I don't really know how to explain it.

There's some good going on. Lots of progress in my minecraft world, interactions with people I love and adore and love to prop up and try and make better, pictures taken of my cats.

But there's also a lot not good.

Medications would help a little there, but, uh.

On that note.

I am beginning to hate my psychiatrist.

I knew going in, "this is either going to be an awesome one or a total whackjob/nutjob with literally no in-between those two extremes".

Continued deadnaming of me in spite of having seen them for multiple months, changing my last appointment to a telemedicine one without telling me, and then when I tried to contact them about their telemedicine today not working receiving nothing but radio silence means I have no refills for my medication because they didn't communicate with me at all.

So guess which I am leaning towards?

I just.

I need something good to get me in a better headspace.

​I lack that entirely right now.

It's a pipe dream because first it would require me to actually make Phyrra and Cyrus, but I actually managed to make a proper sequel to Phyrra and Cyrus!

Now, there was already a spinoff, Smoke Ling, son of a Gunther, covering the son of Gunther King Slayer, the second villain in Phyrra and Cyrus, appearing in the second season, the enemy of Bard. It covered things set about 20 years after the end of the main story of Phyrra and Cyrus (technically 80 years before the epilogue since the epilogue is 100 years from the ending of the main story).

This was a proper sequel, set hundreds of years into the future.

I have the worldbuilding set up.

I have the main character(s). This story would, instead of being an allegory for being trans, would be an allegory for plurality.

Just need to iron out the finer detail points.

​Speaking of plurality though, I owe a ramble on that, too.

I wanna tell the story of how I got ma'am'd for the first time ever, and how on Monday, at approximately a time between 8:10 and 8:30, the person who did so was asking for my help. I keep on playing through something I will never ever have the answer to, because the only person who could answer it was that random total stranger I will never ever meet again.

They were asking for help with gas. I keep on playing it through my head. Did I hang up the fuel line (ending my transaction) before or after the request? After would mean no help, before would mean I could've, but didn't. Did I misunderstand the request and they wanted me to use my credit card to pay for some gas which I could do at any time? Could I have rewarded them for correctly gendering me by doing something different? I will wrack my brain on this for god only knows how long, but I will never know.

It won't stop that from weighing on me tho.

In better news tho.

I got back into streaming after a 20 day drought. I should be getting my new stream schedule up, streaming tonight, creating a youtube, writing a script for youtube videos, updating linkedin, finishing work stuff, and streaming, but I am doing none of it. Tired, just not feeling up to it. I can't even properly tell the story I want to.

I did also come up with two item combos in League, albeit not for Ashe most games. Brainstorming the highest amount of damage which can be dealt, I wasn't sure if it would be (mostly) full lethality or (mostly) full crit against non-tanks, but I think the combo is Eclipse + LDR + BT + IE + Ravenous + sixth high-AD item (Navori probably), but I'm not positive.

Beyond that?

I got authorized to start HRT and am beginning it tomorrow!

You'd think that'd be a big thing; it is! I'm just a terrible blogger and can't really figure out how to write my mood into words right now.

​Sorry for being so lackluster.

...But turns out I do have some frustration.

I need a letter to certify that I am MtF to begin estrogen and up my dose of the T-blocker.

I was hoping that it could be done online, but it needs to be done in person. Meaning either my January 21st appointment, or if I can get a sooner behavioral mental health appointment.

Either way though, a bit frustrating.

Understandable, due to legal reasons.

But frustrating.

Tomorrow is my endocrinology appointment.

It was originally scheduled to be in-person, but then I got covid and tested positive for covid and thus, had to change the type of appointment.

While I was progressing under the prior endocrinologist, this is a new one thanks to the prior one retiring, so I am yet again facing the same fears as the last one: being gatekept.

Originally, by this time, I was meant to be on two pills and start taking estrogen.

But I am worried between it being a first visit, and being remote, that I might get gatekept and be delayed further.

I want to take the next steps so badly. I literally am double-padding bras and shaving twice daily and it's not good enough. I need more. I just...want things to be the way they should be.

​So here's to hoping.

...But I am working on being a much much better person overall.

There's still a lot of things I need to do.

I've been compiling a list of questions that I need to ask my supervisor at work.

I need to stay on top of a lot of stuff that, right now, I very much am not. (Showers and dental hygiene mostly, but also to some extent my lesser obligations.)

But while there's a boatload of stuff that I need to do.

I'm still making a lot of progress.

