Transition Transmission: April

I want this picture to define me.

Hey folks ! Hope y'all are a-ok :).

I've been thinking about what I could do to ensure a stream of updates here on my blog, and since I decided at the start of this month to transition a series of monthly updates might be a good way to fill that gap. So here goes, let me know what you think yeah?

What's changed since the last time I posted then? Well not much in terms in regards to getting appointments and stuff, in fact that has regressed but I'll go into that in a moment. What I've mostly been doing is research and planning. I'm terrible for planning, as in I like to think I can plan stuff but in actual fact I end up not following through or I making a mess of things. This is a huge step however and I felt it would be best if I came up with some realistic goals for myself in the next year. Who knows when I will get my first appointment in whatever GIC they decide to send me to so in the meantime it would be good to look at all the options.

First the bad news, my local health team have made a couple of blunders in regards to my referral which has kind of halted things in many ways. As you know the system here in Wales can be a little fiddly and backwards, sending people to things like 'specialist teams' and that before they refer you. Well anyway I was supposed to wait for an appointment date according to my GP. I received a letter saying that my referral had been sent but I'd not heard any more, this week I had another letter saying my referral had been dropped because I hadn't contacted them in time. This means that if I can't sort things out this week I may have to go back and start the whole process again. Taking up another 3 months of my time on top of the million billion trillion years it takes to even get a date for a GIC appointment. So yeah things are kind of annoying on that front. It wont stop me obviously, I have a nice day off now in which I can call up and kick butt, I will admit that on first receiving the letter I felt super deflated but it won't deter me.

This has led me down another path though with support from my friends. I've been researching into the possibility of going private, this is kind of a huge step and somewhat of a risk financially. I have money saved up however right now it's tied up in trying to look for a new place to live, car stuff and general in case of emergency money. Right now my finances seem like a vast web of bits and pieces that need to be brought together, something I'm working on now. I don't want to commit to anything while I feel this insecure about where my money will be coming from in a few months but rest assured I am looking into it. If I know I am somewhat secure 6 months down the line I'd have saved enough money to sort out all the initial stuff and have enough to worry about insuring my car etc. It doesn't help knowing that I might be out of work in 6 weeks (I'll blame it on the Government for a laugh) so that is taking up a decent chunk of my time. I'm kind of terrible with money but when it comes to big things like this I am quite conservative. Ewwww I said conservative, I feel ill.

Next up I've been giving myself sleepless nights thinking about how and when I'm going to come out proper. Like not just "Oh I am trans" but "Oh I'm transitioning LOL". Yeah transitioning is a personal thing but I know that people need time to adjust etc. I started last weekend by speaking to someone I know is 100% behind me, my brother. Admittedly it wasn't the best environment to tell them, basically the smoking area outside a metal bar but it just slipped out. I was worried that it would make things awkward but it really it  hasn't. I spoke about the process, the challenges ahead and my general fears about coming out right now in a valleys town where people are still fascinated by the only gay in the village, I'm not even joking. I know people who think there is only one gay man living in my town. NOT EVEN JOKING. He asked me to talk though all the people that I am worried about telling, members of the family, friends, work colleagues and we worked through each one together. How best to tell people and what I should do if things don't go well. Obviously we don't know how people react so anything we said could turn out wrong but it did give me that confidence to tell everyone.

That's kind of where I am right now, baby steps Williams I should be called. I knew it would be though, I didn't want to jump in with both feet, I want to test the waters. Find a nice part of the pool before diving in. Check me out with the swimming metaphors

Yeah so should I do more of these ? Even if next month it goes as far as "Yeah phoned a doctor and they said a thing". Be nice to keep people in the loop a little and show that I'm not always sitting on my bum playing Dark Souls.......that's just most of the time.

Charlie xx

Ground control to Major Tom

I'm sure some of you (by that I mean none of you) have begun wondering why I've not posted in just over a month. Since my last blog I've been super quiet here and despite having some of my most viewed posts since the blog started I've failed to keep up the momentum. So why is that ? Well I'll explain below.

First of all I've wanted to take a little break and recharge my writing batteries again. In the first 6 months I really did go through most of the topics I wanted to talk about and since joining Twitter I've found a whole new host of things to talk about. Up until April most of my posts were personal, I commented on my own experiences however since finding a bigger audience I've started speaking about the LGBTQ+ community as a whole. With that exposure does come some criticism which definitely does put a damper on things but more than that I want to feel like I can answer any detractors in an educated way, hence why I've been taking time away to learn as much as I can. I have some content ready to go on the recent Stonewall movie controversy but I want to make 100% sure it's ready to go before I post it.

Secondly I've been having some really awful times with my identity this summer. That's despite being more open and exposed than ever. You see although I call myself trans for ease of discussion I am in actual fact more gender fluid. Be that for work purposes or whatever my identity is not fixed and I do find myself going back and forth between two people. That's a really simplistic way of putting it but maybe it's something I can expand on in the future. I don't control when this happens and as a result it has an impact on my blog and me personally. When I'm in this mid point I tend to be far more aggressive and frustrated which leads me to do silly things like delete a whole bunch of people from my Facebook because 'lol it's funny'. This also means that I find less topics to write about and have less enthusiasm for what I do. 

Will I come back soon? Most definitely ! I have some interesting things I want to talk about very soon, for now though I just need this time to myself. 

I hope to be back in the next few weeks with a few topics on genderfluidity, what it's like and perhaps get the perspective of other genderfluid people. So until then I love you all and I'll speak to you soon.

Charlie xx