"Trust your feelings Luke"

I am a renowned overthinker and cannot count how many times I have been reminded of it. I dissect and pull things apart to get to the bottom of concepts and ideas but then have trouble with just letting go. 

I don't know if this is engrained genetically or developed over time. My father no doubt had a hand in this plus my engineering training. 

However once you have burrowed to your heart's content and have hit bedrock its time to stop and just feel. Your instinct and trust in the self must take over with a bit of blind faith. 

Tonight I have the retirement party of my very accepting best friend of 40 years which will be attended by some of his siblings plus others I don't know. I am going for broke and trusting my gut because it is time to do so. None of these people have ever met Joanna. 

The time for analysis is over and it will go only as well or as badly as I desire to.

Bombs away.

He's absolutely right

 

Game face

For anyone who is living openly and doesn't quite fall under the radar, a game face is pretty much mandatory. 

I would describe it as a calm and comfortable but friendly nonchalance where you just focus on the current moment and where your head is at. When I walk into a metro car at rush hour at 6'1" I am hard to miss and yet people will glance up at me and go right back to the phones, books or staring into space. They have made the judgement that I own my own immediate surroundings. I also know and take solace in the fact that I am not the tallest woman in Montréal by any means. I know because I run into them sometimes.

Today anyone can be confused for being transgender and some women in the US have been attacked in bathrooms for not passing femininity inspection. But we can't forever live in fear of that occurring and must claim our authenticity. 

My game face says I will not put up with your nonsense and infringement on my life. On the other hand I get lots of friendly smiles from people who feed off my energy. 

If you don't have a game face, get one.

Please:)

The insanity of this moment

 

Boundary line

There can be a problematic boundary line between being a masculine woman or feminine man and being transgender. The issue is identifying it in the self and deciding what to do or not. 

Back when the binary was very rigid, gender variant people couldn't explore very much but once we loosened the rules more people stretched the limits of what it means to be a man or a woman. 

However this introduced a new element where many began to very seriously question what their penchant for variance meant and where it's battery limit lay. Some began to transition and succeeded while for others it wasn't the answer at all.

For me the core question comes down to comfort with one's birth sex and whether the person can navigate life within that framework. In a world that has the most malleable view of gender ever I believe this is more than possible. 

Many of us have known people who pushed the envelope of acceptability openly within society and the reception wasn't always kind. However they seemed to have enough self-esteem and courage to suffer the slings and arrows of people who love to mock. It also appears they were comfortable enough with birth sex to continue life that way. 

Today we have expanded a transgender umbrella which doesn't offer easy prescriptive solutions and people with varying degrees of dysphoria (or none at all) are wondering what they are supposed to do once they realize they are 'trans" (whatever their understanding of that is).

Sometimes there isn't that much to do at all besides accept themselves. But ultimately only they can know.

Dreams

For the longest time my psychology was so blocked and non-accepting of my being transgender, that I was never female in my dreams. 

Never. 

This eventually changed after many years and I was reminded of this just last night when I was dreaming about working again in an office with young employees. Clearly there was nothing special about the dream except for the fact that in it I was female. 

This happened slowly over time as I unblocked my thinking on who I am and became a sign that I was progressing into my authenticity.

It turns out that there are different stages of acceptance and often when you think you're done, you're not.

Sometimes much more than you thought possible is still to come.

Uneasy

Right now society feels like an untethered boat drifting along in te waves. People feel less sense of purpose because everything is in flux and the order we used to count on is no longer there. 

Everything has been put into a question and is being re-examined. The nature of work and relationships were put under the microscope during COVID and we have yet to understand how they will be brought into some new and predictable formula we can count on. 

Everyone I talk to feels the same in that we are in a stasis mode with no clear resolution until a new world order is established which humans can depend on for stability.

The world is the reverse of when I was the age of my children. We had economic certainty and a way forward except that people outside the social norms felt trapped and were largely repressed or in hiding. Today the human mosaic has been revealed to us openly but it needs a safe and stable environment which can provide for everyone. 

You can tell that eventually the tumblers will fall into place but it will take time. The end of these historical cycles are often messy and regretably they tend to end with much tumult.