I'm hoping to commit to streaming with a schedule, 3 days a week (Wednesday night/Thursday morning, Thursday night/Friday morning, and Friday night/Saturday morning, all at circa 3-6 am, give or take an hour for both the start/end times being as early as 2 am starting or as late as 4 am starting and going until as early as 5 am but as late as 7 am).

I'm furthering my work as a content creator, too, by compiling an entire list of things I want to make.
I'm working a lot, so like.

I'm making progress!

I feel like I am taking control of my life.

Very very slowly.

I'm still not quite doing everything I want to be doing. Not doing the walking (which I desperately need to do because I have zero stamina right now and get out of breath quickly and winded easily) yet, not brushing daily, not showering as often as I want to, not staying on top of everything I want to be, but like.

I'm getting more and more and more with time.

So like.

I'm thinking.

I can do this.

Phyrra and Cyrus, my dream of dreams to make, might be a long long ways away, but it starts with doing what I am doing. I genuinely think that the best way for me to make Phyrra and Cyrus a reality is for me to get people hyped about me making a project. Which I do by getting people to know me and know what I am doing.

It's slightly roundabout, but I also need the skills I am setting out to acquire. Video editing for a start, also sound editing, also animation.

Now, for Phyrra and Cyrus, I will need to hire people better than I will be to do that sort of thing.

But I still think that the content creation ideas that I want to make involving teaching myself those things...
...Will make making Phyrra and Cyrus that much easier as I will be able to demonstrate what I want to create easier and have a better idea of what needs to be done and so on and so forth.

(Also on that note, I still need to write the blog I have on Phyrra and Cyrus. So I don't forget about it altogether, it involves our alchemist and her aesthetic and how she presents herself and the breakthrough I had there in realizing something about her but again, need to do that later, can't do it tonight.)

Side-note, today marks me completing the first stage of units in my Civ 3 mod.
Next up is the buildings/wonders (I won't need to make the wonders for every city yet but I do need to make the buildable wonders at the very least), and then the governments, and then the techs, and then revising the resources/units/buildings/wonders/governments to fit the techs, and then manually building the map.

All in all I'd say that I'm about 12.5% done with the mod since getting what I've gotten is a significant amount of the work but there's a looooot more to do there.

​Also also: refill of hormones picked up, but the T-blocker's not as effective as I'd prefer. After my psychiatry appointment in November, will be needing to go back to the endocrinologist about this.

I did good on my job interview, received validation of my gender identity, and got a lot done.
I think that's a good start!

Now granted.

Still got more to do and tomorrow I have another interview.

Butstill.

​Progress! Lots of it!

My father said that he would not offer to make me breakfast anymore and today had a general mood of grumpiness about him--if this is the extent of his reaction to what I said, then it's Poke the Poodle levels of harmless. I mentioned yesterday that if my father continued to be more bark than bite, that I owe him more or less an apology as he would not nearly be as bad as I thought.

However, the waters get a lot muddier when you realize that he also said, "last year, your mother was considering kicking you out of the house because you have no job. I was against the idea. Consider that and what you said." (or something to that effect, at least).

Now, that could still be harmless--it could be just a statement of, "I am better than you think I am.". If this is what he meant, then he would in fact be right! He would in fact be better than I thought he was if all his rhetoric comes down to lots of bark, no real bite. I would be all too happy to admit that I was too harsh to him.

However, I'm still concerned. Because while that's one possible interpretation of what he said, the other possible interpretation is that it is a threat; of 'I did not kick you out but I am reconsidering that now'. If that is what he meant, then my viewpoint is going to be a lot less inaccurate.

For the longest of times, I've thought: my father loves who he thinks I am, but would not love me as I actually am. If my father's all bark and no bite, that'd be proven mostly wrong. He'd never be truly accepting of me, but he'd still treat me as family.

But if my father's bark is backed up with bite and the statement was in fact a threat, then it would turn out I was right. If he was against kicking me out before he knew I am a girl but me being a girl is enough to make him reconsider, then it would seem I was not in fact wrong in my assessment.

​Unfortunately, only time will tell.

So I'll start with a note about my blog; it would appear that my fears of messing up past entries are, sadly, not unjustified and that entries can in fact lose stuff from my updating them with tags. It has, as far as I know, only happened to one entry, and it was only a loss of bold in emphasis that already had italics, so the original entry was still preserved as far as I know, but it still means I need to be very very cautious.

I am not going to stop the effort to update the blog, but I AM going to let you know that it happened.

As for the scary part, this has been the scariest day since coming out, for much the same reason--family.

