Unlike other pages all content on this webpage is NOT creative commons, unless otherwise specified.This is mainly due to this section containing images of myself and others that I would not want to give up all rights to. Thx for understanding :) Also I free write most of this in my coding program so there will be spelling mistakes.
Working on a few different projects right now and I am excited about them all. I really want to finish them up before I need to return to both grad school and teaching. I am currently focusing a lot on Engles' concept of social murder, especially its implcations beyond just class (Engles' orginal intent). The framework however has very interesting implications around gender, colonialism, racism, ect. While I am currently not working on this I think connecting it to data center development (especially focusing on the intersection of class and race) could be very important. But the reason I am studying the concept currently is because I am working on an application of it to the American trans experience, inspired by my state's decision to remove coverage for GAC in the state employee insurance. So I am currently working on that collection of essays, 2 literary analyses (might scrap one of them), a new poem, and a zine explaining (not advising) the current process to change your name and gender marker in my state as I have just personally finished up the process.
Things are good now even if I have been kinda all over the place. Had a great vacation with family and my partner! We got to go to a fancy pants resturant called Vern's and while I felt kinda out of place it was a really good experience. It required me to change how I understood fine dining as an art. It was something I had respect for but never really tried. I almost had this expectation that tasting the food would be some never before felt heodonistic pleasure. After my first bite it was.. good. Really good. But the tast alone, while pleasant and complex was not life changing. This made me need to pause for a moment. Our culture's push for anti intellectuallism loves to hate fine dining and "modern" (despite most are being critiqued not falling into this category) art. And while I had over come the hatred of art, I had not had a personal experience with fine dining until now. I knew after that bite my knee jerk reaction should be checked. Then I paid more attention to my mouth. I shifted my perspective and experience to be similar to how I read literature or look at art. With my second bite I began noting the tastes and texxtures and engaging with them by asking why? This totally shifted my exxperience and I had a great time with my partner! By the end of the meal I had a similar feeling as walking out of a museam or finishing a novel. I would reccomend, if you ever get the cash or ability to try fine dining; even if you think it is a scam. But make sure to engage with it not as just a meal but also as a piece of art.
here is a picture that my partner took of us outside the resturant.
But if I just had a fun vacation why did I say im kinda all over the place. Well I think that its bc now that I am not in the survival mode of teaching and have a plethora of good fortune right now (finished my zine, got into my masters program, great relationship, working on new projects) it has allowed my brain to dredge up old thoughts and memories leading to regrets. Regret really is in my experience one of the least productive emotions. Becuase you can never achive its goals. With sadness you can weep, anger you can make changes, joy you can relish in. But regret doesn't want to be experienced it wants a change and not a current change but for you to change the past. And you just can't do that. I hate how much of my past was tied to struggles and pain and failure that I feel like would be avoided in my current situation. I wish I could do it again but after transitioning after my suicidal ideation was defeated after I started medication for my ADHD. But thats why it is a regret. I cant redo it. And the other side of the emotion is I can only regret the past because I get to be all of these things now. For a long time I thought I would be depressed and struggle with being suicidal and dysphoric until I died either by suicide or a (at the time) lucky accident. But I am so glad I survived to transition to feel life and love again. I just wish I had the opprotunity to do it sooner.
It has been three months but I am back. I have been up to a lot in work and personal creations. It is the first day of summer, my third year of teaching is done. But today, I am miserable. Not fully sure why. It could be that I am out of my ADHD meds, haven't made coffee today, because I burned myself out by the end of the school year, my horrible uber ride yesterday, or maybe its just an off day and I have wasted too much time scrolling.
But I have been working on a solo zine. The zine I previously mentioned here that I was working on has mostly been scrapped. This new one has some elements of that. But with my current job I thought the previous zine would just be too controversial to release. I am already a trans public school teacher in the south and I think that zines essays and final call to action would just be too radical to publish.But some of its themes will still show up in this solo poem zine. It has already been announced on the Southern Scum Collective insta bc I will be publishing it through our collective but It is called "Becoming Is Rebellion." It will print this Monday. I'll also be posting two of the poems I cut from the zine on this website today.
I am kind of just trying to get through today and see if tomorrow is better. I am seeing family and my partner next week and we are traveling to see my aunt in SC so I will need to clean my apartment before then but I know I don't have that in me today. It is one of those odd days to feel bad. I got my test scores back for students and while I find state tests meaningless I know almost all my bosses evaluate me on. My scores were good so at least job wise I should be happy. Summer has started so I have time to relax. I have food and shelter and my hrt so I wish I could get out of this funk.
