I'm determined to stick to my "blog every day" vow, or at least, giving up on the second day is too pathetic even for me, so I might as well recap how the day went. I certainly can't think of anything more interesting to say.
Today has been a day of Getting Things Done™. With the Boy starting back at school on Wednesday, there were a few more things that needed doing, as well as things we didn't do over weekend such as weekly shop and laundry. Thankfully it stayed nice and sunny today, so we got clothes washed and dried and can probably manage another load tomorrow. (This is how dull my life is - laundry is a highlight.)
J cut the Boy's hair: he ended up with a shorter fringe than originally intended because he decided to look down part way through and it went all slant-y. We meandered town-wards to see if Keal Teamwear had any of his school branded jumpers in and were pleasantly surprised when they did, and in his size as well! (A little large on him, actually, but, you know. He'll grow into them....)
I wrote a personal statement for a job application and did my damned best to hit everything on the person specification in order. I even used the word "pro-actively". You can shoot me now if you like. It's for an admin job I'm sure I could do and would enjoy but I'm not holding much hope of even getting an interview as my history of success with that institution is virtually non-existent. May try re-writing my past work experience to emphasise the more relevant bits. It may help.
I also started a Jobseekers Allowance application online and struggled through the pages and pages of things I'm sure I only answered a few weeks ago (nearly a year? Really?) until I eventually hit the point where I needed more info than I had to hand and realised I should have prepared a bit better. And a few days ago. And I still need to go poke council in hope of getting Housing and Council Tax benefit sorted too. And...yeah. Not being so organised right now.
Rest of the day went by in a blur of reading, interneting and pausing to eat and wash up. Didn't really pay attention to University Challenge, and missed the beginning of Only Connect due to suddenly realising I hadn't said goodnight to my son (who then wanted a glass of water, etc etc). Am now intending to watch the final episode of Once Upon A Time - have enjoyed the series much more than I thought I would from initial reviews, and despite some obvious plotting and erratic characterisation ("I'll do this! Because this! And suddenly change my mind because the plot demands it!") it's been a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to see how this wraps up (or doesn't). Maybe tomorrow I'll get round to doing a proper review. That, or tell you about my laundry again.
Monday, September 3, 2012
Sunday, September 2, 2012
The Proverbial Getting--This-Down-From-The-Shelf-And-Blowing-All-The-Dust-Off Post
*cough* *cough*
Blimey that really is a lot of accumulated crud. Might have to take a wet cloth to this at some point. So, I wonder if this still works...yes, I think that's the light coming on.....
Hello, again.
It's been...blimey, quite a long time actually. Usual reasons - life, depression, lack of things to say. So what have I been up to in the meantime? Well, against all expectation and the trend of the current economy I got a job. It was only temporary, but it was work - and work I could do and enjoyed doing to boot. I know, lucky so-and-so. The people were great, my manager was great, it was a nice enough building and not too bad a journey there. Contract got extended a couple of times, which was fantastic from a money and actually still having a job point of view, but did kind of screw up our plans for the summer. Sorry Granddad and P, sorry everyone in Dublin that we'd said we'd come visit. Maybe next year.
J finished and submitted her thesis, not that there was much doubt she wouldn't, and now just has the stress of having to figure out when they can actually hold her viva. The boy has had a summer holiday that hasn't consisted entirely of computer games - the rain hasn't helped with getting him doing other things though. He's fully got used to having two mums now, and doesn't even seem phased by explaining that to other children. We went to the Gathering, and despite the depression rearing it's head again I still ended up enjoying the last couple of days (so. much. angst.) and am actually looking forward to next year instead of wondering whether I ought to bother. The boy is well and truly old enough to be trusted to just go and play with other kids while we're there, and I'm beginning to feel less guilty about letting him do so.
So with just a few more days until school starts again, this seemed like a good time to start blogging again. Reading Just A Geek has probably influenced that a bit too. I'm currently trying to restart my own career, realising I do need to do something else and to stop seeing myself as a failed mathematician, struggling with lack-of-work related depression, worrying about how I'm going to support my family....yeah, I can sympathise a lot with Wheaton's experiences there and have a great deal of admiration for the way he handled it at the time, and his honesty in writing about it. I know I'm not going to become the new Wil Wheaton (apart from anything else, I'd look rubbish with a beard), but maybe blogging again will at least give me a focus and something to do every day (more or less).
