Poetry Corner

Ok so I was trying to write one thing and something entirely different sprang to mind. It has either been a very long time since I posts a poem or the first time I have. I'm a bit too tried to look right now. So with out any more a ado I bring you:


"Sounds of an Author"
by Gillian Gilbert (Gilly) [Last name withheld]


Scribble Scribble Scribble

Note Note Note

Write Plot Write

Plot Write Plot

Read Read Read

Rewrite Rewrite Write

Rewrite Plot Write

Rewrite Write Rewrite

Read

Rewrite Rewrite Write

Write Rewrite Rewrite

Read Read

Rewrite Rewrite Rewrite

Let Story Escape...

[END]

A flash in the dark

Today a woman said to me, "Thank you, sir.. I'm sorry, ma'am." Then she smiled and I smiled back and she walked away with her cookies.

I make note of this cause it feels good when I'm gendered female by others. It feels right. I make note of this because so much of the time I don't feel good and I don't feel right. This is like a flash of light in a dark tunnel reminding me what light looks like.

Someone got fired

No not me. Someone else. At my work. We've been short a few times in the last couple of weeks. Big even amounts. Thursday we were short. When I asked the woman, who I didn't want to think was doing what I thought she was doing, if anything had happened on the short register, she lied to me. I didn't know it was a lie but I felt it. I told me manager what I suspected. She looked over the security footage and found her stealing. So she was fired.

Part of me wants to be proud that I 'solved the mystery.' Part of me wishes I had stayed silent. Part of me wishes I wasn't quite so clever. The woman who was fired was my friend. (And you out there who wants to say if she had been my friend she wouldn't have stolen from the store, well you can just hush up cause sometimes people do things that don't seem very friendlike but still are friends.) But the larger part of me knows that I did what I had to do. As my manager said, "This is why you're the assistant manager." I looked out for the store's best interest. I did my job. I still feel lousy.

checking in

So it's been a bit since I posted. Actuclly it's been a bit since I've been able to finish a post but anyway something happened today that I wanted to relate.

So I'm at work and I'm rolling out cookie cakes for the first time in like forever when I hear someone call out "Ma'am, how much are these?" I look up cause even through I'm nowhere near the front counter I know they are talking to me and when I look up I see that they are looking back at me. I step out from behind the rolling table and walf over to the counter and tell the teenage girl who was calling me the price of what she was pointing to. Her jaw drops and she begins saying, "I'm so sorry I called you ma'am," and variations of such for a couple of minutes. I found her utter horror at her 'mistake' to be quite amusing but did my best to get her to understand that it wasn't a big deal.

But is it a big deal? Gender is 'serious business' for most people. Calling a guy a girl can lead to yelling or even physical violence. I feel like I'm in a state of flux. I can abide being called sir because I haven't made my stand, yet. I do prefer ma'am through. I wonder what the girl would have said if I had said I preferred to be called ma'am?

This brings to mind another incident from a few days ago. A man and his young daughter were watching me make pretzels. As he watch me he was talking to his daughter telling her that I knew what I was doing and to watch me. Throughout all of it he referred to me as she. When I then had to serve him he slipped in a questioning, "sir?" To which I just smiled. Before he walked away he made one more comment to his daughter in which he again called me she.

Right now that seems to be my lot in life. To pass some of the time but only when I'm not talking to the person. I could be upset about this but really I'm not, cause even this is more than I thought I could even have. I've been on this journey for sometime now. Stuck in a holding pattern waiting for the skies to clear. I think it's time to brave to storm.

Enough metaphor for now what do I mean by this? I mean that I'm within a stones throw of telling my boss and everyone at work and in my life that I don't want to hear his name anymore. That I want to be called by my name and referred to as she. I want to say to customers I prefer ma'am. I want to live openly as myself.

I want this so bad but I have to choose it for myself. No one is going to give it to me. I have to take it.

***

Oh yeah and that guy called me at work again. I was busy at the time told him I was and when he asked if I would call later I said I didn't know and hung up. I talked to my sister about his first call and she agreed that him asking me to come over to his house seemed sleazy.

Meet Bits

This is a sketch I did for the animated series I'm working on. Bits is a Latin American cookie god who inhabits a body made of stitched together cookies.

Blog course correction

When I started this blog I had thought I would use it as a place to write "serious stuff." This is part of an early post I wrote in dec. of '08:

Mondays I will be writing about books, movies, tv shows, or video games. This won't be a review based column, more of a "Hey, this something I like and here's why" column.

Wednesday's column will be about trans stuff. From news items of interest to personal updates on my own transition, this is where you'll find it.

For Friday I will have a column similar to Monday's, except it will focus on media found on the web.

I had some plans didn't I. I want to try to get back to what I wanted this blog to be. I'll still be posting about whats going on in my life but I'm going to try to include more posts like the ones I list above. Not on a set schedule like I thought I would.

Anyway just wanted to state this out loud. Move along nothing more to see here.

Go on scoot!

Self-Revelation

Ok so I'm two days late with this post.

