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Friday, 10 September 2010 (demons in her dancing shoes) 9:19am Oh, frak me. I made dropped off the paperwork to get the gender certification thingy yesterday ("paperwork" in this context basically being a printout of the new policy with the relevant parts highlighted), and was told that it would probably take a week or so. Then I get a call this morning saying that my regular doctor is "temporarily away," so it's been passed on to her substitute. Which is fine, except that said substitute won't give me the certification until she meets me. I suppose I get why they want to do that, but especially after dealing that transphobic doctor who didn't think I was really a transsexual because I'm not mortified by my penis or my sex drive, doctors who question my validity are a major sore spot with me. I'm sure it'll be fine, it's just a formality, but it still rankles the hell of out me. 10:11am After not saying a word to each since Tuesday morning (even at the ripe old age of thirty-seven, I do "brooding teenager listening to Nine Inch Nails" like nobody's business), my formerly-new-but-soon-to-be-ex-supervisor has asked to meet with me later today. Inevitable, I suppose. 1:26pm That went better than expected. I managed to keep my cool, having gotten the initial barrage the tears out of my system on Tuesday, and I think I may have a shot at actually keeping my job. Or, more accurately, auditioning for the new one. The reason why the decision had been made to just get rid of me and hire someone new was that he had no reason to believe, based on what he's seen of my work thus far, that I had the skills necessary to do the new job. I had to explain to him that I've actually been very limited in what I can do here, based on the restrictions of both our web content system (fuck you so hard, Joomla) and what the people above me will let me get away with. He seemed very surprised, for example, to learn that one of the reasons I was hired was for my writing skills. It came up in the context of some of the horrible writing on the site. He asked: is writing something you would want to do, or can do? So I explained to him how most of what I've written has either been met with severe criticism (like the whole kerfuffle about my tone and voice) or simply rewritten by someone else, someone who isn't as good a writer but has more power than me. Basically, there was a disconnect between what I do in my current job and what I'm actually capable of—he didn't realize that they aren't the same thing, that I'm more experienced and skilled that my work thus far shows. There are things I need to study up on, to be sure, but that doesn't mean that I can't learn those things. I just haven't yet. What I need is time and direction, and the latter of which has been sorely lacking lately. Which is one of the reasons that I've initiated so many of my own projects. Of course, when my former supervisor told me earlier this year that he didn't think I was good enough to bring on full-time, perceived lack of initiative was among the among the many faults he listed, and now that I have been moving forward of my volition, they've been getting shot down. Because that's the way the universe operates, I suppose. Damned if you do and damned if you don't, so you might as well just godsdamned do it. The bottom line is, I have a month to prove myself capable of doing the job. Thankfully, he's given me a couple of very specific projects to do, and that makes all the difference in the world. He's still going to be interviewing other people for the position, but he assures me I'm at the top of the list. So. | ||
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Thursday, 9 September 2010 (here comes geordie) 10:11am No gym this morning, both because I'm starting to feel it in my legs from yesterday morning, plus I didn't get to bed until one. Which had been the plan to begin with, so in that respect, it worked out just fine. The big Unthology press release is out, or at least it's on Facebook, which is pretty much as out as anything gets in 2010. The big plan for today is to attend the San Francisco Arts Commision panel review of my grant application. I'll sit quietly in the back as a group of strangers decide my fate. Just a little on the nerve-wracking side, that. I'm also going to finally go to Lyon-Martin to get "certification from an attending medical physician that the applicant has undergone appropriate clinical treatment for gender transition" so I can get a passport. I have no immediate plans to the country, but it's still a good thing to have, especially if there's some sort of windfall that allows me to actually go to Norwich or London for the Unthology launch. Stranger things have happened. I think. 4:11pm Mmm. Vegan bratwurst at Underdog. I think I've earned it. I'm also getting my exercise—I took the train from Church to 9th and Judah, and am walking the rest of the way. Go me. 7:01pm The panel review wasn't quite as bad as I'd feared, but it was still pretty surreal. Some of the panelists liked my work and my grant proposal, some didn't, as to be expected. I enjoyed the positive comments and winced at the negative ones. (And I wasn't too surprised by who did and didn't like it—the old lesbian, for example, was not a fan.) They knew I was in the room, but of course there was no interaction between us, which was perfectly understandable but made it all the odder. In any event, I'll get the grant or I won't, and it's entirely out of my hands now. Like Willie Nelson said, fortunately, we are not in control. | ||