The other New Term's Resolution I've made (well, one of them, the last being Wii Fit again) is to actually learn more computery stuff, and I've already made a start by brushing up and learning more mySQL. Being an utter geek, I've made a database to catalogue books, starting with comics. Need to populate it some more and then maybe try some simple php forms to add and extract info. It seems a not-too-stupid way to practise and expand on the very simple tutorial I worked through a while back. Skills I will probably never need, but it keeps me occupied and may, you never know, lead on to other things.
If I manage to keep it up. A look back through the archive of this blog is all the evidence that is needed that I'm not very good at sticking with things. Good intentions, and all that. Still, I seem to heading that way anyway, so once again I say: I can but try.
Blimey that really is a lot of accumulated crud. Might have to take a wet cloth to this at some point. So, I wonder if this still works...yes, I think that's the light coming on.....
Hello, again.
It's been...blimey, quite a long time actually. Usual reasons - life, depression, lack of things to say. So what have I been up to in the meantime? Well, against all expectation and the trend of the current economy I got a job. It was only temporary, but it was work - and work I could do and enjoyed doing to boot. I know, lucky so-and-so. The people were great, my manager was great, it was a nice enough building and not too bad a journey there. Contract got extended a couple of times, which was fantastic from a money and actually still having a job point of view, but did kind of screw up our plans for the summer. Sorry Granddad and P, sorry everyone in Dublin that we'd said we'd come visit. Maybe next year.
J finished and submitted her thesis, not that there was much doubt she wouldn't, and now just has the stress of having to figure out when they can actually hold her viva. The boy has had a summer holiday that hasn't consisted entirely of computer games - the rain hasn't helped with getting him doing other things though. He's fully got used to having two mums now, and doesn't even seem phased by explaining that to other children. We went to the Gathering, and despite the depression rearing it's head again I still ended up enjoying the last couple of days (so. much. angst.) and am actually looking forward to next year instead of wondering whether I ought to bother. The boy is well and truly old enough to be trusted to just go and play with other kids while we're there, and I'm beginning to feel less guilty about letting him do so.
So with just a few more days until school starts again, this seemed like a good time to start blogging again. Reading Just A Geek has probably influenced that a bit too. I'm currently trying to restart my own career, realising I do need to do something else and to stop seeing myself as a failed mathematician, struggling with lack-of-work related depression, worrying about how I'm going to support my family....yeah, I can sympathise a lot with Wheaton's experiences there and have a great deal of admiration for the way he handled it at the time, and his honesty in writing about it. I know I'm not going to become the new Wil Wheaton (apart from anything else, I'd look rubbish with a beard), but maybe blogging again will at least give me a focus and something to do every day (more or less).
The other New Term's Resolution I've made (well, one of them, the last being Wii Fit again) is to actually learn more computery stuff, and I've already made a start by brushing up and learning more mySQL. Being an utter geek, I've made a database to catalogue books, starting with comics. Need to populate it some more and then maybe try some simple php forms to add and extract info. It seems a not-too-stupid way to practise and expand on the very simple tutorial I worked through a while back. Skills I will probably never need, but it keeps me occupied and may, you never know, lead on to other things.
If I manage to keep it up. A look back through the archive of this blog is all the evidence that is needed that I'm not very good at sticking with things. Good intentions, and all that. Still, I seem to heading that way anyway, so once again I say: I can but try.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
[Guest Post] Denial, Acceptance, Willpower and Thresholds
My girlfriend wrote something and it's brilliant and we're hosting it here as she doesn't have her own blog. Think that's all the intro it needs.
(Disclaimer, I am a trans woman, and am only speaking for myself here. I am trying to be as inclusive as I can with this, but if I've got something wrong, please let me know and educate me on it!)
Being trans isn't a choice. It isn't something that is done to you at some point in your life. It's not an event, an act or anything like that. It's something that you are, and have always been.
Whether you realise it or not.
