 = Tito Jackson = American singer-songwriter

• 1955 = Tanya Roberts = American actor

• 1959 = Sarah, Duchess of York = British royal

• 1959 = Todd Solondz = American actor and filmmaker

• 1966 = Eric Benét = American singer-songwriter

• 1969 = Dominic West = English actor and director

• 1972 = Matt Keeslar = American actor

• 1981 = Keyshia Cole = American singer-songwriter

• 1988 = Jenna Talackova = Canadian model and tv personality 🌈

EVENTS

• 1783 = The Montgolfier brothers‘ hot air balloon makes the first human ascent, piloted by Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier.

• 1878 = The Edison Electric Light Company begins operation.

• 1939 = The New York Municipal Airport (later renamed LaGuardia Airport) is dedicated.

• 1951 = I Love Lucy premieres on CBS.

• 1952 = In LA, W. Dorr Legg and six friends, all members of the Mattachine Society, discuss publishing a journal to promote education and research activities beneficial to gay men and lesbians. The magazine ONE, Inc., the nation’s first wide-circulated, national homosexual periodical, is founded.

• 1955 = Grand Ole Opry premieres on ABC as a live hour-long monthly show.

• 1956 = FORTRAN, the first modern computer language, is first shared with the coding community.

• 1977 = Debby Boone’s single “You Light Up My Life” goes #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and stays #1 for ten weeks.

• 1999 = Fight Club is released in theaters.

HOLIDAYS + OBSERVANCES

• LGBTQ History Month (October 1-31) 🌈🧐📚

• National Fossil Day

• National Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15-October 15)

• National I Love Lucy Day

• National Latinx AIDS Awareness Day

• National Shawarma Day

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PHOTO OF THE DAY

RAINBOW OVER ARCADIA BY CLINT COLLIDE (10-14-25)

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PORTRAIT + QUOTE OF THE DAY

MICHEL FOUCAULT AS A YOUNG MAN

MICHEL FOUCAULT RE-AIMAGINED

“The strategic adversary is fascism... the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us.”
Michel Foucault