Goodbye to my Old Life

I never thought that things would change. That was really in the nature of my lifestyle, that things were so planned, so predictable that any change was so expected and by that account, gradual, that barring a few breaks and milestones, nothing was ever really different.

All of that is changing, very fast, which in and of itself is almost the most significant part.

I jumped ship mid-semester to move 1000 miles from home. Two months later I am leaving the job I relocated for and moving across states again to live with a man I've known for almost exactly that amount of time, in an apartment I've never been in, in a city I've never been to, with no job lined up whatsoever. Even more haphazard than the last.

I was wont to say that this time, I'm moving to something, not from something; I am no longer running away, but chasing something I want. But those are not as dissimilar as they sound, that or I have been fooling myself. But to be honest, I think I am running from something, here in Denver; loneliness. Spending the summer cooped up in an apartment with me, myself and my medical school applications was not something I was particularly looking forward to; worse, sinking my money into an embarassing and invasive procedure with no source of hugs during the ordeal. I am, perhaps, running away from myself, from the person I am when I am completely alone; morose, unanimated, unmotivated. Even though too much interaction with people can drain me, I need a little to keep me going. Kind of like my fuel-injected motorcycle; too much gas can choke me, but I still need a little. There's a perfect balance. Maybe living with a man that spends half his time on business trips will give me both the companionship and the solitude that I require. But believe that I love him, I don't want him to be away... at least, not because I don't like him. It's just a consequence of my personality, as best I can put it. But I do fear that I will smother him when he gets home. I need outside activities, outside friends. I should take a class, or get a part time job. Just not teaching again, for the love of God. Tutoring was good; high pay on low hours, maybe enough to cover my part of the rent.

I'm really jumping through a lot of topics. I didn't sit down with any particular post in mind, only the idea that it's been a while since I've written, and I'm going through a lot of life changes, and that's usually a good time to write. At least, those are the times you want to read about later. And I happen to find myself with an unexpected period of really nothing to do. I'm going to California tomorrow, probably not for the last time but the last time that I can foresee for any particular purpose for the moment.

I don't think I have the charisma to do what he does. There's no reason to fly me around the world, or even around the country. But maybe there will be. Maybe I can change that. Maybe I will get back into teaching, just at a higher calibur. I think I'd like a Master's Degree in Chemistry. I'd like to teach the thing that was the most difficult for me to learn. Honestly, that makes the most sense. I feel like I'm terrible at teaching math because it always came naturally to me, more or less. How can you help somebody who doesn't understand it, to understand it, if you've always understood it yourself? But that's a post all it's own.

Anyways. I'm graduating with my bachelor's degree, in a science, from a high calibur university. Even if I never accomplish anything higher academically in my life, I will always be able to find work. And while that's a standard that I've never considered, a bar that's always been so beneath me I've never bothered to think about it my eyes have been opened to the realities of the world. I wish that my parents had given me an allowance instead of a credit card, some point of reference for the painfully slow flow of income, how quickly expenses add up. I was always frugal but inevitably with daddy's credit card I learned to spend without any real appreciation for the sum. Now that I've worked a job and paid my rent from it, watching the number flux, I begin to appreciate what everyone else has been talking about, how truly difficult it is to work "for a living." Because it really is "to live." The bottom line has come into focus. My parents had always done that for me and it isn't until the age of 22, almost 23 that I begin to realize that if I were truly on my own, this would be it. Medical school would be a far-off dream, not a round-the-corner reality. But what would be so wrong with that?

I truly believe that I am capable of taking better care of my body than my parents ever did of theirs. Whether or not I will is the pertinent question. Because if I keep good care of myself, I will be young for a very long time, and there's no reason that I have to rush into a decision, or a profession. I only get to live once, and life is not very long, so I always thought that I had to choose right away and get a move on to make my time here on Earth worth anything. But it isn't so. Now more than before or after I am free to wander, free to discover what this big beautiful world is really all about, what my place in it should be. To presume that I know enough to presume that wasting away in medical school for four years, plus residency after that, is my best and highest use now seems folly. Not to say that it would be a waste; I think I would enjoy myself, and I think I would make great contributions after that. But so could someone else, whom, in my displacing, may not figure out to do the things that I would do if I forewent medical school. Fill the gaps.

