Something Trans

Interesting title.  I just thought I should write about something trans today.  After all it's a part of who I am.  It's a part of my journey.  I am transgender.  I know some people are reluctant to use that word, and honestly I was that way for a long time.  I was reluctant to think of myself as transsexual.

Sometimes it's important to look back where I have come from and see the path I have taken to get to this place.  I have had my surgery.  And let me say that "this side of the fence", this side of surgery is different from what I expected.

There are the little things that I wasn't expecting ... like having a vagina is a little messy.  So much easier just being able to "shake" the little guy down there when I was done.  Now it's really hard to be clean and dry.

Dilating is interesting too.  I have a confession to make there.  I haven't been dilating as much as I should.  Eeek.  I dilate once a day for about 30 minutes, but I am meant to be doing that morning and night.  I don't do it in the morning.  I find it nearly impossible to have the energy to get up early in the morning to do that when my energy levels have been so depleted from the surgery.

And that is probably the biggest thing I have had to get used to.  Having the surgery for me was like having glandular fever all over again.  I have seriously not had the energy I was expecting.  My GP told me that I would probably feel that way for 6 months, and she could very well be right.  It's almost 4 months, and I am still feeling rather tired.

On the up side, I love my life now.  I can't say that enough times.  I never, ever thought that I would get to have these experiences.  I am forever thankful for that.  I love being me.  I love being seen for being me.  And I don't miss wearing a mask.  I Love Being Me!!!  :-)

In The Moment

Being in the present moment.  OMG I struggle with this.  And to be honest, I never had much of an understanding how important it is to be present.  It's where we live though.  I have list of things that I need to achieve, and until I do, I have essentially held myself to ransom.  I need to let my attachment to my goals go, and focus and be attached to the process and journey.

We had sizzler for lunch today with the boys.  Another way to share something special with them.  It's nice to get out like that as a family and do that.

As we attempt to understand ourselves and our struggles with life's endeavours, we may find peace in the observation of a flower. Ask yourself: At what point in a flower's life, from seed to full bloom does it reach perfection? 

The Practicing Mind by Thomas M. Sterner

Transition has a way of holding out this idea of what it means to be perfect in front of us.  Well to be perfectly honest, life, not just transition, does that.  I have transitioned, and I have had surgery.  But now what?  What next?  An interesting question.  Life is the journey and it's a daily step by step journey.  Like even right now, I am writing this blog.  That is my process at this very moment.  I desire to not let my mind wander to the future and what I hope to achieve out of life, or the future, or this month, or this year, or today.  Because right now I am achieving my goal of writing a blog.  It will never be finished.  It is a work in progress always.

Enjoying the Journey

I think the universe is telling me a the moment to "enjoy the journey".  That's how it feels.  I just purchased "The Practicing Mind" which is an interesting read so far.  Basically it talks about not making the product my goal, but the process, "the practice" of getting to that place the goal.  Which is interesting.  I guess that means that the goal is the discipline of practicing over the final product.  When we look at the product as the goal we sometimes find the journey there to be a nuisance.  And then with that feeling on board, we struggle to make the journey.  Interesting.  I can totally relate to that.

It's a Saturday.  We took the boys to Carindale today to spend their "christmas money".  Apart from that we have been home all day.  It hasn't felt like a saturday.  I guess that is because it is christmas holidays.

I have been really enjoying playing guitar of late.  And hopefully I am beginning to enjoy the journey.  I have been practicing with the JS-10 Eband device which is amazing.  Makes practicing easy ... lots of different styles and backing tracks that I can "dial in" and just start playing over.  It seems to be helping me develop my ear which is good.

I'm also looking at possibly working through some of Ted Greene's "Modern Chord Progressions".  It's an incredibly intense book.  I have wondered how I should even work through it.  I think, I should look at it like the Bible.  Funny I know.  But if I am to internalise the music and ideas, I need to take them as small bite sized pieces.  It's not about playing all the different chord progressions one after another.  It's about letting one chord progression get into my head.

My Value System

We had a lovely catch up today with Jess.  We had previously caught up for her birthday in August just before my surgery date.  It was so lovely catching up and touching base with each other.  I asked Giselle later if that's "girl talk" and "how did I do?"  Funny question, I guess.  Probably highlights the fact that I am never over confident about that kind of thing.

