January 14th, 2008

Happy New Year Everyone.....geez, what a hangover - it's already 2 weeks into the new year, and I'm just getting back to posting!

Actually, I blame my lack of activity on being unsure of how to proceed.  I didn't want to post a bunch of fluff on here without getting to some serious issues that I did have to tackle over the holidays.  As some of you may know, I've had a considerable amount of distress about some of my old friendships, and even my last relationship.  Originally, this site was to detail my transition progress and be a place where I could express my feelings about it.  Perhaps it's time for that to change.  I posted a blog about a month ago, expressing my reaction to some communications I'd had with some of my friends.  I felt I'd really tamed down my feelings before writing that blog so that I didn't come off  unfair to them yet be able to talk about how it all made me feel.  Basically, a few friends were having issues with my transition.  They didn't see it as a positive thing in my life, yet still care about me.  The result of a few emails was that I was very upset with what they had to say, and expressed those feelings in my blog.  My friends however, were apparently just as distressed about the situation between us, and certainly didn't agree with my assessment of them.  In the spirit of the season they called me up to meet.  At first it seemed we were just getting together to try and be somewhat social and see if we can at least get to a point where we were comfortable with each other.  I was very nervous and worried about what would happen at this get together.  But it started out pleasant enough, and we started off with the usual small talk.  As it turned out, a few more of our mutual friends joined in and we actually had a small crowd getting together   About the time I was breathing a sigh of relief that the night was not going to turn out to be a debacle, my friends said they wanted to clear the air about a few things and we took a separate table.

Ok, so here's where I should perhaps change how I write this stuff.  Just getting this much down had involved a few re-writes and many sentences being erased, etc.... as I'm trying to find the best way to approach this.  I suppose it would help if I knew where I was going with all this.  So back to the concept that perhaps I change the focus of this site a bit.  I still think it's a useful site for those who know me and would like to keep up with the basic progress.  I hope other trans people find my experiences useful as well.  Now, I had been operating under the assumption that transition involves more than physical changes, so things that happened in my life as a result of them were worthy of being discussed here.  Perhaps it's not necessary for me to discuss as much of my personal life as I have been.  I've developed a great support circle of friends and I rely on them to help me deal with issues than what I might derive from expressing my thoughts here.  Maybe that cuts short some issues that other trans people might want to know about.  So if there are others out there, that would like to know more about how transitioning affected my life, that I haven't already shared here, I think it would be better to email me directly and ask.

In the future, I plan on only posting physical changes and happy thoughts (I know, boring).  Ok, maybe I'll vent out against bad things that might happen, but if it involves a personal relationship of mine, I think it'd be best just to deal directly with those people.

Oh, you still want to know what happened when my friends and I sat down to talk?  Well, we wrangled with each other for a bit, shed some tears (Ok, I did anyway - they're guys and probably didn't need to cry) and ended up finding a way that we can continue to be friends in each others lives.  Exactly how that will work I don't know, and it will evolve over time.  But it won't likely be discussed here, unless there's a darn good reason to mention it.

With this out of the way for now, I do plan to keep blogging, but not likely more than every week or two.  Let's face it, I'm not THAT interesting ;)