Wedding

My brother understood why I couldn't go to his eldest daughter's wedding as my sister in law's family are the type of people who would not understand why I am suddenly wearing women's clothing and might call for an exorcism. He knew this had nothing to do with him or his daughter but I said so clearly in advance and his response did not disappoint. 

He is a very good person. 

My sister in law's eldest brother is a particularly objectionable sort whose job as a teacher was threatened when his caustic online posting was discovered by his students (mirroring Jordan Peterson). I cannot tolerate him and these days my loose tongue and razor thin patience for idiots could possibly get the best of me. 

I work on calming the volcano. 

Interestingly the daughter of the bride is now 17 (she had the baby in high school) attended the wedding in a suit and tie and uses they/them pronouns. My sister-in-law cannot make sense of this because, despite not being a bad person, she is as thick as a post. Her gay son, who is close to my own son, remains an enigma for a limited thinker with a black and white oriented brain. For her he might still be able to find repentance one day provided he prays hard enough.

My daughter attended with Ben and had a great time but everyone on my side of the family understood why I wasn't there. 

This is about respecting one's integrity and preserving peace of mind. If you cave in to people you feel bad about your lack of courage and if you come as you please your patience for intolerant idiots is tested. In other words, It’s lose-lose no matter what and others I checked with agreed. 

David's wedding (for my sister's eldest) in August will be a different story.

                     A maybe for August 

No one cares about you

This sounds like a very depressing title but I promise it's not. 

Most people live inside their own heads and are preoccupied with their personal affairs; a reality which, after you retire, becomes doubly evident. Those you thought might have more free time for you don't which makes perfect sense as they are still very much running inside their own personal mazes. 

This simple realization should liberate us to focus more on what we need and forget what people think. For they are not spending much time at all thinking about us. For strangers we barely even exist.

This is a universal theme of humanity and with this knowledge you can become more free than you ever imagined. You were educated from birth to worry about what others think and most of us fell into the same trap. We are busy inside our heads fussing about our acceptability to society instead of focusing on our own internal needs. 

Our sense of self should improve and our authenticity will blossom because instead of thinking about how we are being perceived we are able to be present for others more than ever before.

Don't waste your energy. Just be real.

Brave

Sara Bareilles has a highly infectious song called "Brave" which was a huge breakout hit for her. Recently it ended up on my feed and listened to the lyrics which were about finding your courage in a world of conformity. 

I thought about bravery and how sometimes it isn't borne out of singular defiance but out of a fatigue of a status quo we can no longer stomach. We are disappointed with ourselves and must break out of a situation which no longer works and perhaps never did. 

Many of us live that kind of experience where a tiny spark of courage ignites a bigger fire which is then thankfully very difficult to put out.

It can also spread.

City Song

 

I will remember her

I'm a little chatterbox these days and so it was nice to find someone who is like minded in the young woman I met this morning in old Montreal.

She was from India and now living in Singapore. Her sister lives here and she told me how lucky I was to live in a beautiful city. 

She is a 33 year old systems engineer, well-spoken and sparkly eyed and we talked about how our technical professions have changed and how life has as well. She has only recently found a partner who she hopes she can make a life with. 

I cannot overstate how much I love these impromptu exchanges with souls who are open and kind. 

"I will remember you Joanna" she says warmly as we part company. 

I will remember her as well.

Having it all

Having it all in life is impossible and so a series of trade-offs are constantly being made with the self. To complicate matters, what we think we want versus what we truly need are contained within the same bucket and we must parse through it to weed out what is truly essential and beneficial to our core. 

Regretably many of the lessons we need to learn are absorbed after much trial and error in life which can leave us bitter if we aren't careful. 

Having much reflected on this issue I have come to some conclusions. 

Firstly our self-respect and authenticity must be maximized such that we don't feel we are losing sight of who we are. Secondly we need to ignore public opinion as much as possible to arrive at the aforementioned things. Unfortunately it can sometimes take a lifetime to achieve these goals. 

The human animal only craves two things: to love and to be loved but we often try to achieve these desires through means that effectively block them. Our childhoods can be marred with issues that remain unresolved and cloud our vision thus diluting the purity of these noble goals. 

Getting to the core of the self involves constant examination and reseting of goals and priorities without losing sight of what is truly important.

