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Messages - Vector

Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 1765
1
General Discussion / Re: Flight of the Twelve Behemoths 2024
« on: February 18, 2024, 08:41:35 pm »
*inhale* HOLY SHIT I'M OFFICIALLY MIDDLE-AGED! Here's last year's post:

Spoiler: Commentary by 2023 Vector (click to show/hide)

I think I'm going to need more time to figure out a full list. I know that these four points are on it:

1. Try for 8 - 12 opportunities that seem uncertain.
2. Earn my driver's license.
3. Participate in the Hot Fresh Reading Challenge.
4. Participate in and document Full Moon Teas throughout 2024.

Looking at last year's goals, a few of the points can be folded into some large projects that I'm working on:
- Unfucking my life post-pandemic, post-no longer being an unstable 20-something, and post-escaping my family. Time to be a real adult.
- Doing the "buying stuff and crying about hair" part of my gender transition.
- "Grad" "school." Just... grad school.

There's some categories of my life that I've never been able to make real progress with--or that are suddenly more relevant in this chapter of my life--that I really want to have some firm growth on before 35:
- Publications, speaking at and attending conferences, learning the responsibilities and habits of a public intellectual (or whatever).
- Working on relationships, whether friendship, found-familial, romantic, or otherwise. There's a kind of "learning how to live life as an uncloseted gay" thing that I need to learn how to do.
- Learn more about how to make and appreciate artwork in various mediums. This is my gift to myself for surviving.

I do need to continue working on my health but I'm not sure about keeping it as a Behemoth. My physical health is mostly "fine" now except for all of the usual ramifications of having had uncertain healthcare access due to being trans, and the added burden of side effects from pretty severe PTSD.

So I'm going through 5 or 6 medical specialists I've been referred to right now trying to fix things, making sure I get enough sleep, improving my diet, and a bunch of stuff like that. I paid for a martial arts course this quarter but haven't attended it at all while I got onboarding paperwork and my HRT sorted out. I guess that's the next step.

I'll be back in a month-ish to check in on Behemoths 1 through 4 and see if it's gotten any easier to tease proper Behemoths out of those other projects.

2
General Discussion / Re: LGBTQ+ Thread
« on: February 18, 2024, 08:10:34 pm »
Started on a T microdose. I had a hell of a weepy and anxious first month while I tried to figure out if I should be on:

  • zero gel
  • "one" gel [standard nonbinary transmasc dose]
  • "one and a half" gel
  • "two" gel [standard trans male dose]

Anyway it turns out that on "one" gel I eat and on the other amounts I don't, so I'm practicing acceptance of sloooooow change and leaning in for the long haul.

Among other things I unfortunately learned after accessing medical treatment, I'm genderfluid and rotate between various genders, preferred sexual interests, and expressions. I say "unfortunately" because I still mostly go by "they" but I suddenly unlocked both my inner scruffy masc butch and my inner high femme (and everything in-between) :P

I was worried I was gonna need a whole lot of surgery but after one month my chest is receding enough that I can get away with skipping the binder on some days, I'm pretty committed to and settled into at least the hormonal part of the transition, AND I can usually redirect my brain to think about things other than gender dysphoria when that flares up. We'll see what happens next but I feel pretty good about not making any further moves for the next two or three years.

Quote from: MrRoboto75 on August 18, 2023, 01:43:15 pm
You'd think a game about pawns becoming queens would be more accepting.

Also, this is a great quote.

3
General Discussion / Re: 2024 Hot Fresh Books Thread
« on: February 18, 2024, 07:44:06 pm »
It is fucking hog-wild reading my impressions from last January. Holy shit. I wasn't sure I was going to participate in the challenges this year because I dropped off pretty quickly, but reading my comments from the 2023 thread clarifies how much I've changed. I think it's worth it to start for that establishment of a benchmark alone.

Spoiler: Challenge Statement from 2023 Vec (click to show/hide)
I have very thoroughly heaved myself out of the Nash Equilibrium referenced at the end almost by accident (see 2023 Behemoths Thread if you're curious for some reason). Anyway, I've sufficiently diversified my reading and viewing and the quota-system is over. The new plan is to just keep track of things as I finish them and write a blurb about particularly interesting entries here and there.

So far the only book I've finished in 2024 is... (drumroll)

Stone Butch Blues - Leslie Feinberg

4
General Discussion / Re: Flight of the Twelve Behemoths 2023
« on: February 18, 2024, 07:13:01 pm »
I broke two leases on the way to finding trans-safe housing; got treated for long COVID; kicked all of my shitty friends out of my life; started the process of changing advisors; taught a class of 1st- and 2nd-graders for the first time; escaped from my parents, who had been using police to control me for much of my adult life, and forced them to give back the earnings they had coerced me into forking over; learned and am starting to cope with the fact that I have a new-to-me and exciting mental illness; joined an online commune for trans people; started participating in a Coyote and Crow table; and started a medical and social transition.

(turns out that I'm both nonbinary AND gender-fluid, and that I need to be on about half of a cisgender male dose of testosterone or my brain and body don't fricking work.)

I am back at work, am finally getting access to deferred medical care I have needed for decades through my endocrinologist, and also enrolled in my first art class this January :)

New thread here.

5
General Discussion / Flight of the Twelve Behemoths 2024
« on: February 18, 2024, 07:04:17 pm »
Every year I think of twelve avenues of focus that I want to use to facilitate growth. These can be New Year's Resolutions; they can be bucket list items you're almost ready to cross off; they can be career-related; personal; profound; small; pointless; silly.

I'll put an example in my next post, but this is how it works:
- Spend some time thinking of 12 things you want to attempt in 2023.
-----> In practice it helps to have your goals be concrete enough to determine whether you have succeeded.
-----> Think carefully about whether your goals are, at the least, small enough to start working on.
- Write your 12 things in a list format in this thread.
- Post updates as you work on and complete goals.

