MOVING TO WORDPRESS

Things I never knew: Blogger drives me insane.

So I'm going to be blogging over at wordpress. You know. A place that won't log me out of my email whenever I sign in.

http://thoughtsonblank.wordpress.com/

...running

I like running. Except for the fact that I hate running. But I like it.

So I have gone for a couple runs here. I'd run in Acadia plenty of times, and that's pretty easy. I know Acadia, I know that I can get "lost" on the trails and not really be lost.

Here? Not so much.
I tried to go on a little exploratory run of the neighborhood. My thought process went sort of like this. "Oh, I will go to Blackhouse! Oh... Blackhouse doesn't really have trails. Well, ok, I'll go run by the river! Oh, you can't, there's no trail. Hrm, ok, I'll just jog down Main street! La di da... CRAP those clouds are dark!" And then it started with thunder and lightening before I got home.

I tried to map my route on Google Maps. this is what I came up with.

...careers

"So, what are you doing after you graduate?"

"Congratulations! What's next in life?"

"What are you doing after graduation?"

I DON'T KNOW.

I have a job. I have had a steady job for 6 months that pays the bills and I love the kiddos I work with. But I know that it's just a job until I figure out what I really want to do. The thing is that I have no idea what I want to be. Even when I just sit and let myself dream about what I want to do in the future there is not one career that actually seems to fit me. I don't want to be a butcher, baker, candle stick maker, doctor, lawyer, sex toy designer, penguin tamer, janitor, teacher... nothing appeals. I don't want to work full time for LGBTQ rights, or full time with youth, I certainly don't want a cubicle.

So what would an amazing, fulfilling career entail for me?

In my ideal, mythical career that doesn't exist I'd want:

• To connect with people on a personal level
• To travel, at least some
• Not work work exclusively with LGBTQ populations, but to never have to hide, lie about, or be ashamed of my various identities
• To meet new and interesting people often
• To be able to share my ideas from the start
• To work collaboratively with others, not doing things alone all the time, but the ability to work on my own when I need/want to
• For this to be a career that is not totally geographically specific
• To be part of changing, for the better, a community
  
• To learn and grow and have a great time doing it

so what? I want to be...

Tell me, folks, what is my future career?

...bullying

I did something stupid today.

Please forgive me.

I watched an episode of Dr. Phil.

I know, I know. I should know better. Stay with me.

somebody uploaded an episode of Dr. Phil about girl bullying. I decided to stick with it despite it being titled "Girl World."

It wasn't terrible. I mean, it was an episode of Dr. Phil. I have absolutely zero respect for the man and his opinions on childhood development. It wasn't a good episode, but I only wanted to punch him four or five times, so it was better than most.

One of the things that bugged me a lot was the examples they had of all the people who were bulled in middle/high school. They are all tall, conventionally beautiful, seemingly-straight women.

I was bullied mercilessly in middle school. People called me gay and fat and ugly and stupid and poor. People threatened me. I was tied to a tether ball poll. I cried every day of middle school, and these girls loved that they had that power over me. And obviously I am still pissed off by it. Recently one of the "ring leaders" of the bullying friended me on facebook and I sent her a message saying, simply, "why the hell would you want to be my friend?" I guess I'm not over it.

But as I was watching this show I kept thinking... "who is there representing me?" All the people who were up there, on this supposed representation of America and the bullying problem we have, was standing there in all of their 5'10" size 2 look-at-my-highlights glory. Where's the trans guy, the butch lesbian, the gay boy, the straight girl who everyone still thinks is a lesbian? Where are they? Where am I? Why are you all assuring her that she'll find a boyfriend who deserves her at some point? What if she doesn't want a boyfriend? What if she doesn't want to fit in?

LGBTQ bullying is hardly talked about outside of LGBTQ spaces. That needs to change if it's actually going to stop.

...being alone

For the first time in my life I have my very own apartment. Nobody else lives with me (except for two rats that I'm ratsitting for for awhile - they are very cute).