In memoriam

 

Based

This 18 year old woman is pissed and I do so admire her attitude and smarts. Let's have more of this!

No kings!

Escalation

The direct result of Trumpism and its violent and divisive rhetoric. For fuck's sake, enough!...

Jung was right

Carl Jung wrote that certain people are gifted to us temporarily and we cannot hold on to them. We may be drawn to them like a moth to a flame and then become despondent when they prove to be elusive and leave our lives. 

Jung says they were meant to teach us something about ourselves and weren't destined to stay in our lives. They were there to help us find personal insight.

He was absolutely right and I can arrest to this. People come and go and help us open doors of self-understanding.

The script

As we get older we realize that our lives should have been less scripted. We aimed for goals which were either not attained or were but perhaps disappointed. What should have happened was an openness of spirit which involved less expectation as to how our lives should go in favor of a little more trust in the sometimes benign chaos of the universe.

Here I exclude our need for a job or career which keeps a roof over our head and food on the table. 

As the eldest in a large family there was lots of expectation and I learned to think that my life was going to go in a certain direction; a premise which turned out to be partly incorrect. Yes I had a long and successful career in my profession but many other things came as surprises which derailed because they perturbed my sense of order.

Now I know better of course and leave the expectations at home.

The subtlety in letting life surprise and allow us to roll with the punches turns out to be the right way.

A solution

Some of you may relate to what I am going to say here and I have addressed this before many times in the past. 

I knew since very young that there was something up with my gender. What that meant was eventually  discovering that I wasn't what society then described as a "crossdresser" but my dysphoria seemed to be manageable enough to be able to avoid medical transition. 

Thus for a long while I ended up labeling myself a Benjamin scale type IV transsexual (ie. someone who ponders on but hesitates regarding transition). Plus my life was so busy with career and raising children that I could plunge into distraction and avoid facing the issue as much as possible. 

Falling into a difficult spot on the spectrum is not easy especially when one grows up under a very strict binary. I sometimes think how my life might have been different were I the age of my children today. 

For example I see gender variance expressed openly everywhere and yesterday I was behind someone I was sure was a young female. As they turned I then discover they had five o'clock shadow they weren't the least bit perturbed about. In every other way including the long hair and the purse they looked perfectly female. 

The trick for an older person is to reconcile with their upbringing and their programmed ideas about gender and make sense of a new path which for me needed to include transparency and authenticity because hiding felt dishonest and devoid of self-respect. 

Feeling some discomfort with the way forward is going to be expected because being part of a tiny and unwelcome part of humanity is not for the faint of heart. But ultimately 2 key questions needed addressing 

Who are you?

What do you need to do to respect that identity? 

Here is where neuroplasticity came in towards formulating a vision for my life that was finally cast into place during the pandemic and before retirement which became a make or break moment for me. 

My gender dysphoria was serious business and could not be ignored but my response to it needed to be measured and take account of my history and how to close the loop with my past including friendships.

Young people have more options today than we did but they don't possess the maturity and life experience that I have and so there is no perfect scenario in this life which is why it took so long given there were so many aspects to be weighed. 

I will be tweaking this formula until the day I die. It's called life.

Why the educated can follow dumb ideas

I am very familiar with this phenomenon in discussions with some individuals. When people's beliefs are threatened, they will rationalize away inconvenient facts...

Don't complain

I don't complain. 

Today I came up out of the metro and a man in his early 50's who had lost both his legs stopped me and wanted to chat. I didn't have change but he was just happy to have someone listen. 

Later as I waited for the bus, a woman with a cane started chatting with me and gave some some of her health challenges. She was very sweet and very philosophical about it all. 

I don't complain about anything..

Icky

Icky's latest video ended up on my feed and it was about her brainworms; or at least what she calls her lack of confidence and body dysmorphia. 

She looks terrific and transitioned at age 23. I will occasionally glance at her content to see how a GenZ navigates being transgender in this era. It's gratifying to see that people remain the same and that the insecurities which plague us in youth are universal. 

Icky doesn't see what others see. Instead she sees broad shoulders and hears a voice that isn't to her liking. Anyone else would view this as nitpicking and yet we are our own worse critics. Her fans give her glowing praise but it doesn't matter what they think and instead what we do about ourselves.

