Back To Counseling

After so much time, I am more than a little befuddled as to how it seems like the universe is finally conspiring to make this all happen. In a couple weeks, I have my first appointment with the psychologist since last year. Amazingly, I have my Mom to thank for that. I was king of scared yesterday to send her the cost of the appointment. I was frightened that she might scoff at the cost and that I would have to look at other avenues for it. People just continue to amaze me. Rather than saying anything negative or even mentioning the cost, my Mom remembered my fairly long standing aversion to a counseling or psychological process and was just glad that I had found someone that I was willing to go back too. I have found in my life at least that when something is meant to happen, things will fall into place to where it just happens.

I mean, there are times when you bang your head against the wall and don’t really get anywhere. Then, you have to pretty much just go back and re-evaluate why you are bothering to bang your head against the wall at all. A little over five years ago, I remember that I was attempting to join the National Guard. I went through the whole process. I filled out all of the forms. I went through everything on the tests. All of it. All I had to do was a brief physical examination and athletic exercises. After that I was in. There was something called the ‘duck walk’ that they wanted me to do. As I went down for it, my knee twisted. All I had to do was stand up and run. I could not. The doctor looked at my knee and I was told it was ‘muscular weakness.’ That was it. It was done. If I had wanted too, I could have gone back and done it.

Something told me to just leave it alone. The circumstances had changed. I had gotten a new job that paid more. It just did not seem to be working out at all. So, I stepped back and let the determination be the determination. Later on, at the new job, I was working the over night shift. One of the guys that I was working the over night shift with was in that same unit. After about three months on the job, the unit was sent to Iraq during the surge in the war. They were over there for two years. Technically, I would have been on computer repair but it was still straight up in Bagdad. I just was not meant to be there and something happened to where I was not there. During the time that I was supposed to be in Iraq, I ended up moving to another part of the country. Also, my Dad died during that time. Ultimately, it was just revealed that it was more important for me to be home. Now, essentially I am too old and all of the circumstances have changed. I am proud of myself for at least trying but I am glad that I was ultimately unsuccessful. There seemed like there was a certain… dignity in the attempt.

Wherever it may lead, my Mom is just glad that I am getting help and I found someone that I was comfortable getting help from. That sort of makes me feel like since I just started writing about this with no other reason than I needed to that the end goal would actually be somehow met. I had no reason to, but I figured just start writing. It sort of reminds me of a John Candy movie that I saw where he decides to write his life until the actual life catches up with the writing. I wrote down a list of about 39 goals. There were a fair number of them that had to do with transitioning. What I have found when I did this the last couple of years is that one of three things will happen, either the goal will be accomplished, I will lose interest in the accomplishment, or that I will feel like ( in failure) that I took the goal as far as I could. Failure is really nothing more than a fully answered question.

At any rate, successfully achieving a large goal means that you successfully achieved many smaller goals on a daily basis. The most important part is to just have a manageable amount of things to do pertinent to your overall goals that you can do on your daily routine. I have seen progress on what seemed like ridiculously long goals on small amounts of daily effort. For instance, daily I will tweet 120 characters of the Bible in sequential order. After a couple years, I am up to Genesis chapter 20. I have also set a goal of getting the Nest Egg achievement in Mafia Wars. I deposit off of my properties ever day. I started on January 1st, 2012. I am now near 5 trillion. That means at roughly January 1st 2014, I should have accomplished the goal. it’s a lot of little things that I do to see progress on goals. So that my overall goal (which is this ) can look more reasonable in small steps. I am trying to do things right.

Just thought I would update.

Despite it all, I believe I am happy.

Till the next time.

There Is A Plan

“A goal without a plan is nothing more than a wish”

Herman Edwards

It is one of the more sage things that I have heard in a while. I have a plan. I just need the will to actually execute it. You can feel your self drifting towards a certain area. I can feel that the surroundings that I am currently in will be as transitional as I hope that my body will one day be. Realistically, the oldest child has three years until she graduates from high school. The youngest child has three years until she enters high school. I have three years until I am 40.

That sort of sets 2015 as a goal type year. The goal for me at least is to have started hormones by then and then move in order to live what they call full time. I have my mom’s wedding as well as my high school reunion next year. I have had 2013 marked on my calendar for some time now. My current thousand day ‘wheel’ ends in January of 2014. To me, a lot of it seems natural about going full time in 2014-2015. Of course, there is also counseling and a lot to happen before that occurs, but I can see it. I can see how it can be done. The negative part is that I would probably still have to take a job in the profession that I have been in for the last decade for some form of continuity, but if I can successfully get a job as the new me – then I can settle into almost any environment. It just seems like 40 is a good target year for a lot of things. It seems like 2015 seems right to me on the level of a nice slow orderly transition. Of course, a lot can happen between now and then. There is even the chance that some of it might actually be good.