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Wednesday, 8 September 2010 (haul me up) 8:43am For some reason, Bootcamp (which turns out to be the actual name of the class) didn't wind me quite as much this morning as it did last week. It was also different than last week, so maybe that enters into it. But it did kick my ass, and that's what matters. I've been pulled into a big project for the main website today, so that'll be my main focus, I guess. And when I'm done with that, I'll continue with the same projects I'd been working on before, the stuff which may be pointless now but I'm going to keep at anyway. Nobody will be able to say I didn't take iniative, at least. It's a Year Zero kinda day, though. I expect I'll listen to it may times over the next five hours. 5:35pm I considered going to the gym after work, and even got as far as getting into my gym clothes and opening the front door. Instead, I decided to err on the side of sleep and take a nap. I'm joining Ilene and some of her friends at The Cat Club for karaoke tonight, and I'd like to actually have some energy for it. Besides, I got plenty of exercise this morning. 8:41pm Ah. That's what I get for not paying closer attention. Though the karaoke is in fact every Wednesday night at The Cat Club, Ilene won't be going until next week. But, I'm all tarted up and simply don't go out enough, so I'm going anyway. Gotta go somewhere, I figure. Bondage a-Go-Go is also tonight, but there's no way I'm heading into that particular snakepit without a friend. Way too many ghosts. sometime after midnight Karaoke fail. I mean, I'm atonal at my best—as anyone who attended I Am Snowmiser can confirm—but I was ear-shatteringly awful tonight, slaughtering Sheryl Crow's "If It Makes You Happy" and Alanis Morissette's "Unsent," songs I adore. And I also felt very alone. There was a crowd there which I was not part of. The fact that the DJ gave "Sympathy for the Devil" to some ponytailed douchebag even though I'd requested it first didn't help. I considered going to Synchronize at Il Pirata afterwards, because I like the music and have been wanting to dance, but I saw the crowd of people outside and decided against it. They didn't look dangerous or particularly unfriendly, but I didn't want to deal with the "alone in a crowd" thing again. So, I just came home. At least there are some of Marta's things here, reminders of her. | ||
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Tuesday, 7 September 2010 (among the gorse, among the grey) 9:14am According to an email I received this morning, Unthology No. 1 is coming out much sooner than I expected: December 1. Also, after Googling the other contributors, I've determined that I'm the only American in the book. For some reason, I'm proud of that. Sadly, I won't be able to attend the launch parties, since flights to the UK are a tad out of my price range. 12:21pm And the universe, it takes away: my new supervisor was a bit snippy with me this morning. I was trying to follow up with our some of our discussions on Friday, and I simply seemed to...annoy him. That was how it felt, anyway, especially after Friday afternoon, when we seemed to be on the same page and stuff. I skulked away and kept to myself. A little while later, the operations manager—one of the people who was involved in me getting hired, and came to both the Instant City reading and Sizzle—took me into one of the small meeting rooms and told me that my days here are numbered. As in, things are going to change in about a month, and my new supervisor is going to hire someone new, someone who's better at my job than I am. So, basically, I'm losing my job. I started sobbing. I just can't help it. it's an autonomic reaction, I said, vaguely aware that "autonomic" isn't quite the right word, but was close enough anyway. Loss hurts, especially loss of livelihood, however meager it may be. She apologized for not having thought to bring in tissues, and it was extremely obvious that she didn't want to have to be telling me this. Obviously, nobody likes having to break this sort of news, but she's arguably one of the two people I'm closest to in the office, if only because she's come to my gig and has expressed interest in who I am as a person. Which made me all the more glad that it was her, because the waterworks would have turned on no matter what, and I prefer it to be in front of someone whom I can consider a friend, rather than a stranger, like the Den Mother's replacement. We hugged—almost more for her than for me, I suspected—and I stayed behind in the meeting room for a little while longer, wanting to more or less have my shit together for the walk back to my desk. On the plus side, I still have a few thousand coming to me in this current round of unemployment extensions, I'll be here for another month, and I had the foresight to put on eyeliner and eyeshadow this morning, which is now awesomely streaky. It's always been my favorite look. 5:11pm Went to the gym after work and ran for an hour. If I'm entering the job market again (fuck, fuck, fuck), it's all the more important that I get into shape. | ||