If you aren't relieved by her self-appraisal you should be because it's proof that we have myopia regarding ourselves and we should just stop it and simply live. 

I wouldn't want to go back to my 20's if for no other reason that there is so much focus on what a fickle public thinks about us which is completely irrelevant.

But we need to live a little to learn that lesson; one which over time she undoubtedly will and her sense of self will only grow.

Surrender

Lawrence O'Donnell consistently calls Trump the stupidest president ever because he just keeps proving it day after day....

June 14th

This Saturday will be very busy. A huge US nation wide protest for "No Kings" day, a papal mass in Chicago and a military North Korea style parade for a draft dodger who insults veterans. 

It's wonderful that the focus is taken off Trump's birthday with the pope being no fool in making a counter statement against the cruelty and stupidity of the regime. The boos for the dear leader at the Kennedy center were a reminder that his approval rating has fallen off a cliff save for the most unreachable. 

The LA protests which are being touted on state regime media FOX as the entire city falling apart, are occupying 1% of the real estate of the county. But don't try to convince the cult who will swallow every Trump pronouncement hook, line and sinker. 

The beginning of the end is here and, as Rand Paul finally realizes the pettiness involved after not being invited to the White House picnic, maybe other GOP senators and members of congress will grow temporary spines to help derail the worst administration in the history of the country.

A visit with Sonia

This morning I was invited for a 7:30 light breakfast at the residence of Sonia and her partner Rene who are both in their early to mid 70's.  She and I met by happenstance at the Jean Talon market where he hit off and now meet once a week there for coffee. 

The reason for the early visit was because of the current transit strike which obliges we work around it.

Sonia knows nothing of my history which I don't feel obliged to share because it's not immediately relevant to our friendship. Still, meeting her husband this morning at their place reminded me of how stressful meeting new people can sometimes be for transgender folks. We can be tempted to brace for impact when it is not warranted.

The public will take you at face value with the caveat being that you know who you are. In other words, if you doubt it so will they and it will impact your mannerisms, your speech and your facial expressions which will betray something is off. I know because I lived it for a very long time.

People can tell.

It was a perfectly lovely visit with two very nice people and I was as relaxed as I could be because I was just being myself.

The moral of the story is always the same and we should just relax into authenticity and let the universe take care of the rest.

Trust me on this :)

Don't lie to me

Someone made one of those "America's Got Talent" highlight videos using some AI content which even said so when you clicked on it as YouTube obliges it. But even then it was obvious that the young man about to sing was AI generated. What wasn't was the footage of Simon Cowell and others reacting to what would have been some other act. 

Despite this the comment section was full of genuine praise for this brave young man who had lost his entire family and now presented himself on the show to sing in their honor. 

It would have been heartwarming had it been true and only a handful of comments bemoaned the fact that so many had been duped by the technology. 

This is where we are today in the era of echo chambers and now manipulation of images and voices which will even more test our ability to think critically. An ability which was already lacking to begin with.

Lighting a match

The fallout of Trumpism will include the permanent loss of friendships and family connections because in the aftermath people will realize that many moral compasses are broken and this discovery cannot be lived with. 

After the fall of WWII Germany sociologists and psychologists sought answers as to how the population could be so easily led to being informants and succumb to cruelty and the answers will be exactly the same this time around. 

The combination of stupidity, self-centeredness, callousness and obliviousness are all part of the human condition for which there is no simple cure. 

The most mportant issue is of course the lack of fairness which is motivating much of the anger among non-Trumpers. Thus it is now Chicago and New York which are experiencing chaos which will move on to other major centers as the people revolt and demonstrate.

It's what happens when you light a match on a powder keg.

Eventually the entire odious and cruel administration will unravel itself because people will not stand for this.

What does it mean?

I continue to see a lot of commentary about the presence of cross gender arousal and what it means and the answer is a highly personal one. It's mere presence could be part of a much broader picture or conversely part of a guilty pleasure. 

Thus to look to someone else's experience would be a mistake. 

We are sexual beings and that reality forms part of a very complex portrait of what it means to be human. The fact that gender dysphoria can be tinged with longing that ends up with sexual overtones is hardly surprising. 

Our job is to determine what lies behind our cross gender experience. 

