The weekend unfolded pretty much as I expected.
Saturday included some time at the gun range, an afternoon at a Civil War battle re-enactment, a make-over at MAC, and dinner at my favorite little Charleston restaurant.
I spend the entire day Sunday helping to set up a corporate tent at the Charleston Cup Steeple Chase. It included food, drink, races....just fun.
Monday I got up early to watch the sunrise from a couple of blocks from where I live. It was spectacular (although this photo - taken with my iPhone - looks more like a nuclear explosion and a mushroom cloud than a sunrise).
Tuesday I got up at 4am and drove the 300 mile commute to Raleigh for work. Now it's Thursday evening, and I'm back in Charleston. Crazy week. Crazy times. No complaints (other than the commute)....
As I share all of this, I was reminded of Andrea James early website. Back in the 1997-1998 timeframe it was much different than it is now....much more personal, much more about her FFS, and then about her life afterwards.
It was those entries and those photos of FFS that first forced me to realize the potential for truly transitioning. And it was her photos afterwards...with friends, at concerts, just "being"... that showed me that there truly was life after transition. I'll never forget the power that those entries had on my world at the time, and in a very real way I think the many years of my continuing to share my life is borne from my appreciation for all that she (and others) unknowingly did to help me be me.
My life is fuller today than it has ever been. Socially, professionally, energy-wise....in every way I can measure. But that fullness has been hard-earned, and the fact that I do as much as I do is a combination of feeling that there's so much to do and so little time and continued wonderment that it's even possible at all. And the reason I continue to share it is that I get as much out of my writing as I put into it. I'm curious how many words I've typed into this blog and on my website over the years.....it has to be well in the hundreds of thousands. Or more.
I recently visited Lynn Conway's "TS Successes" web page. The thing that strikes me is how many of the websites that are linked there are gone. I assume people have simply moved on. Although I think this blog has turned much more about life in general than about being trans or politics or activism or trans news....all of which were main themes for a number of years....I find that my continued writing here has just become part of life.
That being said, I haven't updated my website in any substantive way in quite a while. I'm going to give that some thought, as it needs to change.
To share your life online in any kind of a personal way is to provide full disclosure of faults, foibles, shortcomings, weaknesses, and opportunities for growth. The value it provides, though, isn't neessarily in the day-to-day entries, but in the context that the entries take in time. Although I doubt anyone looks at the old stuff anymore - I've had a blog since 2004 - this could all be a book in and of itself. Being able to look back over them months or even years later, with the ebb and flow of life in general, is the real value.
Back to the present....my mom wants me to come to Dallas for Thanksgiving. I'm very much conflicted about that. The thing I'd far prefer is to spend the day here, in my own place, not having to travel or drive or be on the road. I've got a long cross-country road trip coming up in the next few weeks anyway to go to Phoenix to get my "stuff" out of storage and bring it all back. One thing I'm usually good at avoiding is feeling too guilty about not being able to live up to all the expectations that other have for me, but this is different.
I still don't know for sure what I'm going to do. Fly out there last minute? Drive out there? Just not go? I've got to spend some time thinking about it because time is running out. Oy.
Anyway - that's a relatively unedited brain dump of what I'm thinking right now. Mostly good. Too much traveling. Doing lots of cool and fun things. Feeling centered and grounded. Generally good balance. All things considered - I just need to enjoy it all while it lasts. :)
1 comment:
As Andrea James website was to you, so yours is to me (and I'm sure many others.)
I see that there is so much potential for my life. So much potential happiness. To get there, there is so much potential sadness as well.
In physics, Potential energy becomes Kinetic Energy. You are now Kinetic.
:)
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