I keep checking the savings and know that 2015 would probably have enough to save up for at least the start of a successful move. The lease ( if going year by year ) ends in July. Of course, there is a good chance that we might move to a new location between now and then. I have got to make counseling a priority in the next two years or so as well as some sort of medical insurance. That is how everything really starts as an idea in the back of your head. That idea starts to develop as a plan. Then the plan moves to execution. Then, you get to move on to telling people that you would not reveal your master stroke if they had any chance at all of stopping you. Do, I did it 35 minutes ago.

It would be fun to tell the masses essentially after hormone replacement therapy had a few months to take effect. I have found recently that I have trailed off on the urge to tell at least for the time being. My wife has known for years. My oldest daughter has now known for about a month. The three people that I decided to tell on Facebook essentially offered some kind words and encouragement for a few days and then it was not mentioned much again. I think on some level my fear of telling people is starting to dissipate a fair bit. I know that it will flare up and blow over. Coming up with a coherent plan of how to live and how to manage work is something that I need help with in the counseling department. I know that there is practically a corps of my friends who will support me even if there are some that do not. I do not actually plan on going through the whole trans deal of putting much out there other than it is happening. I have never been any kind of activist. I have always hated parades. No changes will be immediate. I think that there is a feeling that as some sort of trans, there is some sort of role that you need to play.

I remember when I got divorced when I was young. I remember that when it got past the emotion to being able to sit down and rationally discuss what I wanted to do and how we wanted to divide things, that was when it was really going to happen. I think that at this point, the children’s personalities are pretty well to the point where they can accept it. You never really know who will be accepting or who will not. I believe when I turn forty that I will have earned a little bit of a right to relax and simply live how I want too. I live a lot for others. I have given myself totally and completely for others my whole life. I think that those others can take a chance at having one time in their lives to actually just allow me to be me.

I can’t really say Till Tomorrow but it will be Till A Tomorrow at least. It is a Tomorrow that I am looking forward too.

Oh what the hell…

Till Tomorrow.

Brooks Was Here

You never want to have a day at work like I had today. The odd part is that there was a lot of ups and downs to it. The actual work today was not all that bad. It was just that there was an email in the queue from the site director. To keep in line with the over all theme, a man I will call ‘Brooks’ passed away suddenly. There are actually times when news like this does not bother you on anything more than a “Its just sad to see a human life gone level.” ‘Brooks’ was a bit different and bit more. The email said that he had been working there for a long time. That did not really tell the story.

‘Brooks’ had been there long enough to be able to choose his own schedule regardless of what schedules were being offered. For those keeping track at home, that is over ten years. ‘ Brooks’ was almost an old world character and a gentleman. He had slicked back greasy hair and a big bushy beard. He wore rainbow suspenders and a belt. For the record, ‘Brooks’ was a huge mass of a man. He was getting on up in years and walked with a cane. The cane kind of added to the overall effect.

‘Brooks’ was on my team last year. He sat a couple rows behind me. He always had a booming voice and very infectious laugh. He wore glasses that could more accurately be called spectacles. The last time I really talked to ‘Brooks’ was earlier this year. We were both in an advanced troubleshooting course together. There was another older black woman in that training who walked with a cane as well. On the last day of training, we all pooled our food on a training table and the three of us talked and had a good time. ‘Brooks’ took forever to walk. I walked with him out of the building. The journey seemed almost impossibly slow and he gabbed the whole way. ‘Brooks’ was one of the people who you just felt better about your self after you spent time with him. He was always entertaining and part of you felt like you were in line for a merit badge.

The older black woman never forgot that I was hungry. Every day after that, she would pass by my pod and give me leftovers from her meal. When she did not have leftovers, she would just give me money. One day she stopped stopping by. I heard she lost her job. Honestly, with all of her medical conditions, I was glad that she was not dead. Unfortunately, ‘Brooks’ has now passed on. I read the email over and over. It talked of his devotion to the company. It talked of how he will be missed. I read the attachment on dealing with grief. The attachment cleared up a lot of things for me. It said that in grief it was important to maintain a routine and not make to many changes.

‘Brooks’ is now not only an inspiration but some one who reminds me of fictional characters. I think of Brooks from the Shawshank Redemption who had become institutionalized by the jail. I think of the old horse in Animal Farm. He was a good worker. He gave everything he had to the company. He will be remembered fondly by all who knew him in the company that he would never leave. There was a quiet dignity to ‘Brooks’ that you had to admire. I loved the guy. I respect him and I will miss the hell out of him. His dignity is not a dignity I want. It is a dignity that I think we need more of. He found his company and stayed with them through thick and fine. He was a fine man.

I think a lot about The Shawshank Redemption. For the first real time the most trendy phrase in that movie has hit me square in the face. It took ‘Brooks’ passing to do it for me.

‘Get busy living or get busy dyin’.

One of the few other trans I knew well in person used to say it all the time. Somehow, coming from them, it just seemed really selfish. Of course, I think that they missed the point of much of movie other than that you can really have everything that you want. They lacked a lot of patience. We all have our failings. They had not earned ‘get busy living, or get busy dying.’ It was not written anywhere in the building but it was everywhere that I looked today,

‘Brooks was here.’