If you wanna do a fractional-Behemoth, that is between 1 and 12 goals you intend to regularly check in on, that's also fine. Done is better than perfect. More importantly, everyone has bumps and surprises in their life. There are some things that we will never achieve, and that's okay. The goal is to struggle, together, for a year.

You can see last year's thread here.

6
General Discussion / Re: AmeriPol thread
« on: August 09, 2023, 02:09:05 pm »
I appreciate the boost, Rolan, thank you.

7
General Discussion / Re: AmeriPol thread
« on: August 02, 2023, 11:26:12 am »
Quote from: Frumple on August 02, 2023, 05:06:50 am
But yeah, hopefully that was just corporate brainrot of some sort instead of anything legislation related.

Unfortunately they explicitly said that nuking the forums was because new legislation means they would have to do much closer moderation of the chats, and they can't afford it. We won't be able to access old logs either, of course.

(I think it could still just be corporate brainrot, to be clear. But it is an unusual, sudden, and aggressive move for a very small corp)

8
General Discussion / Re: AmeriPol thread
« on: August 02, 2023, 01:33:32 am »
I'm concerned about KOSA (particularly the broad-spectrum powers regarding defining what types of content are harmful to minors). We could be looking at a very different internet soon in terms of adults being able to access needed information freely and with reasonable expectations of privacy.


This suddenly came up for me in a visceral way because the Habitica app, which I use to help keep track of tasks and manage my garbage mental health, is shutting down all of its forum-like features, AKA "guilds," in the next week. Guilds are themed chats which may be private or public. In particular I'm losing access to a private trauma support group and match services for the remaining group chat feature, the "party," will now be randomized. Guilds may have organized chats between thousands of people, whereas my party has 8 members.

(Posting volume in Guilds is generally pretty low. There are relatively few posters and many, many readers).

I take issue with the changes I've mentioned because one of the things I try to avoid online is private or even semi-private chats with minors, because I am not cisgender as you know, and it is better not to have any ambiguity as to what has been discussed. In particular, my "party" has no minors in it, and all of the adults were recruited from a left-leaning guild and are sympathetic to trans people. I am not really willing to go through a randomized matching process in the current political situation.

I am especially annoyed because my Habitica social circle has zero overlap with any of my other online or meatspace identities, which actually really helped when it came to the trauma management. It was private and I could say whatever embarrassing thing I needed to and get support. I don't want to just move the guild feature over to Discord, for example. I really wanted it to be fully detached from all my other things.


Additionally, this year a psychiatrist in California ghosted me during intake for trauma-focused group therapy after I divulged my gender identity. Unfortunately that gender identity is very much bound up with the types of events and the sometimes atypical way in which I've reacted to them, so mentioning it was necessary for my care and not really optional. Online support has been really helpful for the past few years and it feels like it's under threat right now.

I don't know what to say. I'm trying not to let my feelings run away with me, but this situation over at Habitica came very out of left field for me, and I'm hoping it's not just the tip of the iceberg in terms of sudden and drastic KOSA-related changes.

9
General Discussion / Re: LGBTQ+ Thread
« on: June 12, 2023, 11:55:23 pm »
I'm not planning a medical transition (e.g. hormones) at the moment but I'm changing many of the things you do to keep cis women looking cis and uh... yeah I have felt similarly :P

10
General Discussion / Re: AmeriPol thread
« on: June 11, 2023, 08:25:06 pm »
I live in California, in a little blue area surrounded by a bunch of red. There's a big push at the moment to get my community to stop accepting trans people anymore. :)

11
General Discussion / Re: AmeriPol thread
« on: June 10, 2023, 10:47:56 pm »
A useful Twitter thread on the current situation for trans people in the United States.

Please do me a favor and read it. I'm stressed out of my mind right now with the effort to find trans-friendly housing locally, which seems to be basically... unavailable. There was a recent violent attack outside of a school board meeting in LA, and apparently there have been neo-Nazis demonstrating outside of Disney World.

Son of a bitch!!

12
General Discussion / Re: LGBTQ+ Thread
« on: June 01, 2023, 12:28:55 am »
HAPPY PRIDE MONTH AND A MUCH RIOT TO ALL

13
General Discussion / Re: LGBTQ+ Thread
« on: May 30, 2023, 12:13:47 pm »
Went and visited some members of my mother's family alone (i.e. without my parents) for the first time. I've only been out to my lesbian cousin, and this time I came out to her mother, my aunt.

It went well, she was kind to me ... ... ... she packed my lunch for the train in her deceased son's old lunchbox.

14
General Discussion / Re: LGBTQ+ Thread
« on: May 27, 2023, 02:05:55 am »
This thread is for LGBTQ+ people to find each other and discuss whatever comes up, not for non-community members to come in and fight back and forth over and over and over again about what our legal and social rights should be. I am sorry but I know you are all very interested in the trans femme sport problem. I don't give a shit anymore.

Do you not notice how with each of these blowups the LGBTQ+ forumites basically leave the thread and stop discussing? I'm not talking about myself--I'm an idiot who is willing to keep wading back in. But all other discussion ceases during each of these conflicts. You could learn from us and potentially change your perspective, but instead you decide that beating the same old dead horse on our front porch is more important.

Pride month is going to start in a couple of days. Consider the possibility of being better allies by, at the very least, hosting your shitty fight in its own dedicated thread. Don't use the cover of our community space to hide your political intentions.

15
General Discussion / Re: AmeriPol thread
« on: May 26, 2023, 02:14:22 pm »
I don't care that much who wins as long as Meatball Ron loses

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