Anyways, during the time I was trying to decide whether or not to call the guy who called me at work(see my last entry for full details, also thank you Krystal for your comment it helped me a lot) I started thinking about how I felt about that kind of attention. Did I like it? At first I thought yeah it's nice to be noticed but then I started to think about what that guy had noticed. He had looked at me and based solely on my looks decided to call me at work and try and arrange a meeting. At first while I was still thinking about calling him I thought about asking him for a photo so I could know who he was. Then I started thinking about whether or not we were even compatible. Would he mind I was transgender? What would he say if I told him I wasn't gay but bi? What if he wasn't a geek/nerd?

Seriously that last one worried me the most. And at some point the thought popped into my head what if he just wants sex? And I had to think about that. Did I want to have sex with a semi-random stranger who called me cute? No I did not. My thoughts kept churning and soon I was wondering if I wanted to have sex at all.

Somehow I ended up on the troper tales page for asexuality. I started reading and I found myself identifing with some of the stories there. I found a link to Asexual Visibility and Education Network and did some more reading and well I think you can see where this is headed. I am still reading and examining my own feelings but I think I am asexual.

Now to forestall any blank stares I'm going to do a little explaining, keep in mind I'm still a newbie so you might want to check out AVEN for more complete info.

So What does it mean to be asexual? Well in basic terms it means a person is not sexual attracted to anyone. Sexual attraction being defined as wanting to have sex with another person. This does not preclude romantic feelings for others.

So I am now identifying as bi-romantic(attracted to both sexes but not for sex) transgender asexual. I have more thinking to do and will likely post more in the future.

So this guy called me at work..

Wendsday a guy called the store and asked for me. He said he wanted to talk to me if I wasn't busy and I said not really and went to the back room where it's quieter. Now I'm thinking, "What is this customer going to complain about?" So I get to the back and ask him what he wants to talk about. He says he was in the store a little earlier and just wanted to talk. I ask him his name. He gives it to me and I still don't know who he is. I can be pretty bad about remembering people so I ask if I know him, he says no, he just wants to talk to me. Now at this point I'm getting a vibe off this guy like maybe talk is not the word he wants to say. I tell hiim to hold on for a minute, take the phone from my head and start thinking hard about everything he's said. I realize either he just wants to talk to me or he's trying to come on to me(keep in mind that in day to day life I don't pass as female). I consider just hanging up the phone cause the whole thing is just too awkward but I don't. I get back on the phone and say I really don't have time right now to talk. He says ok but could I call him after work cause he thinks I'm cute. Well now I know where this is headed at least. I say tonight isn't good cause I have to go to sleep as soon as I get home to work in the morning. I mention that the day after tomorrow I'm off work. Then we have a brief conversation where in he asks me to come to his house in a nearby city and I decline since my car is not in such good shape. He gives me his number and I say I'll try to call him.

I didn't call him. I thought real hard about whether or not I should. I had said I would. My sister and co-workers said I should cause I'm kind of a homebody and I should get out more. Then I thought about whether I wanted to call him and realized that I really didn't. I was really flattered that someone would call me cute but that doesn't mean I have to talk to them or go out with them. In fact the part where he asked me to his house was mildly creepy. Not saying that he's a creep but just the way he went from can we talk to can you drive to this other city in in sentence kind if felt weird.

I feel kind of bad about not calling but I don't want to call him out of guilt. What do you think?

Also in the last few days I realized something else about myself but that deserves it's own post which I'll write tonight. Until then, bye.

Writing more

It's only been a week and a half since my last post which is an improvement.

Now on to what this post's title is about. I've been writing more. To be more specific I've been writing more fiction. To be even more specific I've been working on scripts for an animated series a coworker and I have been working on. It's quite an ambitious project considering we've got rough story plots for three seasons of about 15 episodes each, three movies and a spat of holiday specials. So far I've got one complete script written and I'm working actively writing another. We don't yet know how we're going to animate it but we'll cross that bridge when I have more scripts written. I have said that I want at least the pilot done by the end of this year.

All this started about five months ago when my coworker, after one of our many discussions about movies we'd like to make, said we should work on a something together. He came up with a lot of the original ideas for the series but I've been adding my own and at this point there are some ideas that we can't remember who came up with them. At first I was skeptical about the series but after a few discussions I was hooked and after a month of talking I bought a notepad and started making notes. I'm doing most of the writing but it doesn't feel like I'm working alone. We talk so much about the series and throw ideas back in forth so much that this is a collaborative effort.

I'm also just started working on the script for a comic that will feature a year in the life of a superhero by showing all 365 days. Working title right now is 365 Hero. Obviously it won't go into great detail about each day, in fact I plan to have each day represented on a single page with a two page spread about once a week for important or visually spectacular days. I estimate it will run between 450 and 500 hundred pages. I'm not a great artist so I don't know when this will see the light of day. Ideally it would be published weekly covering one week time wise as well. After the year ended it could be collected in an omnibus edition. This is still very much in the planing stages.

Wow, I don't dream small do I? :)

Well thats all for now.