I'm going to write more

I don’t really enjoy that conservative politicians get to tell the story of what I do in a day

I’m looking to write more these days for a couple of reasons. One, because the world seems pretty set on making sure I use the men’s bathroom and that my child loses access to gender-affirming care, which makes it pretty easy to want to yell all the time, and B, because writing helps me calm down and exercise my brain in helpful ways.

Close to 20 years ago I set out to write and publish a story every day for 365 days in a row. I am not going to give myself the same challenge this time, because iii: my brain does not work the way it did it my late-20s and I don’t want to think of myself as failing if I miss a day, but I AM going to try and write here more frequently. I have a new account on Bluesky now too (yes please do follow!) which has helped me get back to sharing things a little more comically and lightly.

When I write more, I also tend to learn more. I don’t scroll the webs as much, I read more instead and try to analyze it and form responses to it. I am more interested right now in analyzing and responding to this world than I am seeing it and crying (although I will cry too).

I don’t have a list of what to write about. I don’t know if I’ll be angry or sad or happy or disturbed, but I know I want to write. I want to be a visible trans person who just exists every day. I don’t always want to be writing about how hard things can be, but also how happy things can be. And sometimes, I just want to write about going for a damn walk or something.

I think that’s something that goes missing when trans people get talked about somehow. Even though things like going to the bathroom is one of the most talked about aspects of a trans person’s life, we tend to overlook the idea that for the most part, trans people just live their lives as boringly as everyone else. Things like falling asleep at 8 p.m., sneaking cookies from my kid’s lunch, watching televisions as soon as I get home, and hitting snooze eight times before getting out of bed makes up most of my life. I don’t really enjoy that conservative politicians get to tell the story of what I do in a day (apparently wait to send my kid to school to have their body mutilated, wait in bathrooms to assault people, and participate in women’s sports to unfairly to take away opportunities from blonde white girls), so I’ll just share what I actually do in an honest way.

So that’s that. If you already subscribe here, hopefully you don’t feel overwhelmed by this proposition of more and more writing, and if you do, I sincerely apologize. And if you are reading this as a non-subscriber and thinking “golly, sign me up,” well…