I think I am riding on a wave of good Karma and if that’s true, I am really enjoying the ride! It’s not a tsunami wave, it’s a simple, gentle wave with small things happening with large rewards.

Today, I went downtown for the raising of the Pride flag at City Hall. This is the first time I’ve done this, and I’ve lived here for the better part of 32 years. I went mostly because I saw a photo opportunity  - and I did get a few good ones. When I was wrapping up, I looked over my shoulder and there was a young guy watching me.

He began to tell me, “This has got to be one of the most powerful statements any city can make”, pointing to the flag. There it was, flying next to the city flag and the Canadian flag. There was another flag that he thought was some sort of British flag. I felt I had to tell him it was the Ontario Provincial flag. He went on to say, what an experience it was that I could be there taking a picture of that flag, proudly flying next to all the others, only in Canada. In other countries it wouldn’t be celebrated in the same way.

This whole experience made me think back to 2011 Toronto Pride, I had taken a photo of the Pride flag with the Canadian flag (see below) that I was so proud to have taken. It was seen by a writer who wanted to use it in a story he wrote. It was an honour to have it included in a story about Pride.  I agreed to it right away. I have since donated a copy of it for a silent auction at a local fundraiser last year.

In a true “social media experience” I saw a link on my facebook that led me to another link for a site that one of my contacts was following called Fierté Canada Pride. Right away I noticed their profile photo, I clicked on it to see a larger version of it and sure enough, it was the same photo of the two flags. I thought about other photographers I’ve met who would be upset someone used their photos without permission or compensation.  For me, if it’s for an HIV cause or to promote Pride, then please use it. I volunteer to do all photos for my local AIDS Service Organizations for most of our events. It’s a way of giving back for a lot of what they have done for me. I sent the site a private message letting them know that it was my photo and that it looked great on their site and to enjoy it.

So giving in this way is a large reward for me. Karma, what you give out, you will get back. Beautiful!

The most positive Karma experience happened about a week and a half ago.  I was out taking pictures at the local University Arboretum. I had been there for an hour or so, just sitting at the picnic table trying to catch the birds flying in and away from the feeder. I noticed a few people coming through the area. I talked to a couple of them, just a hello.

Then I noticed a couple  of guys. They looked around, then sat down on a bench to the right of me. They were around my age. I had this feeling that maybe I knew them as they fit the general description of a couple of guys I once chummed around with. One was a friend I had hoped to reconnect with, someone I hadn’t seen in about 15 years. I had made a commitment at a recent retreat back in February to try to re-connect. I had found an old phone number, but misplaced it.

So, after about 10-15 minutes, I decided to pack up and go say hello, see if it was that old friend. I turned around to see they were on their way out of the area, so I had to hurry. I managed to catch up and I called out the friend’s name. He turned around and said, “pardon me?” I said his name again and he looked at me. Then he said, “don’t tell me, give me a minute”. It was him, and like me, a little older a little more grey. He lives in another nearby city; we hadn’t seen each other in maybe 15 years and there we were, in the least of all expected places. I go to this place so often. We tried to catch up but he was in a hurry to go somewhere, said he had an appointment, he gave me his cell number and I was to call him.

This has to be the most genuine form of Karma ever, or was it “fate”? Could they be the same thing?  To move forward now I realize that I will need to do some apologizing to him. I can’t go into the reason for the separation but I wasn’t the person I am today. I didn’t know or use empathy or compassion very well then, hell most times I can’t say I had any awareness of it. I am aware that it may not be the same friendship it was before, but it could be. We can’t get into the same trouble  - or can we?

I spend a lot of time on the internet, but I am trying to get out more. Now that the weather is cooperating it’s been easier. Photography has become a social affair; I get to meet other photographers or people asking what I’m taking pictures of and they share stories of their own. One gentleman and his wife last night suggested I join the seniors’ centre, they have a photography club and I could win the photo of the week. I do qualify, you need to be 55 and over, and I am over.

So I’m trying to put a finger on what it is I’m doing and I don’t see many great things. I think a lot of it is just staying positive, avoiding the negatives. If you want things to add up in life, avoid the negatives. I have seen how people treat me by the way I treat them, I do it all so differently now. I made many bad choices in my life and tasted the bad Karma on those occasions, so yes, the good Karma is working for me now.

So I’ll sign off here and since Pride season is kicking off around the world, Happy Pride everyone.

I love my fine feathered friends, they are amazing creatures, and they sing beautifully but................ 

No one could ever accuse me of being anti-nature or a bird hater. Birds have been a large part of my photography excursions over the past three years. Today, I am a little miffed that a website that brings awareness to birds in need of care continues to lead an AIDS service organization (ASO)  to win a website upgrade by means of an online challenge. I think, this is why HIV will remain a big part of the world today and in the future. 

In show business they say don't follow kids or animal acts, they will always win in the end. I hope this isn't the case here but I am ready to concede that it will be. I spent most of yesterday promoting the challenge on Twitter and Facebook and it took off quickly; for a while we were running neck and neck, we even held first place briefly. This morning I wake up to find we were more than 600 votes behind again. I will keep pumping out the "Vote" messages online because if you don't try, you don't even come close. We are after all, in second place at this time. 

