Often, a mundane life can be boring

 

One thing I have noticed over the past few weeks is that when things are calm and I am living a mundane life, people can find me boring.  Isn't this what most trans people want for their lives?  Excitement and challenges are good and necessary.  But, being calm and relaxed is important too.  Balance is essential for a healthy life.

- - - - - -

When I switched to writing this blog, I lost 2/3's of my readership.  I attribute this loss to not including stories about the life of my former cruise partner and the "Sturm und Drang" in her life.  Yet, that's a good thing.  After undergoing painful feelings of loss and grief, I came out a better person in the end.  I hope she came out better as well.

In the beginning, life for a transgender person can be scary.  First, we have to experiment with being partially out.  Questions like "what will people think?" and "what can happen to me?" come to mind.  We fear our unknowns, and we are often paralyzed by our fears.  Gradually, we start tiptoeing outside and getting used to being seen.  We know our appearance is far from perfect, but we're experimenting with our new social identities.  At this time, we usually work towards having the skills to blend in and not be noticed (at first) as being transgender people.  We are learning who we are and who we want to be by being out in the world.  Yet, our identities are not yet fixed yet.

After a while, we develop confidence in our "new" selves.  We have learned the unwritten language of our authentic gender, and people know us as our authentic identity.  Some of us move forward to medical transition, others stay with legal and social transition, and the rest remain comfortable in gender roles that provide enough flexibility to present as their authentic selves.

- - - - - -

So, do I lead a boring life?  In some ways, yes.  In others, no.  One of my friends says I have the best of both worlds.  But I'm not sure of that.  I can never grow close to my children as a cisgender woman can.  Nor can I take advantage of male privilege in ways I find alien to me.  It's as if I am an immigrant in a new world.  Familiar, yes.  And yet, a little bit strange.  But I wouldn't change things for the world.

Relearning an old skill (a short post)

 

One of the problems I have with my other website is that I have a spreadsheet available for downloading, instead of encapsulating the computation engine for my real cruise cost calculator in Javascript and have it reside on a separate server.  My logic is too available for the average person to steal.  And I want to fix this.

What should I do?

MSJ suggests that I hire help from fiverr.com to do the work, then put it on the website.  I could do that, but I'm not so sure that I can't do it myself.  Years ago, I wrote code in Javascript which would interact with a database residing on a server.  This wasn't so hard.  So I figured that I might as well relearn this skill for use in the future.

No, I am not seriously thinking of going back into programming.  Instead, I keep indulging my wish to find productive and challenging ways to occupy my time, like the man in the picture above. I figure that I won't have anything worth playing with for at least a couple of months at best.  But when I do, I'll have a feel for another tool I can build for that website. 

Not yet ready

 

When I look at this face, all I can say is that I didn't look "ready for prime time".  I had someone cruising with me who was blind to the risks I'd face if I went on-shore at the wrong ports.  If I had had her with me when I cruised to some Eastern Caribbean ports a year or two later, I'd have been in big trouble.  The rules for LGBT travelers advise us to avoid these islands like the plague, because we (by our nature) are breaking their laws and their taboos.

So when I registered for a recent meetup, I wondered if a recent pattern would hold - would my ex-girlfriend continue to avoid me if I were to attend the same meetup?  If we attended the meetup, what would happen?  I had a lot to worry about, but all for naught.  It was a pleasant interaction - even though I was in Marian mode.  (It makes me wonder why she made all the big fuss about "owning" the meetup groups in the first place.  But that's another story.)

Why do I mention all of this?  Well, none of us are ever fully ready to take on needed challenges in life. If we are able to be fully prepared, then some things will no longer be a challenge to us.  I didn't think I'd be ready to see my ex, and it went off smoothly.  (Given the arguments we had after the breakup, a lot of things could have happened.)  But most of all, my feminine presentation is still far from perfect.  If I had waited until I was fully ready to go out as Marian, I'd still be in the closet.

Life is all about taking chances.  To live well, one must break out of one's cocoon and become a butterfly.  It's time to do so....