I am really enjoying Life Coaching with Anthony Venn Brown.  It's been amazing.  This week, I had to identify my values and how they fit together, as in what is the priorities of my value system.  Which is a challenging process.  I think I have my value system as I believe it to be.  My top 12 values in order would be:

Love
Equality
Kindness
Connection
Respect
Authenticity
Creativity
Growth
Purpose
Organisation
Empathy
Balance

I'm very intrigued as to what we will do with that.  What is interesting is that these values are almost hardwired in me.  They represent the values that I carry.  They aren't by any means what I would expect someone else to value, but these are my values - I guess these are my "religion" or my "spirituality", my "code".

Learning About Myself

I am learning things about myself as I work through this Life Coaching Program.  One of the things I have learned is that it is more important and valuable for me to understand who I am than it is for me to place the burden of responsibility for figuring that out on someone else.  I have hoped for so long to be "discovered".  And what I mean by that is that I hope that someone will see the potential in me, and ultimately that discovery would open doors for me.  This is backwards though, I have come to realise.  I mean it sounds backwards when I verbalise it.  I guess I haven't ever verbalised it before.

I am discovering that my desire for a possible "change of career" is more based in the belief that I have "run my race" with respect to Technology and I have little left in me to contribute.  While there may actually be more rewarding experiences for me "out there", this is not a good enough reason to leave technology.  I truly don't know how many days, months, or years I have left in technology.  I do know, however, that I am a valuable asset with very diverse experience.

I need to plan more.  That's something else I am discovering.  I am not sure exactly how I will do that, but I know that I must do that.  It's not enough to have a couple of steps planned out.  I want to know where I want to go.  I want to know what that destination looks like.  It's no longer enough to know the next few steps.  I want direction.  And I want a destination.

While I consider that there is some aspect of a "calling" on my life, a greater purpose, I am wary that I would use this to "avoid the difficult and painful things of life".  It's all together entirely possibly that my desire to go into some form of ministry years ago was a subconscious mechanism to "avoid" dealing with my gender identity disorder.  

I am loving what I am discovering about myself.  And that is probably my next realisation.  In the program that I am working through, I am to understand that I have the answers to my own questions.  My life coach, Anthony, is to lead me in my discovery of those answers, not to give me those answers. Like I shared, that's something that is second nature to me:  I seem to find it easy to defer to others.

Transform

It’s interesting for me to take a step back and look at my process.  I have a fear of asking for help.  I need to ask for help, but more often than not, I’m afraid of a few things.  One, I am afraid of asking the wrong questions.  Two, I am afraid of asking the wrong people. 

I think what that means is I am afraid of failure.  But in the process I have made myself unwilling to ask others for help for fear of failure.  There have been times in my life where I have “made a mess” as it work as I was working a process only to have that process evolve into something that does work.  And I love that feeling.  I love feeling accomplished.  Of getting my hands dirty and making something out of the “mess” as it were.  But I’m initially afraid of that “dirt”.  So what do I do?  How do I “step out” and make that mess while dealing with my own fears of failure? 

I also feel like there are times in my life where I really get “bogged down” in issues that just never seem to get resolved.  I’m not sure what that is about.  I think another thing that I fear is “momentum”.  When I have momentum with good habits, I feel like I can face a lot of different things and just “work it out”.  But when I lack momentum, my motivation is not far behind. 

I would like things to change in my life.  I would like to transform in this next year.  Perhaps that will be my word for next year:  Transform.  I get that is somewhat ironic because I have done a lot of that lately.  This would be different though.  This would be about changes to not just me in my identity, but changes to me.  After all, I’m not sure that I have really actually changed much except my outer “skin”.  I want to change the inside which is a lot harder.

Life Coaching

I have started a Life Coaching Engagement with Anthony Venn Brown.  I first read his book "A Life of UnLearning" in 2005 I believe.  Reading that book really inspired me to make decisions to start on this journey.  I had up until that point made a lot of decisions both to do this and then not to do it.  Somehow I always ended up in the same place of having done nothing and very miserable.

I love where I am at right now.  I have had the surgery and I am beginning to feel really good about myself.  I don't always like every picture I see of myself, and I don't always like the image in the mirror that I see.  But it's a lot less than it used to be.  And at least now I get to wear pretty clothes!!  :)  Not lost on me.