Part of me wanted my legacy to be that I walked away one day. So that the writing underneath it would read ‘so was Red.’ I’m going to miss ‘Brooks,’ but I am always going to keep the things that his life and eath taught me. I am starting to think that it really does not make sense to live any other way than simply the only way that makes sense to you.

It is perhaps poignant that my team at work celebrated a pot luck today. One of our members is moving on to a different job in the company. There was a ton of food. There was a great cake. It was all really sweet. I did not know where to go with my emotions. I was happy for the woman moving on. She had gotten together with our manager after tell our manager that she wanted to leave. They found a plan and a place in the company for her. I saw the lesson in that one as well. I started to think that one day they might even find a place in the company for the real me. I just have to put my numbers in line before I can feel comfortable asking.

Today, I saw an ending.

Today, I saw a beginning.

Today, I got a hint of the bread crumbs on the path. I had to find a place during my lunch break where no one would see me to cry.

‘Get busy living or get busy dying.’

I think I am starting to get it now.

Till tomorrow.

Living In Fear

I live in fear. I live in constant unending fear. It gets so tiring some day, I can barely even take it. I fear that I will not be able to take care of bills. I fear that I will not be able to take care of my family. I fear that I will be discovered for being what I am or who I feel I am. I was watching Outside the Lines today on ESPN. It concerned a former owner of the Pittsburg Pirates. He was scared that people would find out that he was gay in the macho world of Major league Baseball. Almost immediately, I understood his story. Especially when he said that he lived in fear of coming out for 25 years.

Much of my fear is tied to finances. Frequently, I have to ask for money or practically beg. Frequently, I have to tell people about my financial failures. At this stage of my life, I was really hoping to be past all of that. I don’t have much to begin with. Holding onto that is much harder than it might seem. Every month seems like a struggle against getting thrown out of the apartment. Every month seems like an admission that I failed. The worst part is that I can’t imagine much of a time when I would be financially secure enough to be able to tell the world who and what I actually am.

It is fear. Every time I go to a meeting with my boss at work, I fear that something will be found that will end up letting me out the door. I feel like I am perpetually on the edge. Then there is all the medical trouble that has cropped up this year. Personally, I spent two weeks in a hospital earlier this year in a life threatening situation. In the last month, my wife was in the hospital no less than three times with a follow up visit as well. Everything manages to just add up and conspire to bury you.

They say that money cannot buy happiness but I could sure at least use some peace of mind some days. Life does not play to your strengths in any way. I feel like I keep falling in to one job after another. I also fear the laughter. I have been made fun of a lot in my life. I fear that if I do tell people, they will not take me seriously. I fear that they will just laugh about everything that I take so seriously. A lot of it gets back to my Dad. He always wondered why I never told him anything. Yet, whenever I did tell him anything, he tended to treat it as a joke. Finally, he learned that if he was told anything, then it had already been done. I got tired of not being take seriously. I don’t know how I would react to it now.

I don’t know how to conquer fear. I wish I did. I have lived with it for so long that it has just become a fact of life. The sad part is that I think that I think I inspire a fair amount of fear. In my kids. In people that I meet up with at work or in a public environment. People see me and are naturally scared. I worry about getting found out but I don’t think anyone would ever dream of what was in my heart. They don’t know how I wish I would see myself in the mirror. I know how I do see myself in the mirror. I practically recoil in sickness from it. I write this because I know that there are those out there who identify with me and what I am saying. They live almost every day scared as well. Scared of losing everything. Scared to do anything that they truly want to and trapped in the trappings of everything around them.

I know that people look at other people’s face book and see others lives. They just assume that everything is going well for everyone in the world and they are in their own privately fearful hell. It is occasionally reassuring to hear from a fellow confused near desperate individual who feels like every day is a struggle to get something right. There are of course the few days when you shake your head and just have no idea where the next day is coming from or how you survived all of the days up to this one. You always make it through … somehow. There are days when that is good enough and there are days when it is not. You just want to get ahead just a little. I know. I have tried. Every time I start to want a little you know extra, then life kicks you back so far back that you are struggling getting on your feet again. You just have that little bit that you keep trying to defend.

The weird part is that what ever you may have, some one out there is jealous of it. Believe me, I know that one to be true. Personally, I am jealous of nearly anyone born female. Ironically, that encompasses everyone in my house who is not me. All around me, I am swimming in a femininity which I feel like I am not allowed to participate. Fights, complaining, all of it… I just feel like I am trying to swim to the surface and there are tentacles always trying to pull me down and drown me. I feel like it has always been this way. I fear ir always will be. It just seems like I have unnaturally bad luck. That may not be the case. I think that it is more accurate that there is a ceiling from which I cannot seem to break above. In my present form, I fear that I never will be.
I know that there are those out there that know what I am talking about.

Till Tomorrow.

