A new writing
It’s kinda weird starting a new blog, if you can call Substack a blog. (Do people even use the term “blog” anymore?) I guess the impetus is - should be - that I have something to say.
Do I, though? Maybe. I dunno.
I’m rambling. Even before I’ve hit 200 words. But starting this was an impulsive action, and I’m not known for impulsive actions. I’m getting better at doing them when they need doing, though.
Like what I’m going through at the moment.
Some decisions take months to make, even when they don’t need to. And I’m getting better at that. I saw a shirt I wanted in a store today but left it behind. Then 20 minutes later, in another store, I realized I was still thinking about it. It was though I’d already decided to buy it, but I hadn’t told myself, so by the time I realized that that’s what I had decided, I had to walk back to the store and actually buy the damn thing.
There are a couple of lines in The Matrix movies, usually from the Oracle, about making decisions and understanding decisions. There are a few times where people come to see her, and they think it’s to help make a decision, but she knows they’ve already made their decision. No, they’ve come to the Oracle to understand their decision. Which she baldly but not unkindly points out, frequently to the discomfort of her visitor.
But she’s right. We make decisions all the time that are really us accepting the decision we really made earlier. It might be minutes earlier. It might be days earlier. It might be years earlier.
I took action to go on HRT about 9 or 10 months ago. Still took almost 6 weeks to actually get my first dose after that. But the actual decision had been made a long time before. I don’t know how long because it was an end-product of a personal piece of self-discovery that looked like it took a week-and-a-half, but really took all my life. Once I figured out I was transgender, going on HRT was such an obvious thing To Do Next, all things considered.
It was an impulsive action that had taken a long time to happen. Except it wasn’t impulsive. I already knew I wanted to be on HRT - I just hadn’t known it yet.
I don’t know what my next big impulsive decision will be. Or impulsive-looking decision. I’ve made a couple in the last 9 months, after all. But picking myself up and doing things is, well, what I need the will to do. That’s something I realized last night. I’d already lamented to myself and a few friends that I wish I’d started this journey 10, 20 years ago.
But I wasn’t ready then. I could have been, but … I wasn’t. I spent those years in a kind of wilderness, marking time, but also recovering from … let’s just say some questionable life decisions. I’ll admit I learnt a lot (particularly about myself) in that, but damn I wish I’d learnt it years earlier! So I’m trying to make up for lost time, in a way. I’ve heard this is fairly normal for transgender people who transition later in life. There’s a lot to learn in a short space of time. Or, perhaps this is a better way to put it, there are lots of experiences to be had and to be re-had that most women have a lot more time to have them in.
But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I guess this means I have a lot to do, and I need to choose to do so.
That … could be harder than it sounds. That takes us back into impulsive actions again. Or YOLO territory. Or am older term, carpe diem. Sieze The Day.
Thus this blog, er, substack. Can I push one out regularly? We’ll see.
We’ll see.