The Holiday Wrap

I am heading out to spend Christmas Eve through New Year's Eve with my father and his side of the family in Columbus, Indiana. I will have limited access to Internet while there, but will be setting up shop at the local Starbucks after Christmas every day for a few hours to take care of immediate work. I wanted to get out a few things before I leave though and wish you all the happiest of holidays.

I have "gone missing" from both the "Diary" here and the "News Desk" for the past few weeks and wanted to explain why. I couldn't explain until after we wrapped, but I actually got asked by Playboy to do a one-hour special for them, titled appropriately enough, The Jason Sechrest Special.

Okay, this is a really big deal to me and it required a lot of time and effort on my part to make sure we got it right.

I have gone in to do guest spots for Playboy TV and Playboy Radio since I was about 21 years old. Back then, they would often scrap my segments or edit them because I was not about to hide that I was usually more interested in the men I was interviewing. Even today, all of the hosts of Playboy Radio are female porn stars. There are no male porn personalities on the station. So for the first one they ever ask to do a special to be me, I was elated and honored. It really shows how far we have come in bridging the gap between the two industries.

I did the show with Heidi Mayne and Brittany Andrews. It was pre-taped and will be airing soon. I'll let you know on the "News Desk" as soon as I have confirmed date and times. They are planning on running it a lot! YAY!

So that's where I've been! Some of you were so sweet to email me and make sure I was okay. I've just been busy with that, updating the other parts of my site, doing publicity for my PR clients, getting ready for the holidays, hosting my two club shows in L.A. and singing several gigs a week. The blogs just had to take a back burner so please forgive me for that. I hope you'll understand.

Speaking of which, I did my last night of the year singing at The Other Side on Friday night and it was pretty emotional for me. The audience has never been better than it was on that night. It was so packed that people were standing together like packs of sardines, singing along, Christmas sweaters and songs aplenty, with not one person in a mood less than blissful. I looked around and thought, what a special place this piano bar is and how lucky I am to have discovered it. It is what made me realize that there was life outside the "bubble," that I was not a hermit just because I didn't feel like living the West Hollywood lifestyle, and it introduced me to so many new friends.

When I went up to perform, I told the audience that I have been a lot of places this year, but none where I have smiled more than in that room. I thanked piano player James Lent for dragging me, kicking and screaming, up to that microphone for the first time when I was so scared to do so.

That has been my year, really. Two to three nights a week singing at various venues, not to mention rehearsals and work time, plus performing in my first musical earlier this year... when I look back and ask what I did in 2007, the answer will be, "That was the year I became a singer."

I also wanted to do a post like I did last year, noting the high and low points of each month, but upon revisiting my old "Diary" entries, I found that more often than not, there were no low points and there were about five or six highlights! I then remembered the reason I did that the year previous was because my year had been so awful, I felt a need to remind myself of not only the bad, but the good too. I am grateful to say that I don't really need to do that this year.

Because this year I decided to start focusing more on singing, acting and hosting than on my site or behind-the-scenes porn work, this is the first year I have been able to say that I have made the bulk of my living off of being an entertainer. Now, the downside to that is that I have not made quite as great a living as past years have seen! LOL... It's weird to be doing what I want to do with my life and being happier than I've ever been and yet I'm not all that financially secure. Something to work on fixing in the New Year. I have managed to keep my head above water doing what I love and that just amazes me as it is, but I would like to find out how to make more money off of those things in the New Year now that I've really spent the last year honing all of those skills. It's time to branch out and hit the audition circuit, which I haven't done in quite some time. I wasn't ready until now.

The only other thing missing is a significant other. Being single has been so much different since being in a real long-term relationship. It's not the fun time that it used to be after having visited the other side of that mirror. But as much as I would love to be in a relationship and be a partner to someone, I also refuse to settle. So that is just what it is for the time being.

Other than that, I am in a better place than I've been in for a really long time. The main thing is that I really like myself these days. I like who I am now a lot more than who I was a year ago. I needed to cut certain people and jobs and situations out of my life to become the person I wanted to be: a good friend, a loyal partner, a good influence, a little more humble and a lot more loving of humanity in all its flaws and glories.

Thank you all for continuing to ride this roller coaster with me. Have a great holiday! I will try to update if I can from Indiana, but expect regular updates to resume after the 2nd.

Sending love to you, your friends and family!