My brother read my coming out post on linkedin and came over here absolutely furious. I didn't hear everything he said, I was wearing headphones both to protect me from my father's eating and also to protect me from my family:
Silence was what I thought was the best course of action, with silence being safety. I didn't want to be perceived. I didn't want to be seen. I didn't want to stir the hornet's nest. I didn't want to make tempers flare up.

So I did my best to make myself as small as possible. Invisible as possible. Scarce as possible. I did my best to draw my aura inward and make it be small. (I don't know if any of my viewers for this blog believe in auras that we exude, but I always feel like I radiate an energy. I usually am overflowing with it, and I can expand it, which makes me more noticeable when I do, and I reversed that process, shrinking it to be as small as possible.)

I turned out my light (so that my brother wouldn't come over to do that himself), I avoided eye contact, I wrapped myself in a blanket, I tried my best to basically be as nonexistent, non-present, as possible. Tuning them out and hoping that my lack of listening intently would register in them not perceiving me, a la "if I can't see them, they can't see me" in a not quite literal but more metaphorical sense.

All in the name of making sure I wouldn't face something even worse.

Some of the things that my brother said I had answers to, but I couldn't say them at the time for the above reason: I was so scared that I was afraid engaging the enraged individual was the worst possible course of action, and giving him answers was precisely that.

He asked me if I forgot that we were connected on LinkedIn. As a matter of fact: no, I did not in fact forget. It was, as far as I was concerned, a win-win. If he never viewed my coming out post on LinkedIn, then nothing would come of it. And if he did​ view the coming out post I made there, he would have me explaining things far, far better than I did on the night I came out, because I am more able to speak online than I am in-person especially when scared, stressed, etc.

I was counting on him having the ability to read it, because I knew that if he read it, he would have a better idea of where I stand, why I did what I did, what I was aiming for, what I intend to do, have better information on my perspectives, etc.

He was furious that I called my father a bigot, but that is objectively true, as is my callout of my fathers homophobia and transphobia. These are not things that are inaccurate. After all, the definition of bigot is: "a person who is obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction, especially one who is prejudiced against or antagonistic toward a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group."

My brother tonight literally showed precisely why that definition applies for the male members of my family. And the definition of homophobia/transphobia also is apt. "having or showing a dislike of or prejudice against gay people." and "having or showing a dislike of or prejudice against transsexual or transgender people." are precisely what has been displayed.

I could have said much much worse than I did and kept it mostly relative to the situation at hand. I could have said much much worse about my father and explained much much worse aspects of him in regards to others.

I did not, because I kept it mostly to only what was the relevant issue.

My brother wondered if I wanted to share what I said with the whole world--explicitly so, yes. I'm not an idiot. I know my family isn't going to spread the word to others that I have come out as a girl and that my name is Bree. I needed to take initiative in that regard and make sure nobody wouldn't know. I reached out to as many people as is humanly possible in as many ways as is humanly possible to ensure they had ways of knowing, because letting everyone know is the only way that it will get around.

​My brother basically called me a liar when I said that my father had, repeatedly, when I was a child threatened to throw me out if I "chose" (his words) to be gay. My father didn't remember telling me that, either. But I most definitely remember him telling that to me. Repeatedly. It stuck with me, burned into me, in ways that neither of them would know. I didn't misremember that. I didn't lie about that. I didn't misconstrue that. It happened, repeatedly, this threat.

My brother was also furious that what I said in such a public place could potentially jeopardize work potential for my father were that needed, or something to that effect. I admit that this is not something I have a good response to, as my response to it mostly boils down to: it wouldn't be a threat to him if he didn't actually hold those problematic viewpoints. If the entirety of the professional world refuses to hire (or fires) you because of things you have said/done and viewpoints you hold, there is probably a good reason for it.

So the way I see it: either there wouldn't be a consequence if the professional world saw it and didn't deem it unemployable (in which case no harm no foul) or if the professional world saw it and deemed it unemployable it could be fixed by just...reevaluating and reexamining your stances and wondering if holding that belief is truly worth losing a job.

Another thing I didn't get a good chance to say is that my viewpoint of my father has actually softened. He has been more bark than bite, not actually following through on threats. I'm concerned that my brother's outburst tonight might change that, with him taking action now that he is aware of what I said about him, but time will tell there:

If he takes actions, the words I said were justified and need no taking back.
If he doesn't take action, then I will admit the words I said were overly harsh. A verbal statement of a bigoted belief may be unpleasant but if left at nothing but being a verbal statement, it is MOSTLY harmless. (Not entirely harmless, but in the grand scheme of things, still mostly does little to no harm at least in comparison to having acted on those words.)