So, back to Life Coaching.  One of the habits I am trying to establish is to blog / journal more frequently.  I used to be more involved in journaling in years gone by.  I don't know what it was that stopped me.  I think it was that I used to love the "feedback" I got when I used to write on mydeardiary.com . I loved that site, and I loved the "connections" that I made there.

One thing I have realised though is that I need to journal for me primarily.  Journaling for other people can be daunting when the thoughts in my head are muddled.  I want to make them into something meaningful, but I just can't find my way through it.

So I'm going to try and not "promote" this journal now for fear that I might start writing for other people.  These words on this page are here primarily for me.  That's how I want this to be.

Kindness

Kindness.  As a spiritual person, I want to embrace this in my life and share it with others.  And I have a person who I know needs it.  Dad.  Yes, I get that I wrote about him yesterday and how much he is frustrating me at the moment.  For the longest time in my life I have felt like so much about him is a “lost cause”.  Not that he has been helpless, but I acknowledge that I don’t have what he needs ultimately.  I’m not even really sure what that is.  I couldn’t say that all he needs is a relationship with God, because I am not sure exactly what God would do for him.  He is an atheist and seems very afraid of all of that.  He surrounds himself with prickly ways, and it’s difficult to get close to him.  I wonder who is beyond all those facades though.

The question is how do embrace kindness into my life.  Colossians suggests that I should clothe myself in kindness, which is kind of ironic, because it is my clothing and my outward appearance that I feel I have to hide from dad.  I have hid who I am internally from him for years.  When I first arrived back in Australia in 1989, he told me that he didn’t want to see any evidence of my Christianity around the house which I get is fair enough.  It’s difficult and challenging to share with him though when he is so anti spiritual.  And he can’t be told.  He is not ever in a position of needing to learn, or of being a learner.  Not in ways like that.  It’s like he has it in his mind that he should be teaching me.  I guess what I would like from him is a relationship of equality.

I need to overcome my fear of being vulnerable with him.  I am not sure what that would take though.  God, I am lost in this.  Do you have a way for me to move in this? 

My Dad

I don't really know what to say.  I feel quite frustrated at the moment, and wonder if this is a good time to record my thoughts as it were.  I'm frustrated because I am sitting in my lounge room and my dad is sitting across from me.  What's frustrating about that?  He fails to get me.  I don't know if it is that he doesn't want to get me or just can't get me.  I really don't know.  I am assuming it it that he doesn't want to get me.  Otherwise he would be trying.  He would surely be showing signs of trying.  Or at the very least ask me.  Ask for help.  I go out of my way for him to get this slowly, but it's like he doesn't want to get it.  So what do I do?  I don't really know.

I don't seem to have much in common with this person.  And it's not like I wish I did, because I don't.  Not really.  He has been generous with me in the past.  And I should remember that.  But does all of that get undone when someone fails to accept who you really are when you tell them who you really are?

I am going to spend some time in the next few days to figure out what it is about him that really annoys me.  Is there some thing that I am not dealing with here?  I have told him what I am ... where I am coming from.  I just don't get that he doesn't get this.  He shows no signs of getting this.

The Next Stage

I started Life Coaching yesterday with Anthony Venn Brown.  I am already amazed at the changes that i have experienced.  I guess to be honest, I wasn't sure how it would work, or how I would go.  I know that it's early days, but I am excited.

There has been a restructure at work.  It's still working its way out at the moment.  I am to move into the "Consume" space, which essentially means I will be dealing with production issues.  Interestingly enough I have spent a lot of time in my career working in implementation teams.  It will be interesting to see work from this point of view.  I'm not sure how I feel about it to be honest.  I guess I will wait and see.  I have been at RACQ now for over 3 years which makes this the longest I have been at one work place.

Life goes on.  Sometimes I wish there was some way of stopping for a moment.  Kaylee decided to leave us.  She took her own life on November 20th Australian time.  I can understand why she did it, though it's sad.  I just don't understand it.  I have shed tears for her.  But it doesn't seem enough some how.  And I didn't even know her.  Not really.  And yet I think I did.  Her journey and outlook seemed similar to mine.  And so did some of her experiences.  We shared commonalities.  So I did know her.  May she rest in peace.