Dizzy Thinking
Behind the Thoughts.
Different seasons. Same thread.The Backstory · The person behind the thoughts
I’m Danney.
This is Dizzy Thinking.
I’m the writer behind Dizzy Thinking—a place for personal reflections on identity, relationships, music, parenthood, and starting over.
I just turned 50. I’m a gay man who spent a surprisingly large portion of his life trying to become whatever the room needed him to be.
Some of that came from growing up. Some from things that I did. Some from things that happened to me. Some from coming out. Some from relationships, work, family and becoming a parent before I’d really figured out who I was.
And some of it I’m only beginning to understand now.
I spent decades without explanations for why I experienced certain things the way I did. Later in life, I finally started getting some answers.
Answers are useful.
They don’t magically rewrite everything that came before.
Why this exists
The space between
A and B.
Dizzy Thinking is where I try to understand how I get from one thought to the next. The relationships, memories, music, mistakes, questions, random detours and 37 open tabs that somehow become the way I see the world.
This isn’t advice, and it isn’t a roadmap for how anyone else should think, feel or heal.
It’s an honest look at how I got from A to B. Including the parts where I doubled back, changed my mind, or still don’t know where I am.
The things that keep showing up
A few recurring themes.
A lot of overlap.
These aren’t separate chapters with tidy endings. They run through each other. Through me. Through the things I write.
Identity
Gay. Dad. Son. Partner. Ex. Business owner. Volunteer. Friend. Person who still isn’t entirely sure what he’s doing.
Late answers
What happens when you finally get explanations for things you’ve spent decades believing were character flaws?
Masking
Learning how to become what the room expects, then eventually wondering which parts were actually you.
People pleasing
Being very good at taking care of everyone else’s comfort and considerably less skilled at protecting your own.
Trauma
Sex abuse is part of my story. It isn’t my identity, and it doesn’t get to explain everything that came afterward. But pretending it had no effect would be equally dishonest.
Coming out
Learning who I was privately. Having that become public without my consent. Losing family, friends, and a career. Then figuring out what being gay actually meant for me, rather than what everyone else thought it meant.
Love & relationships
How I attach. How I communicate. What I expect. What I tolerate. What I give. What I need. And why those aren’t always the same things.
Parenthood
Becoming a parent young, trying to break cycles I could see while unknowingly carrying others forward.
Justice & empathy
Why unfairness can consume me. Why I can feel other people’s pain intensely. And why extending that same understanding toward myself has historically been a much harder assignment.
The 10–12 year cycle
I’ve noticed that roughly every decade or so, my life seems to blow itself up. Career. Identity. Relationships. Direction. I don’t know whether that’s a pattern, coincidence, choices, circumstances, or my brain connecting dots. That’s exactly the kind of question Dizzy Thinking exists for.
Starting over
I’ve gotten pretty fucking good at this one.
Not necessarily by choice.
Music
Music has helped me find my way through life. It has given me words when I couldn’t find my own, company when I felt alone, and a way to understand what I was feeling. Certain songs still carry entire seasons of my life.
The road
Sometimes thinking works differently when the scenery is moving.
Humor
Because if we’re going to examine a lifetime of questionable decisions, we should at least be allowed to laugh occasionally.
And underneath all of it
Uncertainty.
I don’t want Dizzy Thinking to become a collection of stories where Past Danney was confused and Present Danney swoops in with the answer.
Present Danney is also confused.
He just asks better questions sometimes.
Some context, without every detail
Different Seasons.
Same Thread.
A life doesn’t fit neatly into a timeline. But these are some of the seasons that brought me here.
-
01
Childhood
Family. Expectations. Abuse. Happy memories alongside things I didn’t have words for. Learning to read the room. Learning to adapt.
One of the early seasons. -
02
Young adulthood
Leaving home. Work. Learning adulthood mostly by doing it.
Before I had the words. -
03
Building a life
Marriage. Parenthood. Trying to build a life while I was still figuring out who I was.
A whole life happening. -
04
Coming out
Identity becoming public without my consent. Losing family, friends, and a career. Marriage ending. Life restructuring. Trying to understand what being myself could look like.
Some seasons
don’t need a photograph. -
05
Career & reinvention
A twenty-year career chapter ending unexpectedly. Something I thought was permanent suddenly wasn’t. So I rebuilt.
People. Work. Another chapter. -
06
Another decade
Career. Business. Love. Family. Another version of life. Another set of things I thought would last.
My daughter, a friend’s car, a moment. -
07
Another implosion
Loss. Relationships changing. Questions about myself getting harder to ignore.
The weather changes. -
08
Late answers
Beginning to understand things about how my brain works that I hadn’t understood for decades. New explanations. New questions about the years before them.
Still making room for things that grow. -
09
Now
Still working. Still loving people. Still screwing things up. Still learning. Still driving. Still asking questions.
Dizzy Thinking lives here.
Why I share
Inside the unfinished part.
I’m not writing this because I figured everything out.
Quite the opposite.
I’m not an expert on how anyone else should live. I’m just becoming more interested in understanding how I’ve lived mine.
If something here helps you recognize something in yourself, understand somebody else a little differently, or simply makes you feel less strange for having 37 tabs open at once, cool.
That’s enough.
