And inevitably...

I felt this stop coming.

Call it a sabbatical or a permanent halt, the blog will stay up regardless. For some reason, I am not someone who can write one post a month because I lose interest and move to other things. I am all in or I am not.

Jack Molay, who for me has the best and most inquisitive transgender blog on the net, will still be able to count on my continuing support and comments. He asks all the right questions and is an invaluable resource for people questioning their gender identity.

As for me, I started again in April 2023 after an extended absence from writing and realized I had changed so much. The blog was becoming less about transgender issues as I went along which showed how much progress I had made over the years. 

As the world plunges into increasing geopolitical chaos this platform risks becoming more about outrage regarding the sheer incompetence and massive stupidity to come particularly on the US stage. I don't need to raise my blood pressure when my aim is to remain balanced and calm. 

My personal cleanup journey will continue indefinitely but with a sense of myself at my core which has never been this good. Things have coalesced so much that I know who I am to a point I had never imagined attaining. The combination of life experience and introspection have paid off. 

Those of you on your own journeys of discovery will note the changes are more drastic as you look back than as you move forward with what appears sometimes to be no progress at all. It's the little steps we take that eventually lead to the right mental state and the management of our dysphoria increasingly gets easier. We find a solution that works which sometimes necessitates we take a medical route. 

Every person is different and only you can know what is right for you. Understanding motivation is everything regarding an action plan.

Entre temps, je vous souhaite bonne chance sur votre propre chemin ;)

The compartmentalized life

One of the clues we might be transgender is that over time we increasingly have trouble with compartmentalizing our cross gender expression. It's no longer working and the dysphoric feelings persist or increase. 

In the past you have been busy enough to ignore things but now realize there is more than meets the eye and expressing yourself once every few weeks or months is not helping at all. 

The possibility that the feelings are much deeper is put on the table and they are examined. You realize that splitting yourself into two characters is becoming more cumbersome to the psyche and produces distress rather than encouraging a peaceful harmony of male and female energy. 

This is how I began to realize that I was gender dysphoric and not just a male enjoying sporadic expression. The signs that were there since very young were being ignored because downplaying them felt more convenient and less frightening than face the likelihood that there was much more.

The more I reflected, the more I realized that compartmentalization was a convenient dodge rather than a desired outcome because it meant I could stop at a point that didn't perturb my effort to lead the life I was then living. 

When compartmentalized behavior is used more as a coping mechanism or pressure relief valve than as an end goal, there is likely more happening than we are admitting; something which older transgender people were much more likely to fall prey to.

Sole Survivor

 

Not owed but offered

I consider Angela the perfect example of someone who doesn't need to know my gender history. 

She works at The Bay jewelry department and we have overlapped here and there over the years only to have become increasingly friendly. She is 58.

This morning we had coffee on Avenue Mont Royal and it went splendidly. I know for a fact based on our discussions that she doesn't know I am transgender which would have zero impact on our rapport. 

I always ask myself: how would them knowing change anything? If the answer is nothing I let sleeping dogs lie particularly if our seeing each other will be infrequent. Still, I don't think Angela would judge me if she knew because she is sweet and kind and if she asked the question I would admit it. I am fairly certain she never will.

We don't owe people the information but we are free to offer it. After all, it's not like we are apologizing for existing.

A telling statistic

85% of the stock market wealth is made by the top 10% of income earners and 50% of it is by the top 1%. 

So when someone wants to use it as a barometer for how well things are going, you can tell them to take a hike. 

The statistic speaks for itself just fine, only not the story they want to tell.

Manifesto

If we always need to be "on" and busy we should ask why. If we are listless when bored maybe it's because we aren't at peace alone with only our thoughts for company. 

Retiring can be a shock for those used to constant deadlines and distractions. When you have lost your primary function as employee and busy parent to children who are now adults, suddenly you have more time than you know what to do with. 

We need to learn how to be still and it can disorient. 

Activities will fill part of the void but it is the potential loss of identity which will hit hardest. If you have defined your purpose through career or being very involved in the lives of your children, you now need to redefine your mission statement or manifesto. 

Learning to be alone was something I had not imagined years ago and yet the perspective it has given me is immeasurable. I withdrew from a model that was sold as panacea for loneliness only to realize the model was deeply flawed. If you chose incorrectly your life was made much more complex and less fulfilling. 

You were at the risk of losing identity to please someone else who, unwittingly or not, was busy draining away your life energy while you tended to their own traumas and deficiencies as well as your own.

Authenticity

When the internal work is being done, people can detect it and so will you.

But because we are human, the work never stops.

Easy or hard life

"Easy choices, hard life; hard choices, easy life"

A quote that I can very much relate to. If our life is devoid of challenge, our easy shortcut choices make can yield hard lessons down the road. However, making the hard decisions by facing adversity can simplify life later on and reduce it to its essential elements of importance.

We've learned some basic truths by not avoiding some hardship.

Let's strawman

People can be manipulated. 

I keep seeing identity politics being raised as a red herring to blame for right wing gains worldwide but especially in the US. Why not blame DEI hiring and transgender people as distractions instead of addressing the core problems. 

At 1% of the population transgender people harm no one but, among other groups, they are low hanging fruit which makes us an easy target for cultural outrage. 

The average Joe voter knows something is wrong but can be manipulated. This is how Republicans began to win the southern states by picking up frustrated Dixiecrats not happy with lyndon Johnson giving black people civil rights they so rightfully deserved. 

Cultural issues can be red meat when you want to distract from your problems and it's how we got the "Woke agenda" moral panic people like Jordan Peterson love to trumpet as distraction.

As people fall behind economically, they need someone to blame and the Democrats weren't much help either when they went truly corporate in the early 90's and encouraged moving business offshore through globalization efforts. Now Americans could also buy cheap shit from China to feed their insatiable rampant consumerism.

All of those people who lost their livelihood to low cost countries are now the people most susceptible to strawman messaging which increases their hatred of a false enemy while ignoring their pain.

Wrong call

Are we responsible for our neighbor? Well yes and no. 

They are subject to their own life choices and must suffer the consequences or regale in their joy. What is hard to miss is that society is falling apart and more people are falling off the grid. 

It would be tempting to think that this is the result of increased laziness among the population which would be patently untrue. 

When I began my career we would work slower but more methodically. It took time to train people and we preached patience and quality. Contrast that to the frantic pace of today and the shoddy lack of preparation of young professionals and its obvious why the results are of mixed to poor quality with huge cost overruns. 

When we jumped at globalization we decided that efficiency and profit would dominate over a good work environment which encouraged team spirit. We didn't need to preach it as much before because we had it. 

Today we preach bullshit slogans to employees to make up for the fact that it eludes us. Work/life balance is extolled as we work overtime to correct more and more errors of judgment. We decided that a healthy society would take a back seat to a smaller amount of people owning more wealth. 

It was the wrong call.

Before liberals became corporatist they used to preach compassion for the downtrodden which eventually just became lip service. By the time of my retirement, the buzzwords just made me sick to my stomach.

You may have noticed...

You may have noticed that this isn't a transgender blog. It is instead a blog which happens to be written by a transgender person.

A subtle difference, but a difference nonetheless.