I was contemplating (intentional/endogenous) plural identity formation, and it occurred to me how much in common the mindstates before and after have with trans identity formation.

When I think back to who I was before I’d really accepted myself as being trans, I had all the usual hangups: what if I’m faking it, what if it’s not actually better, what if it’s grass-is-greener, what will my family/friends think, etc. etc. There was something basically obscuring it, and yet — while many aspects of my material reality have surely shifted in the decade since — internally the changes are not huge. The most prominent one is simply identification; a willingness to see the self through a given lens, followed by the confirmatory euphoria of knowing truth.

There’s nothing fundamentally different about questioning-me and knowing-me, just a change in what I’m willing to accept about myself.

It was much the same with plurality. It had long made sense as a means of better understanding my self, but before you cross the gap (which really takes place in lots of little ways, rather than one leap, but some of the little ways are bigger than others), doubt fills your mind and occludes those moments of recognisance. Even though it “made sense” even stronger was the sense that it was generally thought to be a faked phenomenon (sound familiar?), one with no real value other than to seek attention.

I wonder just how many possibly useful lenses are hidden this way; in general, and for my selves specifically. What, if accepted, would let me go even further in my quest for self-knowledge?

I’m incredibly blocked at work.

Circumstances mean that there’s a large drain on motivation, and the piece of work I’m up to right now I haven’t really budged from in weeks. Months? Working part-time has its benefits, also its downsides.

How much longer can this go on?

I dreamt of her, fractally.

I dream of her often enough, but lately the edge had been taken off, no heavy meaning invested, instead accompanied by a casual lightness that never really graced our actual relationship with its presence.

This time, though, it was her, her, her, and me, apologising, reaching through one dream and into the next to try to make contact, to establish some connection, to get the message through that I wished more than anything it hadn’t gone that way. In one level she had bleached her hair, same as me; we were dancing in a circle and Niki (?) pointed her out to me, just behind me.

At the end of the dream I was apologising to Niki, saying I needed to go out on a motorcycle ride with her at short notice, having finally reconnected.

Ugh.

I was alerted by a commenter that it’s been more than a year, now, since this video dropped:

COVID measures had already begun to be implemented; national borders shut, most schools already closed. Watching this press conference, a scene from The Simpsons played in my mind. I’d been getting a little comfy with a video editing program to record IIDX plays, so I gave it a crack.

I don’t really have networks to tap, but Niki liked it so much she diligently dropped it into comments on Facebook and Twitter replies wherever it seemed appropriate. Before I knew it, I had a moderately popular YouTube video. It entered the popular discourse when it was further remixed, but if you ask me, the Trump oversamples are just kinda gross.

One thing that’s been interesting to see has been how the popularity of the video corresponded with (literally) viral events:

The three major events were:

• Late March, video released, Dan Andrews said “get on the beers”.
• Mid-May, first lockdown restrictions eased.
• October 26, Victoria recorded zero new cases/deaths for the first time since June. Dan reported that he “might go a little higher up the shelf” than beers.

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Maybe it’s just the elevated T levels lately, but god if I don’t feel a lot of animosity towards certain behaviours.

There’s this one guy who’s just joined a programming language community, and like:

• He doesn’t really understand the language or its motivations yet, is trying to learn, but is way out of his depth still. That’s cool, so was I once.
• Despite this, though, he keeps trying to “help” people in areas he is still way out of his depth in, and like, should definitely be aware he is out his depth in. Blind leading the blind.
• When something doesn’t make sense, he starts going wild saying how it’s stupid, must be a bug, starts @mentioning the creator (who probably isn’t even online) saying “please tell me it’s a bug”. I hand-hold him and explain how, no, he’s just got it wrong, he calms down. Why be so belligerently wrong about something?
• In various chat rooms people will be discussing using certain features (or not using them) and he’ll start just kinda circlejerking with no-one in particular about how good it is that the language lets you do this, “unlike CERTAIN OTHER LANGUAGES”, but like, dude, shut up, we’re trying to have a conversation here?

It takes every fibre of my being to not be like “ok, just shut up,” but I’m thoroughly irritated after a few weeks of this. The last one in particular is one I see a lot from new entrants to this community; they barely understand it but they have decided it’s the best thing ever and for some reason feel a need to go on about that, rather than just.. actually use it and make something.

Maybe I’m hostile to the idea of people deciding to invest themselves in something they don’t understand well yet, perhaps because when I was young I did a lot of that while casting around for places to hang my identity up on.