Anyways. Returning to my original point. My pre-planned life is gone. I am not quite in free fall, not by any realistic standards. I still have a plan, an indefinite plan in which more planning is not immediatley required. I plan that is about to land me in a very comfortable position, realistically. I may find that I enjoy luxury much more than I had ever imagined. I may find that I never want to live without it again. I feel it slightly more likely that after the first week or two, I will find it extremely uncomfortable, and then perhaps I'll get used to it, but I don't think I'll have a problem going back to a more... Spartan lifestyle after that. Though perhaps some could look at my current lifestyle and call it anything but Spartan... it's all about perspective. I'm going off topic again. For the first time in my life, I don't know where I'm going to be in 6 months, and I'm happy about that. I am completely okay with figuring things out. I need to experiment, I need to feel out all my options so that I can be happy with the one that I finally choose.

What if I choose him? What if we choose each other for life? I feel both old and young in the same moment, knowledgeful and ignorant, full of experience and open to new possibilities. Perhaps this is what "prime" is. It would seem almost inappropriate that my adventures in romance would end so early, with him, and yet anything with him cannot be anything but an adventure.

I have never felt so strongly of divine intervention. I am no longer angry or upset about anything that ever happened to me, because it all led to him; any little thing changed would not have resulted in that fateful meeting. In my soft, fluffy free-fall in the spring of 2014, he is by far the best part. And the other parts are pretty fucking good, all said.

I'm not scared. I feel as if I should be, but I'm not. Perhaps this is the second of many spurrious moves across country; perhaps there will be spurrious moves across national borders in my future. I cannot say. But all this is much more in line with the person I always thought I would be. Then again, I can't really remember in this moment, the person I always thought I would be. But I do feel a lot happier. Being a leaf in the wind seems much more fitting. Plans always felt like fetters and chains. Freedom never felt so powerful. Perhaps that just a privileged white American cant on the whole thing, but I will get where I need to be, one way or another, and throw starfishes back into the sea. One way or another I will be an innovator, a leader, and I hope to have someone to stand beside me through all of it. But if not, that's okay too. Being led by the hand is how I got my start, but it doesn't have to be how I finish, or even reach my peak.

Calling All My Shit - I am the Thumbtack

Okay, so that last post was kind of bullshit. Getting my hair cut wrong devastated my confidence and I am barely holding my own shit together, without trying to make waves. I haven't established a good enough reputation to do that. I had the good fortune of making some major screw-ups in my first private-sector job, in a company that I will probably never work for again, in an industry that I will probably never work in again. But I also learned some of my strengths. I learned what I need to become to be a stellar employee (which I am not. Yet.).

But here's something a little bit bizarre, and I feel okay sharing this on this forum. I'm likeable. My coworkers, and quite a few of my students, like me. I don't know that I ever thought I was particularly unlikeable, but there is a level of warmth that I wasn't expecting.

I am also (finally) learning this skill that other people seemed to learn a lot more quickly: networking. With people, with computers, basically any two things that can connect, I'm finally stringing up the lines. Just this past week I put together tutor and tutoring client, because I am a trusted resource, a thumbtack in the corkboard of my industry. I put people together who otherwise never would have found each other. I am also cognizant of the needs of my industry; I take care of my clients before I take care of my friends. I will not create a reputation for bad quality of service. For some reason I am more proud of this accomplishment than I am of many things that have recently been happening in my life; maybe the realization that I really was the best solution to the problem, that this could not have happened so well without me.

It's very possible that I was so successful in this arena because it was all by text and none of the parties involved saw my awful haircut.

There's a certain unwholesome sub-human in my life... not anymore, in my past I should say. People would call on it to provide services, make connections, and when it didn't come through, they would have to solve the problem themselves. And in the process, they would discover that they didn't need it at all. But if this thing had come through, had solved the problem, they would have come to rely on it. They would have called it back again and again; it would have become an invaluable resource, because they would never learn to do these things without it. That's what I'm setting myself up for; to become invaluable. To be the shortcut that my clients always know will get them to where they need to go faster than if they tried it themselves.