It's VERY odd. I'm finally applying every one of those green living tips I spent the last three years half-ignoring at COA. I've only spent three nights here, but it's already just so odd being alone. Just knowing that when I wake up there is no possibility that somebody else will be in the shower. That everything will be exactly how I left it. It's nice, no doubt, but very odd.

Granted, I'm not totally alone. I have lovely front neighbors I met yesterday who are letting me have free internet. And I have a friend or two in the area - non-COA folks who have some semblance of a sane life and don't go jetting off to some other state or country (or sometimes planet it seems) on a whim.

I've never been very good at just hanging out with people. At just kinda sitting around and not doing much with people. There are a couple folks I can do it with. Addams/Emily/Alli are three (really, they are one person) and my friend Dawn is another. I can just go to her house and sit for a looooong time (not that that thrills her, I'm sure, but whatever). Granted, when I'm there I have to deal with her yippy dog-like alien and the fact that she has decided I don't eat enough and therefore she has to feed me all the time. But I can deal with that because, hey, she's somebody nice to talk to. And she has a hot tub. And she *can* cook, which is nice.

So that's where I am at. I have an apartment. I have a couple of friends. I have internet. I sort of have my church. Slooooowly I'm building a life here.

...messageboards

I was an active member of a specific messageboard for a number of years. What board it is doesn't matter, though many of you reading probably know. The name doesn't matter.

It was the messageboard of a popular YA author, though it was really about young people (ok, young women) being empowered. The mission of the board was blatantly feminist though many of the members did not identify as such as it wasn't "cool" or they were somehow beyond that. But we were empowered, at least in that teeny, tiny part of the vast world wide web. Empowered to engage is discourse about politics and hypothetical questions about "sensitive" issues, and empowered to jump down the throat of anybody who we thought disagreed with us. Empowered to discuss cake, whether we should get our hair cut, and empowered to call people out on real, perceived, or invented bullshit.

That messageboard was really transformative for me, and it watched me grow up. It watched me move out of an abusive childhood, shed a lot of the stuff that came with that, and move on. It saw me through three colleges, four states, coming out as trans, learning to NOT shut up, and eventually it saw me outgrow the boundaries that were there. I was yearning for something more and bigger and it wasn't where I belonged any longer. I left a year and a couple months ago. As stupid as it sounds it was remarkably painful. I am so grateful that I left.

I left because the community there was incredibly progressive to my 16 year old self. As I became more progressive, more educated, more able to form my own opinions that were informed and true to myself it became less and less progressive. There were a few loud members who made it a point to tell others how they USED to be so "progressive" but then then grew up and became informed. They drove me crazy. There were a few members who were more than happy to throw other members' emotions and difficulties aside in order to make a point.

I left because of gender stuff. Because people there said some mighty insulting things regarding trans people and by that point I had learned that I did NOT have to sit around and take any bullshit. Heck, it was easy. Click the little red X. So I did.

But that's not to say that that community never had things to teach me. It did. I learned a lot. In a lot of ways they gave me the strength to learn to stand up for myself and say, "No. This is not what I need."

In a way it's really strange, even now, to be going through a big life change without that messageboard to kind of unravel it all on. It was a safe space for a long time. I kind of miss it.

...teenagers

Dear Andrew,

Welcome to your post-college life, complete with your very own delinquent teenager. She'll arrive a few days post graduation with, possibly, some basic necessities like clothes. No guarantees. You will need to register her for classes, keep her out of trouble, feed her, and possibly even let her have a little fun. Any thoughts you had about a post graduation live that involved freedom, conferences, or dating? Not happening.

Congrats on that whole bachelors degree, btw. That's pretty cool.

Love,
Life

...sunrises

I love nature. I don't quite love it as much as some of the students at my school do. Or perhaps I love it in very different ways. Regardless, I do love nature. As a kid I loved laying on the beaches of southern California for hours upon hours, alternating between reading and swimming out to cool off. Here on campus I love going and laying on the dock, really any time of day. Sunrise and sunset are two of my favorites, but 2pm on those really hot days at the end of spring term work well, too. I think I always need to live near a big body of water. Water grounds me. I love it.