Some people are given cross sex hormones which then kills all desire for cross gender expression. It shows them that their identity wasn't tied to their proclivities as much as they may have thought. For others it confirms something they already knew deep down regarding their feelings and possible medical transition desires. 

Each situation is different which is why exploring beyond isn't just a whim but an absolute must if we want answers.

Good to yourself

I'm going to say that most people aren't sufficiently good to themselves. We are wired to please (some of us more than others) and we will deny personal needs to our own detriment. 

This lesson hits hardest once we retire and the world slows down for us just enough that we can reflect on how our formula wasn't working. The people who used to depend on our efforts are less to be found and the realization becomes more stark. 

It isn't just transgender people (although they tend to be chronic pleasers) but anyone who was taught that duty and responsibility came before the self. This is a great quality to have and yet it can tip in the direction of putting yourself last. 

I don't put myself last any longer and it has bolstered my sense of self. The hard part became figuring out where the needs of others bled into a denial of self which threatened both my authenticity and my self-respect. 

Love of self isn't narcissistic although for some people it can be. It should be about protecting a spirit that dwells within us which then breeds a joy we can extend to others.

Not taking the bait

Andy Bashear doesn't take the culture war framing used to distract voters...

Leeches

Trust in expertise has collapsed and we will soon return to using leeches for curing ailments. This is living proof that humans don't get any smarter. 

All of this happened slowly and insidiously greatly expanding with the proliferation of social media where skeptics found each other. Suddenly those with tin foil hats had kindred spirits and could regale in flat earth theories and why horse paste was good for curing COVID. 

During the pandemic the channels of simpleton Joe Rogan and histrionic shaman Russell Brand took off because they were selling what people wanted to hear. Dumbed down messaging they could understand was welcome which exacted revenge on the intelligentsia they deemed part of the oppressing class.

Studies have shown that many people crave authoritarian rule and want strong leaders to tell them what to do. The strict parenting they received appeals to them as does the messaging that people who are different are to be mistrusted and even hated. 

It is the 21st century and yet we are pedaling backwards into chicken pox epidemics driven by people who think science is a hoax but are fine with unsubstantiated conspiracy. 

It's like we are actively pleading to have bad things happen.

Not a drill

This is not a drill. 

Authoritarianism has a solid foothold in the US. The classic playbook has been applied where you create a bad situation which generates protest and you react with an extreme response to deter and frighten. LA is now that boiling point. 

It's been done before and the situation  will continue to degrade until perhaps martial law is enacted and you end up with a fascist regime. 

Walking this back is going to be extremely difficult because the dark forces that wrote and promoted project 2025 are not going to give up without a fight. The "cruelty is the point" crowd has officially taken over and they are dogmatic right wingers committed to their cause of taking America backwards to some utopia of their own imagination; a sort of Christian nationalist mecca modeled on a past where minorities knew their place.

I try to get past the stupidity but it's impossible because this world is replete with idiots. 77 million people got this very wrong and it should have been obvious that you don't re-elect a despicable criminal into the highest office in the land.

As empires crumble fingers are invariably pointed internally because you need scapegoats. You need the Woke, LGBTQ people, college professors or immigrants to blame for a malaise that was already well in place. They always do it to themselves.

An unjust society cannot continue in health until the underlying cancer is addressed; one which took 40 years to metastasize. It will involve major surgery to cure it in the form of major societal overhaul but until then many innocent people will suffer.

Same old song and now it's up to the people like it always is.

John redecorates

The original and one and only...

Authenticity is transparency

Over the years I came to the conclusion that authenticity is synonymous with transparency. In other words, who you are should be a known commodity. This can be scary but the alternative is to damage your psychology through the paralysis of fear. 

Thus an identity is established through ultimately claiming your space with unapologetic confidence. You tell people who you are and they must accept it because this is something so fundamental to your nature that it cannot be changed. 

This is where your own self-examination comes and you decide whether you have lived with suppressed identity issues as opposed to someone who enjoys playing with gender (which there is of course nothing wrong with). 

Here the mind can trick us because we have invested so much time developing a personal narrative which may not be correct. We either make much more of the situation or conversely underplay it and suffer in silence. The latter is the more harmful of the two. 

It has taken me many years to arrive at an understanding of my identity because my life started out with so many variables which were antagonistic to who I was. The eldest in a very religious household born during an era where gender rules were strictly enforced. 