I will probably never charge finder's fees to my old clients. I've always said that owed favors are worth more than money. That philosophy is evolving a little bit. I don't think that they will ever owe me favors. But as I strengthen my connections with each of them, I increase my access to their networks. And solid networks are gold. This world runs on money, that's true, but money runs thorugh people; you have to know people, and get along with them, to succeed. They have to trust you. And trust is transferable. The friend of my friend is my friend. My old clients trust the person I refer to them because I say he is trustworthy; their trust in me is transferred to him. And frankly, I originally found him on craigslist; I didn't actually know if he was any good until I tried him out on another client. But they vouched for him, so now I vouch for him. Interestingly, I had first given that substitution to a friend from school; he screwed it up. I will never refer him to a client again.

And that is why I am so worried about screwing up at this job, even though I don't plan on coming back. These people can still vouch for me. Whether or not they do is based on a relatively short window of interaction. I have two months. But the last guy, the guy who screwed up, he only had a week. Maybe it was just a bad week. Doesn't matter. The consequences are there.

Moral of the story; there is never an excuse for low performance, especially when you only have a brief period to make or break your image with a group of people. I'm not a particularly high-influence person. But when a client needed help, and an industry-acquiantance needed a job, I was able to put them together. For those two people, I AM important. Making a good impression to me can be the difference between getting much-needed help and not, getting much-needed work and not. I am a thumbtack, holding together many bits of colored string. In my line of work, in my industry, people want to be connected to me. That gives me power. The more I use it to do a good job, the more power I will have, because the more people will rely on me.

This probably sounds bizarre, and I want to clarify that while I may be a bit power-hungry, I am using it to the utmost good. I have no interest in using my power to harm people. Insure my own security? Maybe. Forward my goals? Absolutely. But what are my goals? The betterment of the lot of all mankind. That goal can be dangerous, depending on who you ask, but I think, so far, I'm a pretty benevolent force in the universe. People want powerful benevolent forces on their side. Isn't that why we pray to God?

The Next Big Adventure: A job change

Gone are the days of taking the job I'm qualified for. Now is the day where I put on my balls and I say "I can do that job. I don't know how to yet, but I'll learn it real quick, and do it better than anyone else on your list there." Gone are the days of limiting my options to the jobs I'm familiar with, that I've been explicitly trained for by my classes. Gone are the days of including high school accomplishments on my resume. The phrases "I can't" and "I'm not ready" will be struck from my vocabulary.

I'm out to seek power. Being a good person, a contributor, is all well and good, but you have to be powerful if you want to really affect change in any way. I don't think I'm going to be the next Bill Gates or Bill Clinton but I will become a name, someone that people think they're not good enough to speak to or meet. But the first step to becoming one of those people, is to approach those people as if you are one of them. Don't be intimidated. Never think of yourself as less. Because I'm not. I am smart, I am talented, and I can be clever though I am not yet refined nor polished. But that's just a matter of practice.

I will approach people at the top of the ladder as if I have a right to be there. I will ask what I can do for them. These are people who are very used to being able to do things for other people; their curiousity will be piqued by someone who has something to offer them. First you had my interest, now you have my attention. If I act like I have something to offer, they will give me the opportunity to offer it.

I shouldn't have cut my own hair. Too late now. I should wait for my face to heal before I go see anyone important. But I will make the impression, I will get the job. They just don't know it yet.

Being Adventurous and Being Present

A lot of people have told me that problems in America should be solved before we concentrate our efforts anywhere else. To some extent I agreed, but I also believed that I couldn't really accomplish anything, that the issues here were systematic. I still believe that they are. But recently I became, in real life, the adventurous person I always imagined myself to be. I packed up everything (everything) and moved a thousand miles from home. Well, that place isn't home anymore. Home has a different definition for people who don't value permanent addresses. It hasn't been home for a long while, maybe most of my life. Anyways.