People make this realisation at all sorts of times in their lives; some (such as a recent massively publicised story) early, at 5 or so, others of us only come to this realisation later in life. I can't actually pin down the time I realised and accepted that I was trans, nor when I realised that the label "transsexual" was the most "accurate".
This is because people have different levels of gumption, chutzpah, willpower, call it what you will. They also have different levels of hurdles to over come (internal and external!) and different people come to these things in different ways.
Personally, the signs were there from an early age - I thought it was most unfair that I had to be a boy and play with boy stuff (although Lego was amazing) whereas girls got to be girls and play with girl stuff! This, to me at the time, was the natural way of things. Girls were girls and boys were boys and wanted to be girls, because being a girl was so clearly superior. This was so self-evident to me that I didn't even mention it to people.
Even once I had admitted to myself this secret and accepted that this wasn't how everyone else felt, I was in deep denial - trans people were weird, and trans women were ugly (I don't think I even acknowledged the fact that trans men existed! I suspect now, though, that I was so absorbed in wanting to be female that it didn't occur to me that girls would want to be something other than a girl!). I also didn't have the most open parents about these issues - which, now that I know more, is understandable, even if it has set me back at least 15 years.
Even now, being open (to myself and to the world at large) about being a trans woman, there are things I have been in denial about (there are no doubt many things I in still in denial about), am accepting, and things that now I have accepted them am looking to change.
My "primary sexual characteristics" for one. Or, to put it in a shorter manner, my penis. I have historically had a low to non-existent level of dysphoria about having one. This has, and is, causing difficulties with the NHS, as that's a big issue for them (trans women are meant to have always hated their penises and want to cut them off, or something). This lack of problem has largely been a symptom of the surroundings, though - the clothes I wore fitted around it, everyone expected it, and it was useful for some things. Now, though, as the clothes I wear matter more to me (and aren't tailored around having one!) and my self-image is altering, having a penis is just getting bloody annoying. I've read people's recent experiences with GRS, and while it doesn't sound the most pleasant experience to go through ever, I know I could cope.
Yes, the leap from something known to unknown is scary and frightening, but when it's something known to be unpleasant and annoying, that leap starts to look better and better. The leap from presenting as male to presenting as female (even if people didn't immediately realise) was similar - a known that I didn't like to an unknown that could have been worse but ultimately turned out so much better.
I've been through this "denial, acceptance, act" cycle, or am knowingly in one of the stages, on so many things: social transition - was unaware, was in denial, acted, check; appearance of breasts - was unaware, denied I needed them, overcame threshold, acted, check (this was helped massively by the advertising campaign by Andrej Pejic modelling lingerie for Hema and my related discovery of "Two cups bigger" bras!); receding hairline - was unaware, denied it was happening, accepted it was happening but denied I needed to do anything about it (trusting, foolishly, in the NHS), have now accepted I need to do something, but am still working on the "act" part; GRS? - was unaware, never really had denial about that, it was more indifference, but have accepted that this may well be a plan.
The over-riding narrative I'm trying (and not sure I'm succeeding at here) is that of the balance of gumption and thresholds. Willpower and dysphoria raise your gumption, your willingness to DO SOMETHING. Denial and social (heh, and medical) pressures raise the threshold, the barrier to doing anything. As willpower and dysphoria increase, if they reach the threshold of pressures against you acting, you get something done, otherwise your gumption laps around the foothills of competing pressures and you exist in a low level of dysphoria (or sometimes even high level, if the competing pressures are high enough), sometimes in denial, sometimes fully aware of the problem, but unable to break through that barrier of social expectation.
What's more important to take away is that breaking through on one of these fronts (penis problems, breast issues, receded hair, social transition) does not mean that the others are automatically solved at the same time - each must be confronted, accepted and acted on in its own turn.
And that's where I am. Some things I've acted on, some I'm accepting, and some I'm just plain in denial about. However, there's always progress - either the dysphoria and willpower change, or the social pressures against change. As Dorey from "Finding Nemo" said: "What do we do? We swim, swim, swim."
(Disclaimer, I am a trans woman, and am only speaking for myself here. I am trying to be as inclusive as I can with this, but if I've got something wrong, please let me know and educate me on it!)