I have been so tired this week, slept for like 12 hours after work yesterday. But I got my signed peach rings cd today! Saw that they are going on tour but sadly I won't be able to see them (I really want to see a live set).
I have also been working a little on my Zine stuff, also a poem just for fun. I want to get at least one section of the Zine and that poem done by next week. Got a crazy busy week this week, I have all my normal job stuff plus a union meeting on Thursday and maybe a workshop on Saturday. I also want to work on this website more but I have kind of run out of ideas for now.
On the train home, it's raining all around me and I can't stop thinking about how grateful I am for my partner and how much I miss them. Will do a proper post about this weekend later but I just wanted to write about them because my heart is so full it hurts a little.
High above 70, light outside during my morning walk, everything immediately feels normal again.
My heart feels kinda heavy today. That means it's probably time to work on some art. Recently I have been working on a personal zine that's mostly narrative focusing on being trans and accepting that transness. I wanted to work on it because honestly I have been trying to piece my sense of self together since coming out. Before then I had a fractured multifaceted sense of self.I would dissociate pretty frequently bc of dysphoria and depression and it has left me with a very limited memory, especially of anytime before I came out a year and a half ago. This project has partially been trying to reclaim those memories and rearrange my fractured view of the past while forging my current identity. It has been pretty hard to write as it is the most personal thing I have ever written making it also the hardest but I feel very compelled to keep working on it. The largest issue right now is it feels like disjointed mad ramblings. I just did some writing for this and I am struggling because I think my timeline is wrong, but I guess that's the whole bad memory thing. Def need to rewrite the part I just wrote, 100% fucked up the time line.
What an odd morning today. Morning started normal, pepsi zero after getting out of bed (idk why ive been drinking so much pepsi), then breakfast, coffee, print some poems for work, brush teeth, get dressed, feed the bunnies, then leave. But it was my walk to work that was weird. I started to feel the floaty feeling I sometimes get when really dysphoric or depressed, like I'm detethering from my body and the world, but I was neither depressed or particularly dyphoric (nothing beyond my daily, ugh I need to be called Mr for 8 hours). I did my grounding techniques and listened to some music but neither seemed to help. Eventually, despite this, I did get to work. At work, before class, I needed to make some copies and in the copier room I ran into a colleague I have seen before but not talked to in my 3 years teaching here (it's a big school). We had a normal conversation and then right when I went to leave she asked me my pronouns, it caught me a little off guard but I guess I was right yesterday, not to mention she has probably seen me slowly begin to look very different lol. This wasn't part of the odd day and honestly was kinda cool that it happened but it did catch me off guard. On my walk home today I saw two deer, a baby and its mom.
Ugh, I have to clean today and I don't want to. Always hard to spend time cleaning after working all week. My partner is coming over later this week (they live a few hours away) so at least that'll give me some motivation. Once it warms up a little outside I will go take some pictures of my sprouts. For now Imma chug this pepsi zero for caffiene, put on a vinyl, and start cleaning.
Sprouts as promised! Still need to start cleaning lol.
Cleaned a bunch today! Didn't get everything done I wanted to but I think I was setting my expectations too high espc bc last week was very draining. Not excited to go to work tomorrow bc I need to be called my dead name all day and that really drains on me. Although its not like I can even call what im doing boymoding at this point, I have tits and my hair reaches my back lol. Ive been waiting to get my legal name change before fully coming out at work (im out everywhere else) but I keep putting it off bc it takes time, money, and effort ((espc when the courthouse is an hour thirty away using public transit and I don't have a car).
I decided to start working on a website the other day both to take my mind off the state of the world and to get involved with the indie net. Now don't get me wrong I don't want to be oblivious to or misinformed about the state of the world, I still want to keep up with the news and think it is imperative to organize in your communities (I have been organizing with my local nea chapter recently), but I can't imagine the constant 5 second "news" from social media is good for me. Not to mention, even if it wasn't brief, most of it is reposts of reposts from someone who did not read the primary sources, is fearmongering, or is just plain wrong. It's been a bad week in the world and my country, especially with last night's strikes on Iran and the worsening of persecution of trans folk in Kansas but listening to people online who pretend to know what they are talking about so they get ad revenue is something I want to stop in my life.
Shifting to a less serious topic, I have some seeds that are sprouting for my garden. I have tried to grow plants on my low light balcony for the past few years to mixed success, but I feel like this will be the year. Forgot to take pictures and now it is dark out so I will share them tomorrow.