Your situation may be different but the core question remains always the same as does the work to answer it. 

Who are you?

Jordan vs Kermit

Too delicious....;)

Run

It is when we stop running and being distracted that facing reality becomes inescapable. Whatever has been left undealt with in life begs to be examined and the circle closed. 

We are all disysfunctional creatures because we are human and were raised by imperfect people within the framework of an irrational world. Our task over our lifetime seems to be to make sense of it and find perspective. 

In retirement I am more aware of how people are constantly running and distracting themselves. It looks more odd to me than ever and remember my own participation with a detachment that is fortified with the passage of time. 

As I become older I care less about feeding the world what it wants and focus on what I need. That those things are often in opposition shows how much of our lives are often organized against our own best interest. 

It can take sometimes take a lifetime to understand this and some never address it at all.

Single

People have never more single in our history and the mechanics of how we got here are easy to understand. We removed the business model aspects of marriage which necessitated that each person bring something to the table. Once women became more independent many men became expendable. 

It is why we have a crisis of masculinity and why hypergamy which is what sees 80% of women compete for the top 15% of men dominates the dating marketplace. If men have height, looks and money they have their pick of more women than the men who are left behind. 

In addition those people who are older and understand all too well the benefits and the pitfalls of couple life are deciding to not enter it again unless it falls into their lap. Some make friends with benefits arrangements that don't involve cohabitation.

Whether this changes has a lot to do with how society restructures itself once we come out of this 100 year historical cycle.

Let it rest

Some older transsexuals spend a lot of time complaining about other gender variant people. Buck Angel is one of them but there are a number of others. Again, much of this is because their psychology has been locked in since their youth into binary thinking. 

When these people transitioned there were no other options but what is regrettable is that they haven't moved  past it and just leave well enough alone. 

There are also younger examples like Blaire White who has become the token transgender person for the right wing. She gets to look down on others and tips her hand at her own deep seated insecurities which perhaps elude her. For obvious reasons, a right wing transgender person should be an oxymoron. 

People who are content with themselves don't need to bother with others however this phenomenon will never go away because it forms part of the psychology of many.

Idiocracy

The inevitable always happens at the collapse. After that there is a new reset....

Just be

Stepping away from binary thinking is the best thing you can do if you are a gender variant or transgender person. Firstly it takes the pressure off "passing" because it doesn't matter. You are simply embracing and being yourself. 

If your cross gender expression moves beyond a past time or a guilty pleasure it will benefit you to work your psychology to where today's youth already is. 

Once that baseline coordinate system is abandoned you think of yourself primarily as a person who belongs somewhere within a continuum or a mosaic which frees the mind greatly. 

If blending in is your goal I don't blame you but we just need to remove pressure from attaining something which can encourage obsession or at the very least become an over distraction. 

Today I passed a young transgender woman who blended perfectly (including some very ample breasts) except for her booming baritone voice. She didn't care and neither did those around her.

Just be.

The stupidest day until tomorrow

Well the inevitable happened and two pathological liars and opportunists are now at war. The most clownish administration in US history has taken a direct hit by the world's richest man who himself helped elect it. His DOGE cuts are right now making sure that people continue to go hungry in famine stricken parts of Africa while food rots sitting in ports. 

I for one couldn't be happier if it helps derail the cruelty and the incompetence that has taken over the government. Yesterday the idiotic Howard Lutnick was being grilled in a committee hearing regarding the erratic tariff policy and was shown a banana to illustrate that not everything can be made at home because you can't grow them in the US. Lutnick had nothing in response but a placid expression. 

Incompetence and stupidity. 

Of course Lawrence O'Donnell had a field day with this. One of the few honest and hard-hitting journalists left, he knew this was coming and said so yet again. You cannot trust people who don't have good intentions but only want to enrich themselves.

I think this is where the wheels of the clown car finally come off and the disintegration of this regime begins in earnest.

It couldn't happen to two nicer people.

FAFO

A line in the sand

I don't advocate for transitions per se but for people to live openly as themselves and if that is what is required then so be it. 

I felt constrained growing up, as did many people of my era, and it wasn't healthy. As a result you develop internal shame and guilt which then necessitates much work to eradicate. I would offer that many people live with some combination of the two for various reasons. 

