Hello, beautiful people. I'm interrupting this period of silence with a brief update. The absence is due to a rather inconvenient truth in my life. My job has become a burden, with overtime and long hours of assuming the position of data manipulator, extraordinaire. By the time I'm done with my long day, my neck and shoulders are screaming, and the computer is the last thing I'm interested in touching. (I've got much more interesting and fun things in my life to touch!) I have been longing for future days of voice recognition and digital communication via a more body-friendly means to enable this blogging inquiry to occur more frequently. I'd rather write with a pen...really! Keyboards and mice are useful, unless you're forced to use them more than eight hours a day. Then they are implements of torture. Seriously.

Anyways...I have many things on my mind. Topics on which I would love to muse. Perhaps I'll find the time and energy soon; perhaps you'll not read much more until October, the light at the end of this tunnel.

Briefly:

The 6th annual Gender Odyssey transgender (FTM) conference in Seattle on Labor Day weekend gave me the insight that being transgendered or cross-gendered is no longer my primary identity. I found myself disillusioned with the content, which seemed to focus on struggle, pain and survival more than hope and celebration. Surely the limited view I was exposed to and my interior reality were key in that experience of it. It's seemed as though the hope and celebration were carried by those who are just finding and/or embracing their authentic selves and finding community as they are lifted out of fragmentation and isolation, and the struggle and pain comes after the acceptance of self brings forth a deep resentment towards society and conventional norms. I was deeply disturbed by some of the art on display which expressed the isolation, anger and resentment experienced by many trans youth. The pain vibe was more than I could bear at times, and I ended up wanting alone time with Melissa, hanging out near the Sound, for more than half of the weekend. There's some deep wounds there, ya'll. Ouch.

The recent release of the letters of Mother Teresa have had a significant impact on me. That she persisted in her service commitment made to Jesus Himself (from her perspective) in the absence of a felt sense of union strikes me both as a phenomenal example of placing others before self (or others as the Body of Christ) and a fascinating exploration of deprivation and desire.

My relationship with money has been obviously transforming over the last month. I have had a strained relationship with money. It has never been abundant in my life (though I've always had enough), and I have occasionally resented that. Spending money has rarely been pleasurable because it often comes with voices of scarcity. The reality is that I have nearly always been on a budget. After a couple of years of joint income and paying down debt aggressively, we finally got to a position of being relatively debt free, and then Melissa was laid off. Now she's in graduate school. The belt has been tighter for nearly a year. And with that has come those voices. And then one day about a month ago we were eating at one of our favorite local restaurants, and I felt how grateful the owners were that we were there. In a flash, I switched from thinking about how little was left in the checking account to thinking about how I was sharing abundance with this neighbor by passing money to him and his family in exchange for the service he was providing. And this is the focus I've increasingly been taking when we do spend money. I pay different attention to how and where I spend it, feeling that each choice creates karma. I am grateful for this shift in one of the few remaining areas in which I experience strife. Now I'll just manifest this livelihood shift, and I'll be making really great progress!

Young woman, Big City: My step-daughter is sleeping in her first apartment for the first time tonight in Seattle with Melissa after driving up in a UHaul today. The child (she's almost 20) is taking her first steps into the big world on her own, and we couldn't be more thrilled. It's exciting to watch her set off towards unknown adventures. And it's fantastic that Melissa and I are setting out on our own new adventure, experiencing life as two adults without children living at home. It's a significant event for all three of us.

That's it for now. I can't say when the next post will be. I'm out here living it.

Be well and love each other...