Being trans isn't a choice. It isn't something that is done to you at some point in your life. It's not an event, an act or anything like that. It's something that you are, and have always been.
Whether you realise it or not.
People make this realisation at all sorts of times in their lives; some (such as a recent massively publicised story) early, at 5 or so, others of us only come to this realisation later in life. I can't actually pin down the time I realised and accepted that I was trans, nor when I realised that the label "transsexual" was the most "accurate".
This is because people have different levels of gumption, chutzpah, willpower, call it what you will. They also have different levels of hurdles to over come (internal and external!) and different people come to these things in different ways.
Personally, the signs were there from an early age - I thought it was most unfair that I had to be a boy and play with boy stuff (although Lego was amazing) whereas girls got to be girls and play with girl stuff! This, to me at the time, was the natural way of things. Girls were girls and boys were boys and wanted to be girls, because being a girl was so clearly superior. This was so self-evident to me that I didn't even mention it to people.
Even once I had admitted to myself this secret and accepted that this wasn't how everyone else felt, I was in deep denial - trans people were weird, and trans women were ugly (I don't think I even acknowledged the fact that trans men existed! I suspect now, though, that I was so absorbed in wanting to be female that it didn't occur to me that girls would want to be something other than a girl!). I also didn't have the most open parents about these issues - which, now that I know more, is understandable, even if it has set me back at least 15 years.
Even now, being open (to myself and to the world at large) about being a trans woman, there are things I have been in denial about (there are no doubt many things I in still in denial about), am accepting, and things that now I have accepted them am looking to change.
My "primary sexual characteristics" for one. Or, to put it in a shorter manner, my penis. I have historically had a low to non-existent level of dysphoria about having one. This has, and is, causing difficulties with the NHS, as that's a big issue for them (trans women are meant to have always hated their penises and want to cut them off, or something). This lack of problem has largely been a symptom of the surroundings, though - the clothes I wore fitted around it, everyone expected it, and it was useful for some things. Now, though, as the clothes I wear matter more to me (and aren't tailored around having one!) and my self-image is altering, having a penis is just getting bloody annoying. I've read people's recent experiences with GRS, and while it doesn't sound the most pleasant experience to go through ever, I know I could cope.
Yes, the leap from something known to unknown is scary and frightening, but when it's something known to be unpleasant and annoying, that leap starts to look better and better. The leap from presenting as male to presenting as female (even if people didn't immediately realise) was similar - a known that I didn't like to an unknown that could have been worse but ultimately turned out so much better.
I've been through this "denial, acceptance, act" cycle, or am knowingly in one of the stages, on so many things: social transition - was unaware, was in denial, acted, check; appearance of breasts - was unaware, denied I needed them, overcame threshold, acted, check (this was helped massively by the advertising campaign by Andrej Pejic modelling lingerie for Hema and my related discovery of "Two cups bigger" bras!); receding hairline - was unaware, denied it was happening, accepted it was happening but denied I needed to do anything about it (trusting, foolishly, in the NHS), have now accepted I need to do something, but am still working on the "act" part; GRS? - was unaware, never really had denial about that, it was more indifference, but have accepted that this may well be a plan.
The over-riding narrative I'm trying (and not sure I'm succeeding at here) is that of the balance of gumption and thresholds. Willpower and dysphoria raise your gumption, your willingness to DO SOMETHING. Denial and social (heh, and medical) pressures raise the threshold, the barrier to doing anything. As willpower and dysphoria increase, if they reach the threshold of pressures against you acting, you get something done, otherwise your gumption laps around the foothills of competing pressures and you exist in a low level of dysphoria (or sometimes even high level, if the competing pressures are high enough), sometimes in denial, sometimes fully aware of the problem, but unable to break through that barrier of social expectation.
What's more important to take away is that breaking through on one of these fronts (penis problems, breast issues, receded hair, social transition) does not mean that the others are automatically solved at the same time - each must be confronted, accepted and acted on in its own turn.
And that's where I am. Some things I've acted on, some I'm accepting, and some I'm just plain in denial about. However, there's always progress - either the dysphoria and willpower change, or the social pressures against change. As Dorey from "Finding Nemo" said: "What do we do? We swim, swim, swim."
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