To repair the psyche we need to bolster self-respect and confidence which then offers us a way forward. Our mind is then clear to find a solution which maximizes authenticity. 

Imagine letting someone else dictate your authenticity and set limits on who you are. That isn't workable for you but before you discuss what makes you authentic with someone else, that internal dialogue and self-definition must first be completed by us. 

Last night I spoke to my daughter about how her relationship is going and how Ben had seemed to draw a line in the sand over an issue she wasn't prepared to accept. I advised that anyone who sets an ultimatum is then opening themselves up for rupture which is why reasonable compromise is always the way but not to the point where who you are is lost in the equation. 

It is why human relationships especially amorous ones are one of the most complex things I can think of.

Collapse in four acts

 

Classic

One of the best movie openings ever....

The truth hurts

Texas man calls it like it is....

Role models

If we feel tempted to complain about our lives it's because we aren't paying sufficient attention to the challenges of others. Many of them have much bigger hills to climb and yet suffer with a dignity and grace that serve as models for the rest of us. 

It is people like that who provide me with perspective. 

When we are untethered from stress we can fall victim to navel gazing which I am also not immune to. 

I think of those people and snap out of it immediately.

Self-protection

This is an interesting phase of my life where family events come up and you aren't always sure what to do. Everyone knows about your situation but you also need to feel comfortable which makes the mental gears work a little harder. 

You need to decide whether to attend at all knowing that hostile mindsets will likely be present while not wanting to cave into them by not presenting as you desire. 

For many years I was forced into a fragmented existence of dysphoria management and even braved approaching HR about a possible work transition but I thought about the career fallout, my children's ages at the time and decided not to despite getting the green light. 

Today I have no guard rails stopping me from anything which is both good and bad. It means you need to reflect carefully on the land mines in front of you in an era that is increasingly turning hostile towards transgender people. 

There is no easy. There is only life.

No thanks

I won't be traveling to the US anytime soon and neither are most of my fellow Canadians. We prefer not to take the risk. 

After being insulted and having our sovereignty threatened we are canceling vacations and selling homes in Florida and other states. Our Prime Minister now talks about the end of business as usual for the long term. 

The bottom line is that we have lost our trust in our southern neighbor and while most of us have friends and family there we don't believe that there is enough stability in the overall society as the empire crumbles. We can't go down with the ship as well as it plays out its Christian nationalism fetish. 

All empires end eventually and they always happen from within. There is an implosion which occurs once they find themselves overextended having overplayed their hand. 

It isn't the end of the country but rather a forced modesty which installs itself once they realize that their place at the top of the heap is over. My own birth nation of Spain had their time centuries ago. 

For Canada having a plan B in making more solid ties with other social democracies will benefit us because we don't like cruelty and authoritarianism isn't something we will ever tolerate. So the UK, France, Australia and others will help fill part of the void left behind.

We didn't ask for this but once here we will see it through.

I make my peace with it

The current president who is a dangerous and slurring imbecile reposted a suggestion by a member of his brain dead cult that Biden was replaced by a robot in 2020. This level of stupidity is regrettable in a public official only to be outdone by the hoardes who voted for this idiot and whose high tech footware is often smarter than them by orders of magnitude. 

The last third of my life will be spent reconciling myself to an understanding of not only how stupid people are but how cruel and self-centered when you give them half a chance. 

Samuel Clemens and other public intellectuals and people of character (who suggested we not argue with idiots because they will drag you down to their level) understood this in their bones and had to make their peace with it.

We have little choice.

One clarification

There is one clarification I want to make on that video I shared yesterday from Dr Z. She uses the term transgender woman for those people who are dysphoric and their investment goes well beyond expression for either sexual or other motives. 

Those of us who are older and grew up under a very strict binary did not experience any blurring of gender. Thus male to female aligned people were either seen as largely secret "crossdressers" or transsexuals who needed to move on ideally in stealth. One was expressing as a woman while the other was a woman.

Today, youth are more likely to say "I am trans" and allow for much binary elasticity (although transsexuals do call themselves transgender women) without need to add as much weight to the terms man and woman which carry their fair share of social construct. In other words, the vocabulary of youth contains a more expansive view of gender. 