The competition is about helping charities raise awareness and strengthen a connection in their communities. The AIDS Commitee of Guelph and Wellington County  believes the upgrade is imperative in helping the organization disseminate health information in an accessible way to the population it serves. 

As you can see, this irks me so much. Everyone can and will talk about birds everywhere, anytime. The news media never have anything negative to write about birds, “but if you want us to talk about HIV prevention and awareness, we’ll put it in the back pages - somewhere". Now if someone is charged with non-disclosure, it would be front page material with the person’s name and photo, supplied by the local police station. 

When people learn they are HIV positive, stigma can prevent them from going to the ASO’s office, so the internet is where they may turn to. ASOs need all the social media access they can muster to provide prevention and awareness and most of all, support. This ASO needs that website update. 

Birds will always soar and sing, HIV Prevention will be hidden and shushed. Not on my watch. 

Thanks for letting me rant and to show I'm not a bird hater, here are a few shots I've taken during this long winter. 

And there ARE a few days left to put  the AIDS Committee of Guelph in the lead for the title of Canada’s Worst Charity Website and thus win the organization $20,000 for a refit. . Click here to vote. The competition closes april 5.

So it's been a couple of weeks since I posted my last blog "No Shame For Being HIV+",  I thought I would write a follow up to share the reaction I received from it. To be honest, it took a large shot of courage to send that article off to be posted. I didn't know how it would affect the people around me. Would I offend someone, would they feel pressed to say something? I believe it could have been a really ugly situation……..if certain people chimed in on it. 

My story went up on February 11th, My name was there, my photo was there. I was up early to see it go public. I waited. I kept refreshing the page to see if anyone was reading it. I saw eight people, a half hour later it was up to 21, people were reading it. By noon we made it the feature story on the PositiveLite.com page. A bit later an email comes in; AIDS New Brunswick wants to feature it on their website. By 2 o'clock the views had doubled. 

I go back to my facebook page, one "Like", no ''Shares". At 1:30pm I had to go offline to attend a Monday afternoon get together at the ASO. When I get there, no one is aware of it being up online. I talked about it, told them how it was going viral. I know that not everyone in my circle who is HIV+ is out there doing what I’m doing and/or follow everything that happens everyday. One person still has dial up service so she can't access the site to read it. Two minutes later, the conversation died off and we’re discussing the sandwiches and coconut cookies. 

Back to the reaction to my story, I wish I could quote some of the comments I got on it, but there was basically only a couple from non-activist/advocates. I mentioned in the first part that the only people who forward or share HIV information are fellow advocates. So that’s been a rather uneventful two weeks with the others around me. 

When I changed my Facebook and twitter to do advocacy work, I emailed everyone who I thought should know what I was up to. Some didn’t know I was gay, let alone HIV+. I wanted them to choose whether they wanted to be subjected to all my HIV stuff. For the most part, I got a positive reaction: we were still going to be friends, they were glad I told them and they wished me the best in whatever I do. 

Maybe a year later, they aren’t even saying “hi” anymore. Maybe some of them gave up on social media all ltogether; who knows?  Not me. So, slowly I started to delete them from my facebook. I respect their beliefs, I would never come out and ask for them to share. I have my privacy settings so that only people I accept as friends see what I am sharing so taking them off my contact list works for all of us. 

The other day, I’m sitting online, doing all my social media stuff, trying to keep up with emails that were coming in, and out of the blue, I go back to my facebook page and refresh it. I scroll through most of it but then my eye catches a long post by one of my contacts, a very active advocate. In what he had written  was this snipit:  

“I logged into facebook to find a message from a friend, who told me that they were 'de-friending' me due to the fact 'I speak too much on the topic of aids”. (He responded to the guy that the name is AIDS.) 

Now I’ve never received anything like this but it is something I believe many of the people around me might be thinking but are unable to tell me. It is exactly why I wrote the first part of this. I seem to always look to family members or friends to get an idea of how I should answer questions their family or acquaintances might ask me. Truthfully, I get the feeling they would prefer I not say anything because those persons don’t know anything, because they haven’t told them. Sometimes they even answer the questions with “he’s semi-retired” or “he takes it easy now”. I think they call this “enabling”, because I am concerned about their privacy and comfort level. 

I am finding and sharing current information about HIV/AIDS, I’m trying to stop this fucking 1980s thinking that so many people still believe. I don’t get paid to do any of this. If I were, I don’t think I could do it with the same passion. Yeah, I’m passionate about what I am doing. If I hear I reached one person a day or a week, then I know I have done a good thing and that is my reward. 

I am writing about what it's like to actually live with HIV after thinking I would never have to. I had all the information but I still got HIV. It may not have traumatized me like it does many others but it’s something I have to live with the rest of my life and I have to do it in an informed and healthy way. It isn’t a death sentence anymore but it is a life sentence. You do live with HIV and you can live a very long healthy life. 