Last year I spent a whole month waking up early and watching the sun rise. It wasn't always with a willing and grateful heart, and sometimes I went right back to sleep afterward. But most of the time I felt more refreshed and happy than if I'd gotten an extra few hours of sleep. Think about how totally crazy the sun is.

It's a flaming ball of incandescent gas, that's upon thousands of miles away, that has SO much mass that it has a gravitational pull that yanks hard enough on the ENTIRE earth to keep us spinning around it. And the earth, meanwhile, is orbiting also on it's own axis so only half the earth is seeing the sun at one time. And then this little rock, also thousands of miles out, is orbiting US, yanking on our oceans and such, giving us tides. I mean... WHAT?

Sometimes I think I just love nature because I'm a geek.

...the unexpected

I don't really like the unexpected. I don't like it more than the average person doesn't like it. I have a hard time dealing with change.

This is not good considering I graduate from college in a few weeks.

I mean, let's talk about changes.

So I am, of course, looking for ways to extend the 20 years of September-June education I have already completed. Auditing classes! Grad school! Underwater Basket Weaving! Anything!

I'm looking at grad schools. I found an amazing program. My mind is screaming "APPLY! APPLY! APPLY! THEY HAVE ROLLING ADMISSIONS! APPLY!" Logically, though, I know I need to be out of school for awhile. At least for a year. I need to step back, realize that I don't have to be a perpetual student.

But ohhhh is it tempting. It's new and interesting and SO not me and SO tempting.

I should go to bed.

...organized religion

Tonight I talked to a former high school teacher. She was an amazingly influential part of my life when I was graduating from high school, and remained really important to me my first couple years of college. We have drifted apart as I have moved and she's started new ventures. We hadn't talked in months when I sent her a message today.

We used to joke that I was like her kid, she was like my mom. we were really, really close. Our conversation tonight was awful. Maybe she changed. Maybe I changed. Maybe I am less willing to take people's bullshit and blatant disrespect of my ideas and ideals. I don't know what happened.

We really started growing apart when I told her I was trans. She didn't care, which is different than saying she didn't mind. She asked me why I had to tell her, if I was still the same person. She never grasped how important it was for me to come out to her.

Tonight I told her I had been going to church. She mocked it, and said that it's sad that I have to go to a church to find community. That the world doesn't need organized religion telling people what to do. She told me that she prefers to define herself. I said that one of our principles was the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. Her response?

"I don't drink koolaid, no matter the flavor."

Ouch.

She was so unwilling to listen to me. Only interested in telling me how dumb religion was. how dumb this awesome thing that I have found a lot of comfort in was. It hurt a lot. I am really glad we had the conversation, but it hurt.

Was that how I have acted toward evangelical Christians in the past? So unwilling, unaccepting, unable to see past my own prejudices to recognize that even if it wasn't .my. choice that it was .a. choice, and a valid one at that?

Even with all she said to me, I'm so grateful for her presence in my life. Without her insistence I would have never applied to college, moved across the country, or grown up nearly as much as I did. I just wish our friendship had turned out differently. It's like when a little kid idolizes their mom, before realizing all her flaws. Not an exact analogy, but close to what I am feeling. for so long she was this person who stepped up to the plate when she realized my family of origin wasn't going to do much. Now I realize that that was useful and important, but that I did a lot of it for myself.

I'm glad I have found new people to support and encourage me in my journey. In my free and responsible search for truth and meaning.

...comfort

Today I sat in church and cried for almost the entire service. Because, right now, life sucks.

In the past 4 days so many things have gone wrong that I don't even know how to start articulating them. So I'm not going to try. Just leave it at Things Really Suck.

And right now I want nothing more than for somebody to give me a hug, make me some dinner, put on some crappy, comfort TV, and be able to tell me it's going to be OK. I don't have anybody in my life to do that; and why should I? I feel like I'm really shitty at taking care of myself.