Born Wrong, Died Wrong

I can tell you that I am not suicidal. I can tell you that I have not actively thought about killing myself in a long long time. I am not currently thinking in any way about killing myself. I cannot tell you that I have never been suicidal or have never thought about killing myself. That would be a lie. Here of all places, I have resolved not lie. There are certain facts which I have chosen to withhold but I have never actively lied in what I said here.

I remember the day I wrote what would have been my suicide note. My whole life came down to four simple words. I read them over and over. I thought a lot about them. Ultimately, I decided that the truth of those words was why I could not actually kill myself. It was not the epilouge that I wanted but if I had done it, it was surely the one that I would have had.

“Born Wrong. Died Wrong.”

I thought about it. Why make it easy for anyone else? Why make it easy for myself? That had not been the way of my life. Why should it be the way of my death? Eventually, I tore up the paper that it was written on. It was like watching Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story and seeing him having his head smashed into his own tombstone.

One of my Dad’s favorite past times was reminding me how ‘easy’ I had it. He would often tell me about his hard scrabble life growing up in the Mid West. He would make my life sound like the nicest, softest, easiest thing that he had ever seen in the world. He was also fond of saying “I hope this is the worst thing that ever happens to you.” It was a phrase that forever trivialized every single major problem in my life. It was that as well as him saying that the “first complainer did not have a chance.” was the basic reason I stopped telling my Dad any of my problems that did not require his assistance. Read into this that only financial problems ever required his assistance. This did not stop him from offering unsolicited advice for everything even when he had no idea what the hell was actually going on.

I found out a long time ago that having a positive day was little more than a really pissy form of rebellion. Even on the phone, I don’t allow them to damper my mood to where they can actually hear my mood being dampered. That just gives the ones that want it a victory.

“Born Wrong. Died Wrong.”

I have learned to fear those words. I have learned to fear crawling into a grave. Another part of Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story talked about how a lifetime lived in cowardice was a failure, but a single day without it was a victory. There is a chance that I do not watch the best movies. Earlier this year, I had a chance to die. I could have put off a visit a couple more days and just let that thing on my face kill me. I realized then that if I died, no one would ever have any chance of knowing who I really was. At least now, should I die, then there are people who know what this blog is and know that I wrote it. Then anyone who wants to can go back and read what happens when I sincerely tell the truth about things.

If you ever saw the movie Good Will Hunting, then you might want to be familiar with the story of William James Sidis. Sidis was a phenomenal mind and a genius who went to college earlier earning advanced degrees. Then after an arrest during a protest, Sidis seemed to drop off. Sidis took a string of middling menial jobs. It all seemed like such a waste that no less a source than James Thurber went to the trouble to actually call Sidis one in the pages of the New Yorker. When Sidis died, they found a treasure trove of papers. Sidis has written about black holes before it was ever a popular theory. Sidis had pen names and had published academic works under them. Apparently, Sidis at one point studied a Native American tribe that held making a contribution in secret as a virtue. As such, Sidis did as well.

Part of the reason why I don’t want to die is that it would just make things too damn easy and comfortable for the rest of the world. Why should I allow them to live without me when on some level it would be far more entertaining to see them try and live with me. The other part is my family. Not the family that made me by any means, rather the family I live with and have in my home. They support me. What am I going to do? Try to avoid scarring them with knowledge of being transsexual by scarring them with the knowledge that I killed myself? It all seems more than a little like a rather cosmic joke to me.

I just want people to know that on some level it is ok to face there mortality.. It takes people perpetually to a dark place that you do not want to stay in. I do not really encourage suicidal thoughts in any way. I just know that I have rather fully thought about it. I have prayed for all sorts of things in my life. There were times when I even prayed for death. I have prayed for cancer (but only it would ravage and contribute to removing certain unwanted parts of my body.) In elementary school, I prayed to Satan if he could make me female. I am guessing there is someone that I don’t currently owe my soul too. I thought of it as interesting at the time that neither God nor Satan was that willing for my soul if the price for having it was changing the sex of my body. Again, life lessons right?

I remember a few years ago that I was at my wife’s grandmother’s house ( which she was very close). My wife and daughters were upstairs with her Grandmother having ‘girl time’ which I was pretty ironically excluded and just having a wonderful time talking and laughing up there. I was downstairs. I had been left alone. She had Christian symbols everywhere in her house. I thought about death and dying. I thought about Heaven. I thought about the promise that you get a new body in Heaven. I thought that in Heaven I could be a woman forever. I could be the woman I would have been if not for this disastrous mistake of life. After this shell is gone, then I thought I would finally have the meeting of mind and body I always dreamed of. It was a comforting thought. I never stood in that house again. My wife’s grandmother died later that year. It was a little comforting that if I ended up crawling into my grave in this body, then there would be a possibility that in the after life I could be me forever.

Oddly, that thought keeps me wanting to live.

Till Tomorrow.

an update

I have not been around recently. Sorry. My wife has had respiratory problems. We have been in the emergency room for two of the last three nights as well as once last week. We are kind of hoping that it has now stabilized. I will try and update more later. As weird as it sounds, I believe that events are actually getting me closer rather than farther away from my goals even though I seem to be moving in the wrong direction. Some times you have to go with counter intuitive logic. I am not going to do it, but part of me thinks that if I quit my job, I can further my writing career. I have not achieved that level of crazy yet. But, I can see how I can get at least half my pay check through writing online. If I pick up three or four more sites that pay, then well you never know.