I moved out here, to Denver Colorado. And I've discovered something. The problems are systematic, and as I move into the adult stage of my life, I'm beginning to be affected by them. I happen to be very lucky that I can still rely heavily on parental support, and I have cash reserves of my own, but let's put just this one dichotomy into perspective.

Working a full time job with biweekly pay intervals (standard), you will not be paid until you've already been working for three weeks. For those three weeks, you are floating on savings.

Rent plus security is due before you move in. Anywhere.

Basically, anyone starting at zero, absolute zero, will have to maintain themselves for three full weeks before getting the cash flow to start supporting themselves. But in many ways, employment is dependent upon having those trappings of financial security; a daily shower alone requires access to very expensive resources, basically a house, apartment or hotel, and is arguably the most indispensable resources for maintaining employment.

I'll be forthright here. I paid out $250 in rent for a room in someone else's apartment for the two weeks that I was working but hadn't received a paycheck. Getting my own place cost me $500 security plus $400 for half a month's rent on the day I signed, again before I had gotten a paycheck. My first paycheck was not as much as this combined amount; we haven't even gotten to food, transportation or business-ready wardrobe yet. So basically, if I had taken out a payday loan, I would still be in the hole.

Feel free to argue that a 22 year old has no "right" to their own place, that I could have found an even cheaper place to live (which is almost true, by a margin of 20%) and avoided a security deposit. Which is true. But there are some problems with this. First, the availability of such arrangements is incredibly scarce; not everyone who could benefit from such an arrangement will have access to them. Supply outweighs demand manifold. Second, I think you're an asshole if that's the world you want to live in, where working people should not have a place to call their own with privacy and a lock on the door by the time they hit their mid-twenties. There are two faulty assumptions that go into that, and you probably come from a place of deeply ingrained privilege, like I did, if you are making them. The first assumption is that all people up to the age of 28 are functionally single and financially in the black. They don't need much space. They don't need a car or air conditioning or heat. They have nothing valuable that needs to be secured. They've saved by working while living with their parents for a while. Fitting into somebody's spare bedroom or splitting rent with trustworthy roommates is just part of the progression process. The second assumption is that all people up to the age of 28 do not have children. Working in a high school, I have found out first hand just how often this isn't true. More appalling is the number of young ladies (it is usually ladies) supporting a child, or two, all by themselves, while working and finishing high school. Parental support is a coin toss; maybe it's there, maybe it isn't, but either way they have to cope.

So being a few years older than them, making (I have to assume) at least double what they make, and only supporting myself, with help, I cannot begin to imagine how they begin to make ends meet. Quite a few can't seem to do algebra to save their lives but their math skills must be damn impressive when they get home and they have to make rent and feed their kids after taxes have garnished a minimum wage. That alone has earned my respect a few of my students.

So I've gone on an adventure. In the process, I have discovered that surviving in the United States in this day and age is a numbers game. The tables can be turned by just a few dollars. There is no "fudging it" in our calculated age. If you're lucky, maybe a sweet face and a handshake will get you some leeway with your landlord or the bus driver. But at the grocery store, on your utility bills, the numbers are set. If you're short, you're short, and something you needed is going back on the shelf. And if that sweet face didn't work, you might be out on the street very quickly. How do you keep your job when you're living out of the back of your car, or worse on a park bench? 

A numbers game is a bad way to run a country, in my opinion, but it does leave the opportunity for relatively simple, if short-term, solutions. Change the numbers. People of privilege like me, and my wonderful boyfriend, can change the numbers for people. It does eventually come down to picking the right people. Small numbers will probably only make small patches in the dams that are poor people's lives, constantly springing new leaks under the stress of the business of living, but my $20 can be the difference between doing laundry this weekend and not, between a duct-tape solution or a new one of whatever they need. It could mean getting that thing they wanted that much sooner. Simply put, changing the numbers for the right people strengthens them, and in turn strengthens the community. A cascade effect of security and confidence.

The system still needs to change. But in the meantime, I can work with the system to make a difference. And in certain places, for certain people, a trivial amount is not trivial at all. The next year of their lives may be better because I tipped the balance today. I want to say that it's a powerful feeling but that power is channeling the love of God into the people around me.

