Central Florida's Hidden Gem: OGC

The Orlando Gay Chorus is presenting their 2012 holiday concert, "Reasons for the Season" at The Plaza LIVE, 425 North Bumby Avenue, Orlando. Performances will be held Saturday, December 15 at 7:30pm and Sunday, December 16 at 4:30pm. "Reasons for the Season" will feature both traditional holiday music and other songs celebrating the diversity of the season. 

See me for tickets or you can also purchase them directly on the website (www.orlandogaychorus.org) - just make sure to use my referral code: 1391. Even if you can't attend personally, it would be a great holiday gift for a loved one. It's going to be a beautiful show. Oh, and your's truly has a solo, so it would be a chance to hear me "sang a lil bit"...

Glad to see, Hard to leave

One of the biggest excitements about going home for Christmas... my beautiful nieces, Brandi (4) and Brooklyn (4 days)!  This photo was from late November, so she will really be filling out when I see her at 1 month old!  Love, love, love these girls.

Brandi has made it harder to leave and return to Orlando every year.  Her ever-evolving self awareness is something I absolutely hate to be missing.  She is so smart and so quick... cute as a button and funny as all get-out.  An absolute joy to experience.  (I sound like an elementary teacher filling out a report card.)   I imagine this will really be a rough trip home with the newbie to the fold.  Sometimes I just feel like I am missing so much.  But my family is really supportive of my goals and dreams... or simply me, really.  They've always believed in me and pushed me to do more, which has literally meant more to me than they can ever know.

Love you guys.

Home is where you make it...

As a transplant from Arkansas, it's not always economically feasible to be with my family on every major event… from births and deaths, to birthdays and anniversaries, or even most holidays.  Holidays are typically the times when I get a bit homesick.  Luckily, I've been able to plug into an amazing group of people that have become a surrogate of sorts, which helps alleviate a lot of the homesickness.  Thanksgiving was a terrific example - amazing food, great friends and conversation, overflowing drinks, laughter echoing off of every wall in every room of the house.  

My friend Jason DID WORK in the kitchen!

I think it true that family is not just those that share your bloodline, but the group of people you choose to surround yourself with.  This holiday sure felt just like home.

Enjoy this classic. Happy Halloween, kids!

When I get away, there is usually ocean involved...

Morning view from the apartment balcony

Recently, I was able to take advantage of a long weekend and took a mini-vacation to Palm Beach, FL.  I stayed with two of the best guys I know, Robert Rexroad and Ryan Tolley.  I am honored to be able to call these guys colleagues, but blessed to call them friends.  They were my hosts and guides around this beautiful city for the weekend.  Along with Bobby's charming lady, Elizabeth, we had a blast for the weekend, full of great conversation, relaxation, reflection and just good ol' fun.

This is a photo of the first ever mimosa purchased in Nana's Diner, 

a new West Palm Beach establishment.  

I'm always finding ways to etch my name in a record book!  :) 

We spent a little time on this yacht... wait... we spent some time LOOKING AT this yacht while waiting on the drawbridge to do it's thing for a small sailboat passing through.  I WILL be hanging out on one of those one of these days, mark my words!  Until then, a boy can dream...

This is honestly one of my favorite sites...

a beach chair in a beautiful spot, watching the ocean wash in and out, feeling the breeze, enjoying the sun, refreshing drink in hand, and a little music in the background.

I could most definitely get used to this!

Hanging out of the window at stop lights can make for pretty sweet photos...

I always get excited when the palm trees are leading the way right to the ocean.

I almost came home on Sunday, but decided I deserved one more day on the beach... 

Best decision of the weekend!

I'm a blessed man.

New Machine, New Motivation, Ready to go!

Recently, we had a little scare... and by we, I mean "me" and host of characters that reside in my head that help me make all decisions.  The hard drive crashed on my beloved MacBook Pro!  Talk about a total freak out!  It was almost a total of 2 weeks before I was able to get to my local Apple store to assess the situation, replace my internal hard drive (which I completed personally - a great personal accomplishment, however simple it may be, because of the fear that I would create more problems by tinkering around inside), and get back to Apple to have my operating system reinstalled.

It was during our time apart, when I was totally out of commission, that I realized just how much I missed my computer.  But why?  Missing out on all of my internet television?  Yeah, okay, I'll give you that one.  But second, this very powerful tool has so many tools within it to facilitate making my dreams a reality... and I've been so distracted by my "day job" that I have allowed many of those additional endeavors to fall by the wayside.  As hard as I tried to avoid this, my work has taken up much more of my life than expected and I have not been feeding those things that make me feel alive!  Now that I am back in operation, that will not happen again!

Luckily, I have an external hard drive that I backed many of my files onto, but its been a while since that last back-up.  This led to a loss of many more of my files than anticipated. (Word to the wise: BACK-UP OFTEN!  This is a lesson I will NEVER forget.)  However, I don't see this as a setback, but this is rather a chance to recreate, refine, and reorganize.  I have all of my graduate school files - thank God! - but a lot of my entertainment collateral has been lost.  This has motivated me to grind harder than ever before... Let's get it on!

First mini goal: incorporation.

The Internet Effect

“In general, has the Internet diminished our ability to think critically or are we more

informed than previous generations – or both?”

The advances of the Internet, with its vast amounts of data and collaborators and sources of information, have taken the worldwide population to a new and different technological era.  There is much debate over which direction the population is headed, whether smarter or dumber, but I believe that with the good comes the bad and our next destination as a people is actually a little bit of both.

Some writers would have you believe that we are becoming less analytical and research oriented.  In Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, he lays out the difference in information approach, in response to the changes in media and technology, in a great metaphor: from deep-sea diving about a topic in-depth to skimming the surface of the water on a jet ski.  He makes many valid points regarding how people have access to so much information and just absorb bits of everything as they travel through the nets, but no one knows about any subject in particular with authority these days, because of current informational trends.

Writers on the other side of the issue insist that we can only improve our intellectual capacity with every advancement in technology which is allows access to more information.  Jamais Cascio, in his article in The Atlantic “Get Smarter”, brought up a point that resonated deeply with me - the trouble isn’t that we have too much information at our fingertips, but that our tools for managing it are still in their infancy.  It is this line of thinking, and my belief that people have to exercise the intellectual curiosity to dig deeper about topics, that allow me to see the ultimate benefit of the internet and all of the information available.

It is my belief that the internet effect on the intellect of humanity has been both good and bad – and that’s okay.  We have access to more topics today than generations before could ever have dreamed of.  This allows access to subjects and exposure to issues that would never have seen the light of day – and I would be remiss at not acknowledging this.  New media, technological advances, and other changes may affect the way we process information on the surface, but the information is all there for further scrutiny and investigation.  One just simply has to dig deeper and with more focus, avoiding the distractions and pitfalls out there to redirect focus.  With the creation of more and more tools that help us to manage what’s available, we can make better and more logical sense of what data we receive.  This has the advantage and potential to take us to higher and higher levels as a people, in medical discoveries, easier means to accomplish goals, and ways to generally improve our everyday lives.

We just have to want to make it work for us.

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Marcus C. Ealy is a graduate of Entertainment Business from Full Sail University in Winter Park, Florida. He is currently active as an entertainment and marketing strategist, blogger, social media manager, and background vocalist.   You can follow his personal blog at http://reflectiveknight.blogspot.com or on Twitter at @MarcusEaly.