Onwards.

 Continuing my meandering through my personal bugaboos...

I'm not going to go into a big thing here re-investigating my gender dysphoria, something that still holds me back self image wise, but more so now because of my history of dealing/not dealing with it, than my current state of mind or being. All I will say is that It's one of my core issues of regret and shame, that holds me back if not on a conscious level, definitely as an undermining force in regards to my confidence with meeting someone I might be interested in dating. As well, it's a distraction from "the work" (the work being writing, publishing, making videos, whatever creative enterprises I am involved in.) I often feel like I spend an inordinate amount of time making negative reasons why I can't do the things I'd like to be doing, and my "history" or baggage as it were in this area is the easiest place to go for me.

Where I think I am dealing in a positive light with all this he/she hoohaw is in my writing. A go to topic for many poems, story ideas that I've had, and some of my more successful (to my mind) pieces of writing stem from my obsession (to put it glibly) with lady-ness and my lack thereof. It's also a convenient crisis that makes it easier to withdraw from moving forward in other paths in life, like writing, publishing, or dating, even. It's easy to convince yourself that if you don't know how you want to be perceived, that others will not be able to do the same for you, and then you can just stop moving forward and wallow in your grief at not having the chutzpah to just work it all out into that vague perfection that you have in mind. At least that's my experience.

Unsatisfying as that is, it is the merry-go-round of my life. Right now however I'm trying really hard every day to gain some discipline by either writing, editing, taking &/or editing photos, or some other creative project everyday. Some days, it's a satisfying release, some days like today, right now it's a slog. But I'm trying every day. My fear of failure and not being good enough, etc is still there under the surface and that's fine if you can get yourself to understand that the fear is a place where the work comes out of often. Writing about my "issues" is what keeps me sane. But it also drives me crazy.

So what is all this rambling about?

My plan for my future, upon returning from Japan had been to get some cushy ESL teaching gig, that made me at least closer to the kind of money I made in Tokyo, from which I would set up my own little self publishing business, putting out chapbooks, and eventually actual bound books of poesy and even perhaps a novel or two here and there. I also had planned to dive back into the cross dressing and become more of a Big old Queen than a trans person, trying to "pass" all the time.

But when I found the ESL gigs out of my reach I floundered and hid from the fear of not being able to afford anything. I had to give up my bachelor pad and move in with roomies again (and I still give thanks to Cory & Kathleen for being there for me in this time) and ended up back in the video store game. It took a few years of my gorging myself and getting humongous and hyper tensioned, and hiding behind what I perceived as my hideous body, and lack of ability to earn a decent living. Even paying off my debts and becoming debt free was muted by my actual lack of financial mobilty afterwards. Since paying off my debts I haven't felt any more like a success than I did before. I'm still living paycheque to paycheque.

Recently (this autumn) this had made me almost inconsolably depressed. I saw no way out. No future at all for me as a person who could attract a partner, or someone who could earn enough money to do anything other than stay home and watch tv every night. I was in a black place. Then some few weeks after my birthday in September, I decided I could somehow afford to publish another chapbook. I researched and found blurb.com and a few other tools that I needed and sat down to work on whipping a short manuscript of poems together. I did, and now I have a book for sale, and I'm already brewing up my ideas for my next one.

This is at least for now, the new me. My big plan is to keep churning out short books of poetry via blurb.com, and maybe some photo books, and fiction as well. I plan to send out some stuff for contests, and magazines etc as well, as long as there are no reading fees. I can pay to be published by my own self. If someday a legit publisher offers me some real money I'll take it, but for now I'm doing it myself. I'm scared to death, but that's SNAFU as they say.

Okay that's enough personal blather for the nonce. My next few entries here will hopefully be more in the vein of essays, or reviews of media that I ingest and need to regurgitate with my own half assed or not half assed commentary.