I want to be able to write from the comfort of my own home and transition as well. With a verified identity online, then I can be who ever I want to be when I am home. That would be my ideal. I have become to understand that life can literally hit you at any point. I have learned to accept a certain unpredictability in it all. I was signed up for all kinds of over time and now I find myself asking for money because of lost wages. Some how, this makes not making my decision public all the more ridiculous to me.

I feel like I need to start taking leaps of faith. Those are the scariest kind. I have been really kind of living on faith for a while. I don’t know how I make it from month to month as it is. Like I said, I feel like if I worked every day now, I could easily make half my present salary writing over the course of the month. That is primarily with working only on three websites that pay. I am starting to try and work on other ones. If I could get regularly up to six to eight. Crazy as it sounds, I could start to use my passion for writing and turn it into my passion for becoming. I know the life I want. I know what I want to do. On some level that is a dangerous thing. It gives me a sense of purpose. The trouble is that it requires that I be absolutely successful on a completely consistent basis.

It has been a very long week. I know that I have followers, readers, and people that love me. I know that my goal is to post nightly. Some people might get worried. There are people in this community that grow despondent as well as suicidal. A sudden cessation of a regular blog ( especially if you don’t exactly know the person ) could possibly lead to speculation. I am alive. I can’t tell you exactly that everything is well. I can tell you that it has been a hard year that has really inspired me to re-evaluate. I think on some level that is a good thing. It took me a long time to get over my Dad’s death. It took me a long time to come to terms with who I am. It took me a long time to tell my daughter. I kind of like the idea of cocooning before emerging as a butterfly. Sorry that this is short.

Till Tomorrow.

A Life Waiting For Me

I knew from before the beginning of this little enterprise that there was an essential component for crossing over. There was having something to cross over too. I first got interested in reading transition blogs several years ago. It seemed like a guilty pleasure at first. Eventually I started to contact the people that were writing the blogs. That is when it occurred to me that I had no idea what their previous names or identities were. Thus, I knew when I started all of this that it would be important that there exist people who never even dreamed that I was anyone other than who I presented myself as here. There would be people who did not know what my previous name was. As such, I have existed in the silent background as my wife’s female roommate for years. Online, there is a whole group of people that have no idea that it is or ever was anything else.

One day, the person that they have heard about for so long will simply emerge. Emerge as she had always been there. If a way, she has. Plans fly out in the wind. There is a place developing as well a life developing that will not only accept me as a woman. They will never accept me as anything different. They will never know that I was anything different. It will become imperative that I not be any different. Again it gets back to Ayn Rand’s statement of it not being important who will allow me, it is merely important who stands to prevent me. Every day, I take a rock hammer to a prison wall. My greatest joy is actually letting the dirt fall on the ground. One day, I will finish crawling through a sewer pipe to freedom. On the other side, a person who people had only heard about but has an established identity will walk living as well as breathing among them.

To those that knew me in a previous life, I will be able to say “Do? Do? I did it 35 minutes ago.” Part of the whole experience is mourning the life you are leaving behind. I get that. But as life moves on. There is another group of people that I have to consider. There are the people who will be a part of my new life. There are the people who don’t understand why I have not emerged already. Quietly, slowly, I am becoming one of them. There is of course that there are more people in my current circle willing to accept me than I know. My oldest daughter stated that rather than making me weirder to her, I started to make a lot of sense. I am starting to lose a lot of the dread associated with this. Part of that is that writing is starting to make regular contributions to my bank account. I often wonder how well I would be doing at that if I had the time to simply write what I wanted to all day.

The other day, I actually earned about a 107 dollars in one day writing online. Granted that was not a typical day. However, if it was a normal day, that is like 3000 dollars a month. That would actually be quite a bit more on average than I am making now. If I could start doing that, then there would be a lot more freedom in my personal life to start being the person that I want to be. It used to be simply a dream, but now there are a few reliable sources. Writing has turned from a thing that occasionally made money to some thing that now regularly makes money. Eventually, I hope that it will be something that regularly makes enough money. Considering I first really sold my first article last year, that is a real improvement. Given time, I could expand the number of sites that I write for as well as put more out there. The point is just to get to a level of consistency.

The important thing is that I can really see how it would work. I can see the benchmarks that are needed. Across that river, there are people waiting. There is a time frame to getting to where I need to be. There is starting to become a feeling that it will be imperative as well a necessary to a great many people. I know where I want to live. I know who I want to live as. I understand from previous life changes that having a completely new environment is completely essential It is even more essential that people go in acting like it is the way that things have always been. To people who have met us over the course of the last half decade or so, it has.

I now look forward to the days in which I can fully take part in the life that is just there waiting for me. It is a happy thought. Those types of things are important right before you go to be.

