Anchor

The older we get the more mentally free we feel but the caveat is we need to find a new anchor point. Once unmoored from the previous position we held we can drift until that the new haven is found. 

From birth our lives were lived with rules we adhered to. Regardless of whether they served us positively or not at least there were predictable guardrails in place which, if nothing else, removed uncertainty. 

Feeling like sheep can be at once comforting and deeply depressing. You can be assuaged by the company or distressed by the lack of freedom to stray from the flock. 

Once you have analyzed your life and decided that many rules didn't suit you, there is a personal reinvention required which should be more reliant on your authenticity.

AI will get better

The video below is clearly AI but one day it won't be so obvious as this particular one is.

Recently Rachel Maddow herself talked about the amount of AI using her voice and image which MSNBC tracks and debunks as much as they can.

No going back now...

Going our own way

It took me a long time to figure myself out. 

"Crossdresser" subculture felt somehow immature and sometimes overtly sexual and secretive and so I didn't belong there. Similarly binary transsexuals had their own reality which meant I had to find myself on my own outside of these groupings. 

In doing my own homework I felt I needed to stick to trying to understand what my dysphoria was trying to tell me and where it was sourced. 

As far as I remember I have always had it so it wasn't a choice. When my son asked me recently about what would happen if tomorrow all gender norms disappeared suddenly (an excellent question) I told him that the gender variance community would split up roughly into choice versus no choice. In other words, people who embraced variance as rebellion or personal preference versus those born a set of criteria that forced them into finding a solution for their dysphoric feelings. 

Over my life I got to know the archetypes involved whether personally or through internet exploration and got to understand that it was more complex than putting people into sub-groupings. 

Existing outside of groups can sometimes feel awkward but for me became mandatory if I was going to try and maintain an objective viewpoint. Yes, you don't have "my people" to rely on as much so you focus on the idea of a global village and the variability of humans as a whole. 

One of the problems for older transgender people is that their programming was so severe that they couldn't find comfortable points of reference to grab onto and so climbing on to the same lifeboat as someone close enough to you was better than being alone. 

I held the opposite view as someone who for the longest time saw my situation as needing a cure. It wasn't until I started to see I didn't need repairing that I was able to find a comfort zone outside of a subgroup and find my own identity. 

I thus began to think more in terms of a global mosaic of people rather than transgender community even as I don't for a moment knock the need for the latter's existence.

Blockage

Hiding who we are and living in secrecy creates mental blockages. How do I know? I lived it from the age of 4.

Clear the brain palette and get on with life. If people don't accept you, the problem isn't yours.

Just another day

After making a deal with the EU (not yet on paper) suddenly Trump hits Switzerland with a 39% tariff announced via social media. The fact that this lunacy has been normalized is the problem. 

To get even with another country of 9 million people, Trump wants to charge his own population 39% more because this smaller country buys less from a larger country? This is how idiots deal with trade imbalances. 

Europe would do well to just leave deals with a madman behind and make arrangements with other nations while America learns its lesson for having elected him not once but twice.

Top 10

In no particular order, here are my top 10 must-have wardrobe staples I cannot live without: 

Comfortable black pumps

Ballet flats

Sneakers

Skinny jeans

Solid color T-shirts

Cardigan

Backpack purse

Sweater dress

Rain boots

Comfortable skirt with pockets

And so it goes

 

Cod liver oil

Trumpism is going to end up being like cod liver oil for American democracy. It has woken up most to the fact that their country is slipping away into an authoritarian empire where people are picked up off the streets and sent to gulags. 

I can sense that the public is fed up with neoliberal policies which have brought the country here. A corrupt supreme court (which needs term limits), right wing think tanks, fringe religion and FOX News have only amplified the problem. 

The hardest hit will be the poorest citizen as cuts to Medicare services plus tariffs shock them into the realization that they were duped. If the democratic party does not have a genuine conversion into true populism which helps those people, then all hope is lost. 

Mamdani winning New York city's mayoral race despite the Democratic party establishment pushback will be a key barometer. That and the effectiveness of Texas democrats in pushing back against GOP redistricting attempts.

Pencils down

After decades of keeping up appearances, aging can finally bring us the freedom to let our guard down. The filter we once employed is jettisoned in favor of a more honest approach which still needs to be tempered with polite restraint. 

We begin to say no to invitations without guilt because we no longer fear the judgement of others. Hopefully, the most authentic version of ourselves emerges and stays for the remainder of our lives. 

What other people believe or do concerns us less and fighting against ignorance becomes less necessary if it means perturbing our peace of mind which becomes a priority.

Retirement has brought me the best mindset of my life but it has taken time to adjust to it. The brain was used to running and delivering on obligation which is no longer required and having so much freedom can feel disorienting at first until it doesn't.

You learn to look after yourself properly because you are the only one who can.

Clocked

When I was younger, slimmer and prettier I'm fairly sure I got clocked quite a bit because I wasn't confident and I think it showed. Even if people didn't detect I was a young male in women's clothes they might have thought: 

"What's wrong with her?" 

Years later as I started making friends as Joanna I was very surprised that people didn't know and waited for the question so I could reveal my secret. It never came.

It took me a long time to realize that I was my biggest enemy and that people will believe who you show them you are. 

The caveat? You need to believe it yourself.

                            Age 40

FAFO

A lot of people still don't comprehend how tariffs work and find out the hard way when they realize even things manufactured in the US still use parts and raw materials subject to tariffs.

A Google search of how tariffs work would have woken them up a lot sooner. Not to mention that trusting a businessman who has had so many bankruptcies should have set off some basic alarm bells...