A Dream Defined (Resolution #7)

I think I got fired today because I'm transgendered. No matter, I was going to quit anyway; they weren't good people. The bad news is that I now don't have a job in Canada, making it harder to get a Visa. (That's why I hadn't quit yet.)

I guess it's no big deal cause the job I had wouldn't have supported living the lifestyle in VC I wanted, and as fate would have it, I had just prior stumbled upon an alternative path that has the potential to realize my fullest dreams there while also capitalizing on all my previous endeavors.

Moreover, it's a path which could lead toward providing a positive role model, not just for other transgendered persons, but for straight folks as well!

Curious?

• Step one: attend the last WSOP circuit event - conveniently held in the state where I live.
• Step two: play in 4 or 5 events, possibly the main event too (if things go very well).
• Step two and 1/2: win enough money to comfortably buy in the WSOP main event + Rio lodging.
• Step three: play in the WSOP final event
  
• Step three point nine: make the final table
• Step four point one: square up debts
  
• Step four point two: help out friends and family
• Step five: move to Vancouver (after staying in Atlanta for a good spell)
• Step six: compose music, write lyrics, produce music
• Step seven: finish my big ideas.
  

Don't you think a transsexual at the 2008 WSOP final table (and therefore on ESPN2 for the next year) might go a long way toward providing a positive image toward alternative genders? At the very least, it would make people think, and that couldn't be all bad!

Quotes from Blaise Pascal

Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?

In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.

Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.

Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth; give him too much, the same.

There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth.

Human beings must be known to be loved; but Divine beings must be loved to be known.

Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects.

A trifle consoles us, for a trifle distresses us.

All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.

As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.

Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary.

Do you wish people to think well of you? Don't speak well of yourself.

Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason.

Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.

It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have everything one wants.

Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.
Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death.

Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.

Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.

The sensitivity of men to small matters, and their indifference to great ones, indicates a strange inversion.

The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.

Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended are any more themselves.
Blaise Pascal

Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.

We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put something before us to prevent us seeing it.

I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

Airline Rates Rise 1000%

One used to be able to fly all over Europe for one pound ($2), sometimes just 49 pence ($1). Now though it seems, Ryan air has done what it wanted to do and has moved on to stage two of it's business: ten pound ($20) flights all over Europe.

Still, it's better than the $200 I have to pay to travel around my region in the US.

(Don't believe me? Visit http://ryanair.com!

Always a traveller...

I just read my old travel diary from when I was 17 and jetting solo to France to spend some time with people I never met. Seemed like a good idea at the time (and in retrospect), but I was too American... I couldn't appreciate where I was and what I was doing, and the effect of being immersed in history and culture while at the same time, not really knowing much about it... well, the effects (along with culture shock) blew away my little mind.

I didn't get on well with my friends (they were all older and did two things: go to the beach (in Normandy) or go to the bar. Sounds ideal, but I was allergic to the Sun, and back then, very, very square. I didn't smoke, drink, or do any drugs at all, (LOL, not that you'd know it now!) and I was so young and high on life, I didn't much care to be around that kind of scene.

So, I ended up staying alone in Paris in a one-star hotel until I ran out of money, then spent a few nights at the airport until I could get a flight home on standby. I nearly got arrested for - I kid you not - playing a synthesizer (through headphones) in the restrooms! Turns out, I was stealing electricity. Who knew?

Looking back on the diary, I now realize that I'm a traveler. I mean, 15 moves in 15 years? And so I begin to look forward to the next trip. As I am (once again) on the verge of being homeless and jobless, I can't help but wonder... where to next?

You know, Eastern thought affirms that we are all travelers, and that the path of constant self-cultivation is a lonely one; yet one that we all must inevitably take if we are to derive true meaning from this existence. The only constant is change, right?

To have come so far... to have so far to go... to still be alone... will I ever cease yearning for stability and companionship? If so, will it be because I've met my soulmate, or because I've found inner peace?

And what does that make me anyway... a traveler who brings with her (in her purse) every important memory of her life? Imagine that... only the clothes on your back, yet contained on a small chip, in vivid detail, every sight, sound, thought, event, award, movie, song you've ever wanted to keep.

Is that the exemplar case of not being held down by material possessions, or is it technology-enabled self delusion, substituting material possessions with digital ones, and if so... does that matter, since it all fits in your pocket?

And what then, if such chip were lost... wouldn't that feel like losing a large part of yourself? (Yes, it would! Imagine losing everything in your home to a fire!) But... I can help to wonder, which inhibits growth more... having possessions or being without? From my experience, the things you own end up owning you... but is that because of their physical mass, or the psychological addictions they create?

My guess is that the physical mass sucks you in, weighs you down like gravity. Since I'm converting everything physical to digital over the next month, I'll keep you posted on the progress!

Not So Perfect

Since Jr. High, I've gotten the highest grade in every class I've taken except for one in high school, two at Michigan State, and two at Georgia Tech. Most people are impressed with the perfect record during my undergraduate years at Ball State, but I want to talk about the imperfect classes.