A little short of my goal tonight. I really don’t have anything more to say.

Till tomorrow.

What Are My Goals?

There is a difference between wants, desires, and goals. Goals need to be realistic and achievable. In order to achieve wants and desires, you first need to quantify goals. I remember reading about basketball coach Lawrence Frank. At a very young point in his life, he mapped out all the goals that he would need to do in order to become an NBA head coach. As ridiculous as it all seemed, it was a plan that eventually worked. He got so detailed right down to going to Indiana University just to join Bobby Knight’s staff as far as being a trainer. Being a trainer for the Indiana University Hoosiers was an absolutely essential part of his plan. Frank’s plan worked and he has been an NBA head coach now for two different franchises.

That got me interested in goal setting. The reason why goals tend to seem impossible is that when you say “I just want to go from point a to point b” Then it is impossible. My current goal is the following. I need another counseling session. I had one two hour session last year. It is my understanding that I need at least 16 hours in counseling to qualify on any level for hormone replacement therapy. My goal in counseling would be getting the option of hormone replacement therapy. It is all in where the counseling actually takes me.

I like an example made by Ian Malcolm in the book Jurassic Park. What is a person’s goal in going into some type of martial arts? The goal is to get a black belt. Why do people want a black belt? They want to be able to kick ass. So, they take years to get a black belt. They can now kick ass. They can probably kick the ass of most anyone that they have or will come across. Yay! However, they have also now been immersed in about seven years of eastern philosophy. They have learned how to meditate. They have learned calmer ways of thinking. They have added all of these positive traits. The have sparred. They have taught. And you know what? They now have the ability to kick ass but no longer possess the desire to kick ass. So no matter what the goal is going in, once the goal is achieved then it might not have exactly the type of result that had been intended.

That is probably because they did not understand what they were asking for in the first place. I remember when I was younger, I prayed to have patience. I heard that patience was always granted. I prayed for wisdom. I had read that wisdom was always granted when asked. I also prayed to be a writer. I wanted to be a writer. I just figured that I might as well take the freebies as well. I also pretty continually prayed to be female.

I might as well have gotten on my knees and said “God, could you please give me as hard a life as possible?” I have answered the phones for customer service or tech support for over ten years now. I can absolutely guarantee you that I have now achieved patience. I have been through so many bad situations ( and failed horribly at them) that it would be impossible not to have achieved some small modicrum of wisdom. In addition to that, I am regularly paid for being a writer. Now, it is kind of time to focus on moving on to a relatively late in life transition. But, the current goal has to be the counseling. You can’t just jump over to the end. First of all, you’ll never get there. Second, there might be something along the journey that changes your perspective about the journey itself.

That’s the kind of scary part. I know that even when you achieve your goals and everything you want to happens – it just never seems to turn out like you think it should. I have literally had situations in which I was right about everything and accomplished all my goals in a situation. Did it have the desired results? Yes. Did it actually turn out the way that I thought it would? Not even close. It is like the parable of the black belt. You can make a journey for an intended reason, but when you achieve the end result of that journey, you realize that your motivation for taking the journey has effectively changed.

That is why goals have to make sense, be realistic, and achievable. My current goal is to have another counseling session. I have seen what happens when you starting planning based on an assumption of the result of the next move. It is like determining your response in an argument to a response that you have not yet heard.

I can tell you what I want. I can’t tell you what will happen. In a way, that’s a little comforting. I can tell you my next goal and that I am working to achieve it. Once that is achieved, then I can set another one.

Till tomorrow.

Making ‘Deals’

Of all things, there is a Tiny Toons Adventures episode in which much of my point today was beautifully illustrated. Buster and Babs were in England and had a sword fight with a butler and someone else in a castle. Finally, one of the opponents says “Well, you have clearly won so lets call the whole thing a draw.”

I remember when my divorce was finalized. I was about 24 years old. My wife had moved out a year before. The judge was a local Baptist deacon who did not really believe that young people should get divorced. What he really did not believe in was a no fault divorce in which he did not get to hear the reasoning for the divorce. As such, he waited until my wife had moved out for a full year so that he could put the reasoning for the divorce as ‘abandonment.’ Now, during this entire time, work would not allow me to take her off of my health insurance because there was no ‘change in family status.’ On top of that, I was paying the lawyer as well as monthly making repayments to my ex=wife on a mutual credit card. I also paid for her to have her last name changed back to what it was originally. After the divorce went final, my Mom asked me if there was any chance at a reconciliation.

I don’t even remember being diplomatic in my response to that one. The point? The best way that you know that you have won hard earned progress that people around you can do absolutely nothing about is when they simply ask you to spontaneously give it up. There was an instance when I was younger and divorced when I called my parents to tell them that I was going to go to a city a couple of states away for the weekend to see a friend. My mom carefully laid out all of the reasons why she did not feel like I should go and then asked if I was still going. After listening to all of that, I was pretty much more committed than ever to go. I told her as such and the woman actually hung up the phone in anger on me.