Especially this guy serving me coffee. Two jobs to support two kids, all by himself. $20 could be a new pair of jeans for his growing son, a new backpack, new headphones so he fits in with the other kids. I hate to offend, because I think this guy is actually keeping things together all by himself. But at the same time, he needs a break. I guess equating horrible hours with financial crisis is a bad assumption to make; I can't assume. I can give that kind of help to a woman, I think, but to a grown man, somehow the rules are different.

One thing that I haven't learned from going on this adventure; the rules. It should be easy, considering I'm still in America, still playing by the same rules that I've been living under my entire life. But I occupy a new space and I'm not navigating it as gracefully as I would like. I am trying. Points for effort.

The biggest value I've gained from moving, is learning to be a member of the community that I'm in. It took me until my last year of living in Los Angeles to finally be a contributor there, to do good works in my own back yard. I should have been doing that all along but some lessons are slow to learn. Now that I'm here, it seems so much more important to be a positive force, to put a few key people into a better position so that they can be pillars of their communities. You don't have to be a minister or speech giver. You just have to be a responsible adult, set a good example, be reliable and honest and decent, to be a pillar that holds up the moral canvas of a neighborhood.

I can be a good man. Even in a dirty orange hoody, I can project power and warmth and presence and respect. I can be a man that people look up to and they don't even know why. They'll wish that there were more people like me.

Moms

Lately I've been noticing a lot of moms. Not moms of people I know, just women with small children, going through their own lives and I just so happen to witness a few moments of it.

I have to say, I am becoming more and more impressed by modern moms. I do believe it does have to do with modern times, the advancement of feminism. I believe that women finally have enough entitlement to authority and autonomy that they are actually worth more than their children. And that is fucking huge.

We are only just coming out of a time where everything, and everyone, belonged to men. A father owned his wife, his children, his dogs, etc. So in this light, a woman's value is really subjectively in the eyes of the man that owns her at the time. For a husband/father, he may value his wife equally to, or less than, his children, but certainly below himself. As such, a woman's treatment of his children (and we can say "his", not "their", in the pyschosocial context I'm referencing) was clouded by his value of them, and his value of her. She could not violate his wishes in fear of losing his approval, realistically her only avenue of survival. In a convoluted manner, this can change the power dynamic between mother and child; if the father values the child over the mother, than the mother's survival is dependent upon the child's attitude towards the mother. This can result, simply, in children walking all over their mothers because their mothers are afraid of their children becoming upset, and transferring this disproval to their fathers. Worse, when mother and child are alone and the father is not present to make his wishes explicitly known, the mother just make a best guess about what course of action the father would approve of in any given situation, and my observation would indicate that this usually errs on the side of giving the child power and control, to maintain their happiness and approval. Fucked up shit, basically.

Enter a new age of thought. A woman can be independent, even if married. A woman's opinions and feelings are valid and cannot be negated by conflicting opinions and feelings of a male figure. Women can thus treat their children in the way that feels appropriate to them, even if and when the father disagrees. When mother and child are not being supervised by the father, the mother needs not attempt to channel the father's will and can make and implement her own best judgment about a situaiton. This is huge. Because what this translates to is that women exert a much greater amount of authority over their children, and from what I can tell, this is a good thing. They do not let their children get away with bad behavior. They demand a higher level of performance, pushing their kids to their maturity limit. Kids act more like adults at a younger age. I predict that this will translate to better performance in school, fewer delinquency and behavior issues, and better preparedness for the adult world. The next generation, the generation that is 7 and younger right now, is going to be the most mature, well-adjusted, highly disciplined, diversity-literate, teamwork-ready generation we have yet seen. All because moms are finally people.

Dear Adam

If you've found this, please tell me. I'm not bothered that you would look for it, or read it, but I would be bothered if you didn't tell me. I would consider that a violation of trust.

So, yeah.

