Tell Your Cat I Said Psst…

Disclaimer: Most of this should be read with dry humor in mind.

Hello, my name is Jeffrey Segassie, but I go by Brett. It’s my middle name. I’m including this because for some reason people tend to be confused by why I go by middle name instead of my first. I’m not sure either, my mom and my family called me by middle name and the meaning is only an abbreviation of another country whereas “Jeffrey” actually means “God’s Peace” and I was born on a Sunday so go figure, the jury might still be out for whether that fits my personality or not. I do know that I try to have empathy for everyone as I was taught, my mom was a great woman, and recently passed. All I can try to be is the man she wanted me to be, that she thought I was.

I was born in Jacksonville, FL and I’m still here now. I am not sure if that is where I want to stay. I would like to travel and see more of the world by living in different places and over the years I’ve realized that Jacksonville is still the beautiful city that I thought it was, but over the past several years it has been a lot more problematic, and not the place I grew up in, and that makes me very emotional that while I grew up being taught to appreciate everyone and their differences that isn’t the world we live in. Equality for everyone should not be an issue. I recently stated to a friend that as a gay man we don’t even have equality amongst ourselves, we all have prejudices, and stereotypes. Maybe it’s wanderlust that I don’t want to live here anymore? I’ve been thinking about using my library degree, when I obtain it, to work in Europe of in other countries, but I’m not sure where to start there.

I’ve also been traveling to Atlanta my entire life and I tried to figure that out some this morning. Let’s say I went there every Christmas and Summer for starters until I was eighteen and I’m still doing that now, that’s somewhere around over 25,000 miles driving just by the time I was legally an adult and I know that it was a lot more than that. When you factor in an idea this way it shows the importance of statistics in your life and everyone has their own. I have my own, which to me shows that I’m more of a staunch character than I always think of myself and everyone can think of themselves in this way when you view different lenses of what you’ve been through.

I attended a non-denominational Christian college, which was Florida Christian College, and is now Johnson University South. It is interesting that there are at least five different types of non-denominational Christian schools of thought, ours was on Alexander Campbell, and there’s at least two or three biography volumes about him have been published, but the author Eva Jean Wrather, spent at least seventy years of her life compiling a biography of more than 800,000 words. People ask me why I attended college there when I did not intend to go into a field teaching religion. I went because I knew some people there, I wanted to move to the Orlando area, and be away from home without being too far away, and I studied Humanities. It’s interesting that now they have more “marketable” degrees Nursing, Business, etc. but I do not regret the people that I met and what I learned there. It would be great if everyone used hermeneutics and context and research about what they talked about before just saying something (I actually learned that there) and how to dress properly (It astounds me that people come to interviews in T-shirts and shorts). It was proved that I didn’t move too far because I’d get calls in the middle of the day with my mom telling me she had driven down and that she needed help finding somewhere to stay. I appreciate that a lot more now than I did then. I worked in the library there which made me want to work in libraries and I graduated fourteen years ago and I’m only now working on my Masters degree because I had doubts and life along the way. If I can give anyone inspiration it would be to not let your doubt get in your way, to just go for it, because time will go on regardless. I’m in this class because it seemed like I learn something from it I’m not sure I’d be great in technology. I’ve always been able to pick up on it. Not programming, what I’m worried about is not that libraries will become obsolete, things change, I’m worried if I don’t have some experience in IT the degree I’m getting right now will become obsolete so I’m trying to learn what I can.

I’m also a cat person. This is Oliver.

I have said somewhere on Twitter @brettsegmented, also Tumblr tumblr.com/brettsegmented (Do you ever just go back to your archived posts and remember things you loved and loved about yourself?) before that I have a very powerful cat. As a jest and to be somewhat serious. I do love dogs too, but when you’re roommate decides to breed them and doesn’t tell you and the dog has 15 puppies you get kind of burnt out. I just want my own, but I don’t think my cat would appreciate that right now.