My father died about two months after I moved away. For that entire two months, my mother told me how much my father ‘grieved’ that we moved away. The basic implication of all of this was that I was either ‘throwing’ or after his death ‘had thrown’ him into his grave. The first thing that I was asked when I showed up for his funeral was if after all of that I had any plans on moving back. In this life or any other, you will get a constantly daily reminder that all you have to do is just completely give up all that you have earned and go back to doing whatever someone else thought was comfortable before.

This often involves little to no effort on other people’s part and a major change backwards on your part. This will all seem absolutely perfectly reasonable to them. It will never be presented as what it is. What it actually is is an admission that they can do absolutely nothing to stop you and are throwing a desperate hail mary wanting you to just spontaneously (and keep in mind forever) give up all the progress you have made. Now, doesn’t that sound reasonable? In return, they will forget that this ‘silliness’ ever occurred and never mention it again ( as if they ever wanted to in the first place ).

When I was doing radio years ago, I was talking to a friend of mine in the booth. We were talking about rejection stories. I had asked a woman at one point to go to a hockey game with me. She not only said ‘no.’ She said that it was one of the stupidest ideas for a date she had ever heard. So, we decided to call her while on the radio to ask what she felt was so dumb about going to a hockey game as a date. She then proceeded to act like there had never been a conversation in the first place and that I had never even asked her. She was the one who had done the rejection and she could not even state that the conversation had ever took place. She later said that she felt the whole idea of explaining why she had give a rejection was more embarrassing that simply lying about the conversation. You will find that people are pretty big about ‘pretending something never happened’ specifically for the sake of ‘normalcy.’

If anyone ever mentions going back to ‘the way things were’ then all that they are doing is admitting that you have made a lot of progress that despite every fiber in their being disagreeing with it, they are also admitting that they can do nothing to stop it. Ayn Rand once famously remarked that the question was not who was going to have the power to ‘stop me.’

The clearest way that people will admit that they have no power or ability to stop you in what you are doing is when they actually ask you to stop yourself. My parents had no ability to stop me from getting a divorce. Believe me, they would have. They had no ability to stop me from going somewhere. They had no ability to stop me from moving. That is why I was asked to limit or stop myself for their sakes. The tacit admission there is that the only who had the power to limit me in any way on these decisions was my self. You know when they actually admit that they have grown to agree with what apparently was the last horrible decision you made? They will use the effects of that decision to argue why you should not make the next decision that they consider to be horrible.

The way that I see it. With the number of times that I have supposedly ruined my life with the decisions I have made up to this point, with the next decision I have either wrecked my life up to this point that the only reason any one would watch at this point would be out of sheer morbid curiosity or the conversation should be predicated with the statement that they were wrong about the last few decisions that I made ruining my life. If the life is already broken beyond repair, then I have news for them. One more bad decision is simply another log on an inferno. Or if there is too much as stake in order to lose which means that somehow the fruits of your last terrible decision in their eyes is enough to make them want you to keep the status quo.

Generally, when people tell you that you are making a decision that is ‘ruining your future’ believe me, your future is about the farthest thing from their minds. You know what is foremost on their minds? Their own present. You ever notice how the tenants of responsibility among youth always seems to involve them putting on concrete shoes that tie them down to one place? Every thing has to be decided early. They are always concerned about your future. Mostly, they are concerned about a future that ties you to the same area that they are in as much as possible. That is why it is always a good idea to get an education, get married, and get a twenty year mortgage (hopefully before you turn twenty five.) That tends to make you a responsible young adult. Heaven ( as well as them ) forbid that you should in any way take a few years just to kind of be and to figure out what you want. Of course (and I am not in favor of teen pregnancy in any way just using it as an example), people will always tell you that a pregnant teen is a bad idea. They are jeopardizing their ability to have a college education. More importantly to the ones involved, they are putting a strain on their grandparents financially as well as creating a situation in which they may not hit benchmarks at appropriate times. Of course, no one ever mentions that if you wait till you are in your thirties to have kids, you are seriously drawing out the age you will be after you end up raising them. Also, you will not have the requisite energy to deal with toddlers much of the time.

They also will not mention that this whole idea of having kids later rather than sooner is a relatively new ( about a century ) in the course of human events. Again, I am not advocating teen pregnancy at all but in the long run, the people being unconvinced by it all are the grandparents in the present and not ultimately the girl and the baby in the future. At any rate, even the most disastrous of decisions tends to have only a few years of effect at the worst.

The other thing that people will not tell you about life is that they are constantly down grading their opinion of you on a fairly regular basis. For instance, I am in my late thirties. I am not so much ruining my future by this potential decision. In many people’s minds I have my life set and have made all of the life changing decisions that I am allowed to. I should be at a stage in my life whether I am just riding a roller coaster to damnation on decisions I have made. They have all that I am ever going to accomplish done in their heads and have started to descend their sage advice upon my children, My decisions long ago have been recognized as my own but they will plead for me to make the right decisions based on ‘everyone else involved.’ After all , that is the prudent thing to do.