This can be more difficult for older people to wrap their head around due to their early and pervasive programming.

the number one question

Here is the number one question that gender therapists get among their patients with a history of cross gender behavior wondering whether they are transgender or not.

Worth a visit if you aren't sure where you fit.

Either way just be happy :)

Your brand

I don't post anymore about what I wear because it holds less importance than ever and yet I cannot deny that there are aspects of femininity that I enjoy and can much more freely regale in. 

Despite being tall I have blended into society with a combination of comfort and style which suits me. It is a form of subdued femininity that feels right and was arrived at organically. 

Your own mileage will vary but I think that finding a balance point between masculine and feminine energy is a process which everyone goes through regardless of whether they are transgender or not. You find a sweet spot and establish a personal style almost as a brand. 

It took me a long time to get here but the aim was always to stay away from caricature and settle for tasteful as per the female role models I grew up with. 

The trick was to not abandon the masculine traits which all people possess to arrive at who I am. For example, after her transition Charlie Martin was still a race car driver and retained something she was passionate about. She remained who she was internally which is all that matters.

My nails are always painted and this little thing is part of my brand. Lately I got tired of red and made a change because I could.

Not a good mix

Texas has passed a bill forcing teachers to place the 10 Commandments in classrooms. This will undoubtedly end up in the courts since it is against the constitution to not keep matters of church and state separate. 

Meanwhile in Oklahoma the social studies program curriculum is to include a section on the 2020 election fraud investigation. Oklahoma is 49th in education which isn't a shocker and puts this information in perspective. Some parents are taking this to court as rightfully they should.

Christian nationalism combined with conspiracy thinking is not a good mix.

That's gonna sting

Pope Leo is going to say Mass in his native Chicago on the same day that Trump has his birthday military parade. Guess who will have the biggest crowd and ratings?

Someone's fragile ego will be mighty bruised and I am here for it.

Did I mention I really like this Pope?

Blunt

My bluntness doesn't seem to hurt my traffic but even if it did I cannot change. This is the only way I know how to communicate things which are important and anyone who has read my writing knows that. Regretably it tends to discourage comments even if I don't mean it to.

Beating around the bush annoys me which means trying to soften language for no reason achieves nothing. If we want to get to the heart of something euphemisms aren't helpful especially when we want to explore a topic more deeply. 

Just know that my direct approach isn't meant as a bludgeon but as a way to get to the root much faster.

Baby steps

If you're anything like me, over the years you have been trying to cobble yourself together into one piece. This can take a long time because if you are older you were taught to reject yourself so be patient. 

You weren't meant to be two people but only one. 

Using neuroplasticity to rewire the circuits takes time. Once you realized this was something you had to do, you were forced into a reconciliation and repatriation process where the past isn't jettisoned but embraced. 

I continue to think that trying to maintain separate masculine and feminine personas is not ultimately healthy for the psyche. The exception being when your cross gender expression doesn't have deep roots in identity and you can somewhat comfortably compartmentalize. In other words, it should be a necessary reality and not a goal when have strong investment fed by our dysphoria. 

I think the aim should be to coalesce ourselves into one entity with a unique set of traits that need not necessarily conform to a binary which is already quite malleable in 2025. 

We just need to very transparently own it and dump the secrecy which can sometimes take very tiny baby steps over a long period to achieve.

The power of myth

America is slowly falling apart. It's like a slow motion demolition where reverberations are felt everywhere but the true scope of what's happening isn't generating sufficient outrage. 

But I don't blame the average citizen when the entire system is rigged against them. Their own representatives are going to town halls and being eviscerated by the audience but it falls on their deaf ears. Many of these congress people are rabid Kool-aid drinkers doing their part to dismantle their own nation because they have been unwittingly indoctrinated to do so. 

In his book 1984, George Orwell predicted this regime where truth is lie and lie is truth because he had an understanding of human nature and the extreme hold of propaganda among a general population. 

What doesn't help is that the myth of American exceptionalism and the American dream still cloud the vision of many who still believe in those things. All the while the people who can least afford to have things taken away from them are being victimized the most. 

Here is where the sin of rugged individualism hurts because so many failed to comprehend that, under that dogma, the cards would always be stacked against them no matter how hard they tried.