When I read blog after blog from young people in their twenties, writing about being diagnosed or their 1st anniversary it makes me say, WHY? What aren’t we doing to get to these people. HIV isn’t anything new, There is no cure. 

I have found the internet to be a place where I can share everything they need to know, the stuff they probably won’t hear any other way. 

Anyway, I hope that people genuinely aren’t ashamed of me or that I have HIV. I won’t hide it any longer. If I’m in your company with your friends and/or extended family and they ask me, “so, what do you do?” I won’t be silent, I am going to talk about it all. 

It’s too quiet, too many people are silent. I feel they are trying to drown me in stigma. I’m still able to swim, I can keep my head above the stigma, I will keep going. I have to because I’m going to live with HIV, and live well. 

Do I see us “Getting to Zero” the “AIDS Free Generation”? No I don’t, not at the pace we are going. I use to say that one day, everyone will know a gay person and it will change the way they feel about homosexuality. Now I say, one day everyone will know someone who is HIV+ and that will hopefully change the way they feel about the disease and most of all, about the person. I’d love to see that in my lifetime, but I am not that optimistic right now. I have hope though, I will always have that.

This post originally appeared on the website of the AIDS Committee of Guelph (ACG) here.

It must be time to slow down because I just noticed I missed the second anniversary of my first blog debuting on ACG's site way back on August 9th 2010. So this means my second year at PositiveLite.com is coming up March 30th as well. This entry will be my 29th blog posting for ACG and I have written 82 for PositiveLite.com. I didn't realize I had this much to say.

When I started I was as green as you can get, I had no idea what I was doing. I remember there was a book I had read, "If you can talk, you can write" by a guy named Joel Saltzman. I read it, many years ago. I did try to write a few times but gave up. I still don't think I will write the next great novel, but blogging is a form of writing that I can do. It is a lot like talking, so why not write it.

The incentive for me to start was knowing that I had two great mentors/editors in Megan DePutter at ACG and Bob Leahy at PositiveLite.com. They cleaned up my articles so that they read better. I don't know how true it is (Editor's note: It's true!) but they have told me they have had to do less editing as time went by. So if my English in some blogs sounds a little too refined to be me, that’s because it’s Bob's work. I have warned him to be careful doing it because people will expect me to talk like that.

Something else that motivated me to get involved in blogging was having my HIV status go public on the internet. Once it was out there I couldn't hide from it, but I could get involved in helping people better understand HIV and to help end the stigma that I was subjected to that day. I wanted to share my story and put a face to this disease and hopefully reach someone else who could relate. I read many blogs by other writers and I can relate to some of their stories or find out new things I could dor to live a better and healthier life.

I have been able to move away from just writing about myself and offer my opinion on other subjects, like homophobia, stigma, or I'll write about my photography, a movie or television shows I watch. I am aware that I'm living with HIV 24 hours a day but it isn't something I have to worry about every hour of the day. Life goes on, normally! I work, I play and I still do most of the things I used to, just a little slower now.

Now, thanks to social media I am communicating and sharing information with people across the country and around the world. To hear from a young American living in Japan that he was following my blog and was inspired to go on and tell his story, or from an older gentleman in Toronto who wanted to talk to me about going public with his real name; these are some of the best rewards I could receive. (The older gentleman in Toronto, by the way, is now the publisher for PositiveLite.com.)

I have tried to start my own blog site several times, but was frustrating to see that no one was reading it. This is where social media came in. You have to be on Facebook and twitter and a few other places where you can post links to your blog. I like to make fun of learning to use programs on the internet; once I learn how to use them, I tell people, "it is so easy, even I can do it."

There are easier ways of promoting via social media than I was used to. I was introduced to another program recently that makes much of the social media work easier. I was told about it ages ago but fought off having to learn something new. With this new program, I can schedule all the posts on social media and take off for the day.

Now I am doing the Facebook page for PositiveLite.com, plus I'm writing and scheduling the tweets to go up on Twitter. I haven't mastered the "Smart Phone", so I'm not doing any of that while on the run and it helps that I don't have one..........yet! I believe I am being smart in telling myself I don't need one. I think once someone has one of those phones, they really do stop communicating in a human way, and become “app-dicted” as well; an app for this, an app for that. Look around you, you don't even have to leave your home, someone around you right now is clutching their phone and paying little attention to you.

I use social media; social media doesn't use me. I find I spend a lot of time online and less time with the people around me. I do need to work on this part. If I'm out with people, most of the time, I have my phone off or on vibrate and I am present in the moment.

Part of the inspiration to write yet another blog about blogging is because ACG has a call out to anyone who might be interested in getting started. Now that some of us have our feet in the door there is plenty of experience to learn from. Megan Deputter, Olivia Kijewski and myself are all blogging on PositiveLite.com as well as ACG's site. We haven't been able to sit down for our first meeting yet so there is still time to get in on this workshop.

To use one suggestion that was made to me, "it might be a good thing for you". It was for me and it seems I'm well into my third year of blogging, I didn't get bored with it. I didn't stop. I do get writer's block from time to time but a detour out in the real world can be all that I need to get back on track.