They never really inform you of when a good time would been for imprudent decisions until that time has actually passed. After you have milked dry the well of youth, it just seems prudent to live with all of the decisions that you made up to that point. You accomplished all you are going to. Just ride it all out, devote your self to your children and then crawl into an open grave. Hope that it is warm.

I will be damned. But by all that is holy, I would rather be damned continually delivering shocks to other people’s systems. I remember when was I high school. I would write stuff and turn it in for the school’s literary magazine. I quickly learned that there would be people in a virtual cadre of conformity ready to say ‘I don’t get it.’ I slowly learned that ‘if they don’t get it, don’t bother to explain it to them.’ There are people just waiting and ready to love the new me. There is a good possibility that there are not the same people who love the me as the me is now.
If they don’t get it, don’t worry about explaining it. If they ask you to stop, that is a good sign. If they could force you to stop, then for their own sakes they would force you to stop. They would not bother to give you a say or a decision in the matter. Asking you to stop is tacitly admitting that they have no control over the situation and that you actually do. It is an act of desperation but in that act of desperation they are actually acknowledging your empowerment, if you take the time to listen to what they are really saying.

Till tomorrow.

Day 500

As far as I know, there are now 5 people that I know that know about this particular blog who know my real name. Slowly but surely I am getting bolder about all of this. In addition to wife and oldest daughter, the others have been incredibly supportive of it. I think the response that I was most impressed by was the woman who asked me what I would like to be called privately. The question really had not occurred to me that someone that I knew would actually be willing to address me as Sherry even if only in private conversation. Honestly, I think that she would call me that publicly as well. The other two new ones are a transitioning woman as well as a woman who is a psychologist.

The psychologist made an interesting point. How many times in human history has God’s will be against what we would popularly think of as the will of God? Isn’t the will of God only for God to know what the will of God is? Didn’t God will A Samaritan to help a sworn enemy? Wasn’t it God’s will for Jesus to drive the traders out of the temple? I mean, I have honestly been a conservative Baptist as well as a Republican my whole life. What does it honestly say to any one that I am transgender? What would it say to people if I one day went full time as a woman? What would that say? How would they respond and what would it mean?

The transitioning female mentioned assumptions that people made. I am overly worried about reactions as well. I remember when I wrote my first novel. I was so excited. I was eager for the people whom I knew around me to buy the book as well as give me feedback on it. Boy, was I in for a shock. My friends and family mostly hated the book. They were embarrassed by it. The others sat around waiting for their free copies. There were not good sales and I had pretty much written off the whole thing as a massive failure. Then one day, I got a letter in the mail. It was from a cop in Chicago. I was actually no where near Chicago. They wrote that they loved my book. They had found it, bought it, read it and really loved it. I learned something by that. I learned that people that liked my book would not be my friends or family. There was an actual audience out there that wanted and needed my work. If they happened to be already in my life, then so be it. If not, then all the better.

I look at this blog. I did not know anyone would actually read it other than me and possibly people in my household. All of the sudden, I was getting likes as well as followers of people that I had never met before or even heard of me. They connected with my work and they connected with my words. That sort of lets me know that even if there is a lot of turnover that that there are people out there just waiting and practically begging to support me. They love me and they don’t even know me. I know that people in my direct community (even those that have supposedly no inkling of this) who are absolutely dying to have this information and love me for it.

My daughter has friends that she goes to visit several times a week. I think if my daughter’s friend’s mother knew, she would be more proud of me than anyone I knew. The reason why this particular blog is titled what it is is that I have a theory that your life changes one tenth of one percent a day. The point was that over a thousand days, your life would do one full revolution whether or not you were actively seeking change. So, I started charting last April. Since, I did, this is the 500th day. This would mean that my life is now 50 percent different. I have been through my hospital ordeal. I have seen my Dad’s grave. I have had my first meeting with my counselor. I have started this blog. I just wonder how close to a real jumping off point I will be when day 1000 hits. I don’t know. I have always seemed to some how manage to get things done. I don’t know how. I was talking to a security guard tonight.

She was talking about how nice it would be to just drop everything and try and make it in a new place. I told her how I quit my job at the height of a recession and took my family cross country to live. We have no job. We had no place to stay. We just drove across the country. I had a family. I left a job and family back where I was. Somehow, it all worked. She had no marriage as well as no kids. She told me that she would be too scared to take that type of leap. That taught me a lot about my family as well as a lot about my self. I should have more faith in my ability to get things done. I worry all the time. I worry about this. I worry about paying rent. I worry about nearly everything. Yet, when it really mattered, I was not exactly prudent. Current I am working every overtime hour I can find to try and get ahead.

Yet with all of my anxiety, I am still building to the next big thing. I don’t even know how I got to this place. I don’t know why God would tempt me with some thing that I seemed to have no ability to drive out of my skull as well as not giving me the resources to make it happen. I don’t actually know why I am crying at the moment. I don’t know how I will actually wake up every morning of my life as a female.

I just know that one day I will.

Till tomorrow.