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Monday, 6 September 2010 (the money shuffle) 5:04pm Gym or not (not), I got my exercise today. It was a gorgeous day out and I recently acquired some 'shrooms that required field testing, so I walked down the beach to Lincoln, through the park to the De Young, had lunch at Good Earth Cuisine in the Inner Sunset, and then down Irving back towards home. Every bit helps. | ||
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Sunday, 5 September 2010 (dream attic) 9:22am Not a fan of the gym on Sunday mornings—doesn't open until seven, and there's way too many people—but I'm not going tomorrow because of its reduced holiday hours and I gotta keep up the pace, so I went this morning. This afternoon, I'm having a phone call about my pr0n review with the make/shift editor, who said that he just has a few edits. I figured he'd either like the review or hate it, and he seems to like it, so yay for that. I was unable to actually procure a copy of the magazine, so I'm not certain exactly what the editorial voice is, but I also tend to work under the assumption that if someone asks me to write something, they're doing so because they want something in my voice. Which is the only one I've got. Still, though, I'm nervous. Talking on the phone is scary. 2:41pm That wasn't so bad, really. It was mostly a few grammatical things here and there, some word choices, but otherwise, I get to keep in all my jokes and even a few bits of mild snarkiness, things that I was sure wouldn't survive the editorial process. And I'm pleasantly shocked that I even got to keep in the Roberta Findlay reference, because, really, who the hell is that? 11:24pm Some kids from Brooklyn who do a 'zine about bad movies came to the show tonight (we were showing Jaws: The Revenge, unfortunately for them. They gave me a couple copies and we chatted for a while. It's fun to get to network like that, and to know that I have some mild presence in this particular subculture, as running San Francisco's longest-running weekly audience-participation bad movie series. One of the reasons I left the Queer Open Mic was that it was in danger of overshadow my writing credentials. In certain places where I should have been credited as a writer, I was credited instead merely as the show's co-host, and quite frankly, that spooked the hell out of me. But Bad Movie Night is sufficiently removed from the literary world—really, the one scene doesn't give a tinker's damn about the other—so I'm perfectly okay with the association. | ||
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Saturday, 4 September 2010 (paranoia in hi-fi) 2:49pm Ugh. I hate long weekends. They throw off my schedule. Plus there's the fact that I have to take Marta (who's currently napping on the couch) home in a few hours, and I have no idea what I'm going to do with myself after that. I feel like I should take advantage of the extra parking in San Francisco provided by so many people being at Burning Man, but I probably won't. | ||
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Friday, 3 September 2010 (times of grace) 3:12pm All anyone wanted to talk about in Damiel's abs class this morning was how sore they were yesterday. Guess I wasn't the only one. It's once again a quiet Friday in the office. I'd been told that the place all but shuts down during the week of Burning Man, but me and my new supervisor have been keeping rather busy. I guess it stands to reason that the person who told me that is a Burner. | ||
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Thursday, 2 September 2010 (shipwreck radio) 11:24am To repeat from yesterday: ow. I decided not to go to the gym this morning, and probably won't this afternoon, because my muscles are still aching. Mostly my right hamstring, which has been making me a little limpy since yesterday, but there's just no way I can run today. Which is fine. It just means yesterday worked. And I'm looking forward to doing it again next Wednesday, and on Wednesdays for the foreseeable future. The reading last night went pretty well. Marta was there with me, and Ilene came out to see it. I felt a little disconnected otherwise, but quite frankly, I always do. | ||
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Wednesday, 1 September 2010 (stereo wastelands) 9:31am Okay, ow. Instead of our usual class, Damiel took us all to a new Wednesday morning class, this one in the Y's gym proper. (I always think of it as the "basketball court," but that's just me.) And it was brutal, forty-five nearly non-stop minutes of various stretches and crunches and lots of running around the perimeter with frequent sprints. I wasn't really adequatedly prepared for it, as I'd already been working out for an hour, but I made it through to the end, at which point I felt like I used to feel at the end of an hour with Raphaela. Which is the feeling I've been chasing ever since I stopped, and one I'll continue chasing on Wednesday mornings, oh my yes. This is the next level, and I'm ready for it. It's a bootcamp, really, and coincidentally, it happens at the same time as a class by that very name which Raphaela teaches at a gym I couldn't begin to afford if I wanted to. 2:23pm Getting dressed for the big Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation launch reading tonight, and lo and behold, my shiny pants fit again! Not perfectly, and there's definite hanging-gut issues, but by the gods, I can zip them up and button them and everything. Progress! My plaid skirt doesn't quite fit yet, but it fits a lot better than it did before. | ||
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