Until today, my father has entirely been the taking no action approach, just words with nothing beyond the words. If that continues, then my softened stance on him will continue to soften. I can amend what I've said on him before, to note that while there is still a lot of bad, there is a lot less bad than I thought, and a fair amount of good as well.

I can maybe forgive him, even, and more or less manage to overlook the flaws in favor of, maybe, eventually, with a great deal of time to mend emotional scars, find flawed-familial-love for him. If it remains true that his bark is worse than his bite, that he says words but won't act on any of them. 

I can apologize for a fair amount of what I have said. It may or may not still be true, depending on the nature of what I apologize for having said, but I feel like if there is genuinely not as much malice as I assumed, I owe at least that much for words spoken while under the assumption of malice being present.

That might not make much sense, people might think I am being overly forgiving for behavior that shouldn't be overly forgiven, but I promise you it's not, it makes sense in my head, I just don't have the words to quite explain the concept. It's basically:
If he's less bad than I thought, then he deserves acknowledgement for being less bad than I thought. Being less bad doesn't mean there's no bad but it still means the characterization of him being that bad is incorrect and would be worthy of remedy.

But this is only an if he is less bad than I thought.

With my father's vague statement of him changing his approach/mindset, I'm not sure what will happen. If he displays malice towards me which was absent before, I apparently was dead on the money in having been rather justified in my characterization. Him not having shown the malice before doesn't make the characterization wrong if after a little provocation of me expressing myself and being honest is enough to cause malice.

But if he doesn't change for the worse, if he remains the same, then I am fully ready, willing, and actually kinda desperate in wanting to change my characterization of him. If there is no malice to be had, then my assumption there would be malice was wrong, and I want to make that adjustment.

​Unfortunately, I don't know, yet. It's really up to him I suppose. We'll have to see, moving forward. What he does in the near future makes a difference so all I can do is wait on him to see what his attitude is.

Another thing my brother was upset about was that I have said things across multiple social media platforms, the scope and scale of which he doesn't know and callouts of familial matters there are things he feels I should not have shared.

​To be blunt though. It's about my life and I can share any aspect of my life with anyone in any medium I choose--including my interactions with family, my experiences with them, my expectations of them, what I am afraid of from them, what I have seen from them, etc. Anything they do or say in my presence is just as much owned by me as it is owned by them, because it was done or said in my presence.

If they have things they wish to do or say that they do not wish to leave the family, then they should either ask for it not to be shared and/or have less family involved in it. Basically if they don't want me to say I have heard them say bad things, then they should not say those bad things in my presence, is what I mean.

If they do say those bad things in my presence, then I have the right to share them in the manner I see fit. I do not share everything about my family to everyone. I only share what I feel I need to share, what is pertinent to share, what is relevant to share, what is necessary to share. I often leave out details deliberately so as to retain some modicum of privacy and decency and respect to my family.

But ultimately, my life is MY life, and interactions with my family are still part of MY life. They are also part of THEIR lives, sure, so not sharing every aspect of those interactions is fair enough. But when the interaction is important enough, I am not going to keep it secret just because they had a part in it.

I realize I did not hear all of my brother's ranting. I did not hear all of his complaints. I did not hear everything he was mad at. I could have misheard some of what he said, misinterpreted some of what he said. And even IF I addressed everything he was mad at and did so without having misheard or misinterpreted him, there's no guarantee that if he heard my defense of my actions that he'd be satisfied.

In fact he'd probably only get even angrier than he already was. Any point I didn't hear, extra anger. Any point I misheard, extra anger. Any point I misinterpreted, extra anger. And every addressing, extra anger. Heck, he'd probably get angry that I am in my public blog stating that I am anticipating he'd be angry.

But I still felt like I should write it down all the same.

He can call me a traitor all he wants; he can call me an ingrate all he wants. But I am staying true to myself. I am staying true to the path I have chosen for my future, at least to the best of my ability. I was already prepared for him to say I am not family anymore. I have been ready for that for years. I knew it would happen when I came out and I knew I was not going to live my whole life without having come out so I knew it was going to happen.

Ultimately however. I stand by what I am saying. I am staying true to myself. If he cannot accept me as I am, then the burden of that is never on me. He can believe I am making a mistake. He can believe that I have betrayed the family. But ultimately, those are his beliefs, and no matter how much he believes them, they have zero impact on the truth and they have zero impact on me or my path.

After all, if being true to myself, and being honest about being true to myself, and pursuing being true to myself, is enough to make me a traitor to my family...then that's not exactly a family worth calling family, now, is it? I know I am a girl. I know my name is Bree. I am determined to pursue transitioning. I am determined to be known to the entire world as Bree.