Getting back into writing

I'm an avid writer. It's something I'm good at. It's part of my identity. But I'm also a perfectionist. So even thinking that someone would ever read what I have written inhibits the writing process entirely. The connection should have been obvious but, like so many obvious things, it wasn't to me until it was pointed out to me, in this case by strangers on the internet, bless their hearts.

So, coming to the conclusion that I would not show off what I had to write about the most recent topic to enter my brain, I was suddenly able to write. And write I did. The funny thing is, in the back of my mind, I still know that I may share this story. But by tricking myself, or by being bluntly honest that this draft will never be revealed to other eyes, I was able to create something that I probably ought to be proud of. I am good writer.

So there's fiction, and that's all well and good. Then there's journaling, which serves the completely difference of keeping a record of my life's adventures. Then still, there is this blog, a lecture to an invisible audience about thoughts I think and that feel important. Except this. Right now I'm just writing. But just wait, I'm sure it will turn into a lecture any moment now. Probably regarding the importance of writing as a way for a cluttered mind to straighten things out, to arrange a vortex of ideas into neat little rows.

Writing about my future has always had an interesting draw for me. I pick out little scenes that I predict to happen in 20 or 30 years time, based on the rather generous assumption that I will still be with the partner that I am with in the present day. Whether or not the stories are happy should really tell me a lot about my feelings for my partner. Or they should tell me a lot about myself. I'm not quite sure whether I'm simply a pessimistic person, or if I have a very good (sub-conscious) judge of a match and I haven't (until now) found anyone that my writer's brain recognizes a positive future with.

So, here's the thing. The first time I started writing about a partnered future, it was post-transition, and filled with sadness because already I suspected that my father would not accept things with compassion. In past months there was at least one story that I wanted to write, again filled with sadness, about meeting back up with a partner post-transition and decades after parting ways, trying to rekindle a romance only to be shut down again and wallow in my physical, emotional and existential loneliness as a migrant physician.

Today I started writing again. I bit the bullet and using the wrong pen and the wrong notebook, put the words to paper and just kept going. I immortalized my self-doubt, my suspicion about how I'd be able to handle being a parent (especially to a daughter), realizing my crippling dependence on a partner for reassurance... and yet this one is going to be different. It's going to end happily. At some point, in this story, 45 year old me will stop being 22. Two decades of love and support, hard work and affirmation will have solidified themselves in me, and I will be confident. I will find strength in myself to be alone. I don't really want to be alone but that's important nonetheless. It is so because I will not need to constantly turn to my partner for reassurance, approval, or validation of my choices. I will already know what he would say, and trusting his judgment, I will be able to draw on that. Knowing that he trusts me, I will be able to trust myself. Then one day, I will simply, unilaterally, trust myself as well.

Today I was able to write about a future in which I have the body, voice, and place in society that I desire, and my family still loved me. Sure, I shoved in some angst about being a parent of a teenager, a parent that was responsible for dragging my kids along on my world-saving adventures without taking enough time to figure out what they wanted for themselves... but at least, in this fantasy, I was functional, and happy, and so was my family. My parents weren't there, but my partner's mom was. Because that's the future I want for myself. I haven't yet encountered anyone who has explicitly wished for parents-in-law, but I do. What stemmed from damage may turn out to be a positive contributing factor to a very healthy marriage. Alliance, cohesion, family love that isn't made up or owed. Real, true affection. I shy away from labeling it as child to parent because that is a bit incestuous, but I will borrow from cultures where such relationships are normal. Heck, there's even such a one in the bible. I need to review.

So, anyways. Writing. It's cool. It shows me that I still have a lot to work through, but I can see a light at the end of this tunnel that shines much brighter than any other. And now, the source of issues is not a lack of acceptance or divergence of life plans with my partner. It's a very valid worry about how I'm going to get along with a person I haven't met yet: my kid. At least, I think it's valid. Of course by saying that, clearly I'm not so sure. Anyways. I was able to write a fantasy in which my partner was supportive of me and attracted to me in the body I want, and it wasn't some huge stretch of the imagination. That makes me feel good. A whole lot better than I've ever felt before about a boy. Because this, this isn't a relationship. It's a partnership.
I think I may be in love.
I am so fucked.