I got a 'B' in highschool for gym class my senior year. My teacher was Bill Harrell, the head coach of the Men's basketball team... you know, the one immortialized in the movie Hoosiers? He took our school to it's eighth state championship the year before and had, in my view, a disdain toward all non-basketball sports. He lowered my grade because I was doing 'dangerous dives' during our week of swimming. (We played basketball the other 20 weeks.) Although a backward, 1-1/2 sommersault 1-1/2 twists might look like a dangerous dive, I was just practicing my list of dives for the upcoming sectionals.

At Michigan State, I took a class on computer vision that thumped me hard, partly because the class required a knowledge of mathematics that at the time, was beyond majik to me. The follow-up course was more managable, but the math was still just as majikal.

That same year, I took a course on algorithmic graph theory, a real beast of a class, for it taught how to think like a generalized mathematical proof. I was more proud of not failing that class than I was of acing the others!

At Georiga Tech, my first class was one on computer language design. I hadn't yet learned to think in language grammars (word math) and that class was downright painful. The 2nd most painful class ever.

The most painful was an advanced mathematics course at Tech. After two straight weeks of not understanding even 5 minutes of any lecture, I dropped that class like Little Boy. It was an entire course on just one part of one theorem of some mathematician from the 1800s! I must have been on crack when I signed up for it initially.

So what did I learn?

>twirling hair<

Math is hard!

Saved By Simcoe (Resolution #2)

Today was another HUGE milestone day! I'm so excited, for although I am only taking one step, it is a large leap forward on my path to womanhood! Taking hormones can be viewed as just another sign of my commitment, but for me, today, it's so much more. Not only does it provide my body with 'vitamins' that I have been missing, but it brings me closer to female and further from male. I'm going to grow breasts... my body fat will redistribute... my skin will become softer... my hair will become fuller! Moreover, just being able to get a prescription for hormones has been a difficult endeavor, and I'm now indebted to the tranny who came before me through Indy. Let me explain.

While visiting my trannie friends in the SF Bay Area, they gave me enough estrogen and testosterone blockers for 2 1/2 months. (In pill form, they had since moved on to patch form and no longer needed the pills.) The original plan was to take the pills (once I got my life stable and in at least a not unsupportive environment) for a month, and if after that time I still felt like I wanted them, that I still wanted to become female, then I would continue taking them and during the second month, find a doctor who would then prescribe me the proper meds/blood tests, etc.

Well, I started on Oct. 4, 2007, just over two months ago. Unfortunately, I was turned down for even a visit by every endocrinologist around town. Turns out a transgendered person can't just go to a doctor for things sie needs, sie has to first get a psychiatric evaluation FOR TWO YEARS that says you're not insane, because, evidently, you must be insane if you want to change your gender. Oh no! :-/

I was down to my last week's worth of pills and did NOT want to interrupt my transformation, so you can imagine it was a stressful time!

Well, I stumbled across a tranny support board where someone ahead of me on the path recommended a doctor down in Indy that was 'sympathetic' to transgendered needs. Figuring that I'd at least get a referral to a shrink (who also won't accept trans visits w/o a doctor referral) I was at least happy to be making some forward progress.

Imagine my surprise, relief, and and joy when, after consulting with me for nearly an hour, he decided to prescribe hormones! Oh blessed man! He even offered to prescribe anti-depressants (cause most in my position are depressed, and if you didn't notice by earlier posts, I was, but I declined for a few reasons. Why? Well, that's another post. :)

So, I went from despair at the though of regressing, to bliss with a bone-fide prescription (with blood work tests scheduled!) all in one day! YAY!

Funny enough, it turns out, once you have the papers, you can go to Wal-Mart to get the drugs. I didn't (boycotting since 2001), but I did go to Target. It's interesting that the meds for something so exotic (changing your sex) can be gotten at places so common, even in small town America! It's because menopausal women take the estrogen, and the testosterone blockers are useful for certain kinds of prostate cancer. Who knew?

But that's how I feel... like I'm finally freeing my body from the cancer of testosterone... and she feels GREAT!

A Legal Sense of Humour (Resolution #3)

I filled all the paperwork at the courthouse today to legally change my name. YAY! This was a huge milestone!!!

Turns out, there's a lot you have to do (and a lot you have to pay!) In addition to lots of paperwork for the court, you also have to put an ad in the local paper for three weeks announcing the change, and you have to get the fact that you did so certified by the newspaper. You also have to pay the paper for the honor.

But, I did, and I strutted myself down to the paper from the courthouse in my stiletto boots and back again, and I was given a court date to appear in court.

Previously, my longest supporting friend asked me what my new birthday would be, and I didn't know what she meant. I had only just recently picked a new name!

When I got my court date, it was obvious what my new birthday would be... April 1st, 2008!

It seems life (and the court system) is not without a sense of humor!