I wish that I could pause life, just for a couple of days. Not have a single obligation, deadline, or commitment. I wish that for those couple of days that I could talk to everyone I needed to talk to and that the people I couldn't handle just didn't exist. Just let me stand up again and do what I need to do.

But life doesn't work that way for me. I get hit with one thing after another after another. In the past four days relationships have ended, people have said things to me that were at best "pretty darn mean," my car got keyed, my ex-step-father started calling me again to remind me that I'm a huge fuck up, and my mother called to remind me that it's my fault that she's a huge fuck up.

All the while my senior project deadline looms ever closer and my pittance of work on it thus far seems more and more pathetic.

A few people from church have made vague attempts to reach out to me today, mostly on facebook, a couple via email. But I don't want to explain to everyone why I'm upset just to have them validate my upsetedness.

I really do just want a break.

...ministry

As I said in my introductory post I am a relatively new Unitarian Universalist. I came to the religion after we lost marriage equality in Maine. I went to a vigil. I came back because what was said that night meant so much to me.

Talking so people will listen, listening so people will talk, inspiring, encouraging, teaching, learning, moving forward, learning from the past. Ministry.

Effective ministry doesn't mean you reach every single person. What's the saying? "you aren't a five dollar bill. not everyone is going to like you."

What does effective ministry mean, then? It means that what you say encourages, teaches, is a leaning experience, a jumping off point to move forward to look back and remember and know and grow.

What are your thoughts on effective ministry?

...radical masculinity

Tonight I was talking with my friend Amy who I met at SEAT*. She said something about asking for help not making me less of a man.

It's such a "very special episode" comment that I sort of rolled my eyes. Of course it doesn't. But I know where she was coming from. One of the hard things about being a trans guy, especially before anybody really reads you as male, is trying to pick up on the minutiae of daily life that cisgendered men are socialized with from day one. When you don't conform to those stereotypes then you aren't "passing" or even *trying* to pass.

But what if I don't want to conform to what society sees as the standard for male? I only started to accept a male identity after I sat down and had a nice long discussion with myself about how being a guy didn't mean I had to adopt the more dominant, aggressive types of masculinity. Being a guy doesn't mean that I have to step down from a single one of my feminist ideals, my sillier characteristics, my love of baking, just like being a female didn't meant that I wasn't allowed to race dirtbikes, climb trees, or kick every other student's ass in AP Chem. Just like we say "girls can do anything!" the obvious corollary to that is "boys can do anything!" The issue there is that "girls can do anything" is usually followed with "that boys can do." When male is presented as the standard to achieve then why would anybody want to lower themselves to do, be, want, or excel at something "female"?

I know that some of my conscious decisions in life mean that society won't so readily see me as male. But I'd so much rather live my ideals than push myself into a box to match how society things I should act.

*SEAT = Sexuality Education Advocacy Training; a conference put on by the Unitarian Universalist Association, the United Church of Christ, and the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism.

... who i am

I've been privately blogging for a number of years now, and I blog publicly on a couple of activist sites, but those aren't my personal thoughts. I figured... hey, why not?

So, a blog.

I feel like I need an intro, even though the only people reading this are likely to be people who know me pretty well.

I am an about-to-graduate college senior living on the downeast coast of Maine. That's the important thing in my life right now. As to the rest...

Who I am:

• I work with children with autistic spectrum disorders
• I am very politically active, though that's dropped off in the past few years
• I am transgender
• I am a (relatively new) unitarian universalist and I am sort of sickeningly in love with my church
• I don't drink, or smoke, or really do anything that most people think of college students as doing
• I am from Los Angeles and consider getting out of CA, away from my family, and supporting myself entirely (though, not always entirely effectively) one of my biggest accomplishments
• I hate cartoons
• I can deliver a damn good speech in front of 500 people (and have, more than once) but I'm monumentally uncomfortable talking to a group of 10 people I know
• I'm scared of the future. And really, really, really excited about it