​This will happen no matter what. My family cannot stop me. They have a choice in whether to accept my path or to reject me, but that is their choice. Not mine.

Amazing what one day of, so to speak (and I do ask for a pardon on the language, I don't usually cuss especially on here but it's an expression), "getting your shit together", can do to make your life less of a hot mess.

Now, granted.

I had very strong incentive to do so.

I needed to catch up on my emails in order to get into my online health stuff, which I needed to access in order to schedule my endocrinology appointment, which is how I start a physical transition.

And I did so (well, mostly; still have some work-related emails from my mom I should read, whoops, forgot about them), meaning that I will be starting my physical transition a little less than a month from now if all things go well.

I still have a long ways to go before I get everything more or less on top of. There's still a bunch of things that I need to accomplish and it's a long list--but I have started it and I am making very good progress on it. I am actually close to being where I need to be, and that's better than I've been in literally months.

I am slowly retaking control of my life, and that is a goal I have had all year long.

It's slow progress. Two steps forward, one step back. The step back each time being rather costly, not insignificant, not something trivial, but the two steps forward also being the same, being important steps towards the future I want to build for me.

I have to keep moving forward.

Tho I should also note.

In spite of the need to look forward, I am doing work towards looking to the past--via slowly updating the blog's archives with tags. I had to revisit the first month of my blog because I realized I had use for a 'food' tag and this may continue to happen if, when I am doing tagging work in the archives, I realize "okay this is a tag that I actually need" and new tags mean that even after I get to blogs that have tags, I need to add any new tags that weren't there that would've been there had I had the tag earlier.

Examples of this include my The Descended tag (the tag used for the webcomic I have the most work on aside from Red Hood Rider) and the Pets tag (why tf did I not already HAVE that tag and only think of it a few days ago???), but also this is the whole reason I want to embark on this endeavor, as it also covers the birth of Phyrra and Cyrus.

Phyrra and Cyrus were not tagged with that tag, because at the time I didn't know how much of the blog would have them in it--it was only later, after much much work was done, that I added the tag and did not apply it retroactively. I want to have, via the Phyrra and Cyrus tag, an easy to access list of every blog entry I made there.

This, while technically a look at the past, is still a look towards the future.
Because if I have an ease of access for all the Phyrra and Cyrus content, that makes it easier for me to work on that project in the future.

Which I still have an ambition of doing.

I've got other things right now that are higher priority and I don't know how I will actually pull off Phyrra and Cyrus. But I want to make them real.

I don't think anyone really thinks I will make them real. For a start, thinking I will make the colliniverse real requires you to know I have thought up the colliniverse (the name of the universe for Phyrra and Cyrus since INFINIverse and variants thereof are sadly already taken) in the first place, which only a select few do.

And even if you did know, do you believe that someone with no experience, no credentials, and no money, with zero experience or real ability to edit or animate can, with their amateurish scriptwriting (which is a form of writing they have zero real experience with), manage to make an entire Animated Series from scratch?

You'd have to be delusional to think it could be done.

And realistically speaking, most of the time I am not delusional. Meaning most of the time, I don't believe I can actually do it. After all, I've got nothing. No connections in the industry. No education in any aspect of the industry. No manager to help me manage things. No clue how to make it happen. No idea how to get the funds necessary, no idea how to present a project that can be funded and to get the funds without having gotten the project done, leading to a loop of "can't fund the project without showing it to the world, can't show the project without funding".

How could I believe in me to be able to do that? I can't, most of the time. And if I can't, why should someone else? Why should someone else believe in me when I don't believe in myself?

But I still want to try. You fail every shot you don't take, so a shot at success is better than no shot at success from having not tried at all.

And right now I am, perhaps due to the euphoria of the chance to start transitioning: feeling rather delusional. So I think I can do it. I can have it all: transition, and make my work a reality for everyone to see. Are the chances of this high? No, but they're not nonexistent, either.

It can be done, smartly, methodically.

I don't have a plan yet because, again: I have some more important, bigger things on my mind at the moment, understandably so.

But sooner rather than later, when I have a better hold on my life and future, I want to steer that future towards making a difference, in a big way rather than a small way. Being parts of communities and spreading positivity within them is nothing to be laughed at; it's nothing to brush off, it's something significant, but it is in the grand scheme of things still smallscale.

And there's nothing wrong with making a difference on the smallscale, is better than not making a difference at all and is better than making things worse.

But I still have the ambition to make things better in a big way.

It all starts with taking control of my life.

And that starts with me transitioning.

Which I am getting closer to, now that I've booked that endocrinologist appointment.