Last night was the big fundraising and show-opening benefit. I ended up working for a little over 14 hours, from shortly before 10AM until just about midnight.
The building was closing at midnight, which meant that everyone needed to be out. I remember (and text messages with coworkers confirm) that at about 11:40PM there were still maybe a dozen people in our very small office. I apparently decided that it would be a good idea to sing a version of “All Around the Mullberry Bush” that culminated with me yelling “BECCA NEEDS YOU TO GET OUT OF THE BUILDING!” I was not drunk – I’d had a single small drink – but I was extremely tired.
My boss was there, but took slight mental breakdown with good humor.
I’ve started looking for a new job. This was an extremely hard decision for me to come to, as there are lots of things I like about my current job: I’m working in the arts, I really like my immediate coworkers, it’s a pretty laid-back office environment, I have some nice perks (like free classes), and I’m damn good at it. But the drawbacks have started to feel like they outweigh the positives. Namely, my bosses and the fact that I’ve been there since before transitioning, and feel trapped in that history of my pre-transition self.
Today, though, I’m going to try and start thinking about looking for a new job as an opportunity to look for something, rather than run away from something.
Continue reading 'Looking forward instead of back'»
My job allows students to take classes for barter, meaning they have to do one hour of work for us for every hour of class time. The work varies – it’s usually filing in the office, but sometimes it’s painting sets, helping clean storage, helping to manage the first day of class, and so on.
We have one barter student, I’ll call him Steve, who is a bit much. He’s really friendly, and very enthusiastic about helping out. He loves taking classes and, without a doubt, is dedicated to doing whatever job is given to him. And yet…
Continue reading 'Hugsent (hug consent)'»
I work in a city-owned building, where artists and arts organizations rent out rooms. This morning, I went to the building office to pick up a replacement key for a door whose locks had changed. (Because the city is master of all locks, and in charge of keys.) I’m friendly with the building secretary, JS, and when I went to pick up the key she said she was annoyed with EU, a friend of mine who also works in the building and had put in the replacement key request for me. (Isn’t bureaucracy awesome?)
I asked why, and she showed me the key request EU had put in. Specifically, my name.
“(Old name)/Rebecca”
That’s right, EU had put my male name -slash- Rebecca.
Continue reading 'One Step Back, One Step Forward'»
So, as I mentioned, I was groped at a work event last weekend by someone, D, who was volunteering (and sometimes worked for us). I talked about it with my coworkers and my bosses, all of whom agreed it was super-creepy, totally unacceptable, and needed some sort of response from the organization.
Well, today the special events director, RW called the guy who did it. She started the conversation something along the lines of, “So I wanted to discuss the…incident…that happened this past weekend at the benefit. Do you know what I’m talking about?”
At that point, D responded, “Wait, are you joking? You mean when I grabbed [male name]’s fake boob?”
The full story below…
Continue reading 'Do I feel better or worse?'»
Sorry for the title, but I couldn’t come up with a good rhyme… Although RhymeZone.com suggests ‘lesser,’ ‘professor,’ ’successor,’ and ‘air compressor’ as possible alternatives… (Also, sorry for being remiss in posting. I think the big reason for that is all the stuff listed below.)
Anyway, I’ve been stressing: having trouble getting to sleep, feeling nervous and panic-y, all the stuff I was talking about in early December.
I realized one of the things that helped me then was listing all the stressors, so I figured I’d try that again now:
- Relationship/transitioning issues with G
- Feeling like I don’t have enough time for all the things in my life and for myself. ‘All the things in my life’ includes:
- Monday: Therapy
- Tuesday: Workshop rehearsal for the piece I’m directing (and now, conflicting, a weekly theatre thing with friends)
- Wednesday: Trans youth group
- Thursday: Workshop class I’m teaching (starts next week)
- Friday: Blissfully nothing, and the stress of using downtime ‘well’
- Saturday: A class I’m taking; more Workshop rehearsal
- Sunday: Rehearsal for a friend’s recital piece that I don’t really want to do but am doing as a favor to her
- (And, of course, a full-time job)
- Money, specifically paying off hair removal (3/4 of the way there, but I want it off my back)
- Buying a new wardrobe (partially linked to ‘money’; I have, like, six or seven tops that I can reasonably wear to work that I just keep cycling through)
- Feeling insecure in the transition (to be the subject of a longer post, one of these days)
Boo! Stress, stress, go away, and don’t come back another day!
-R
Today was my first day at work as R and, all in all, the experience was sort of surreal. It didn’t help that I had a bad time getting to sleep last night (though I slept fine once I was asleep) and I had a lot of stuff to get through today (including fighting with the Internet at the office for two hours).
Basically, I think it was the experience of having something that’s been so private and so personal for my entire life suddenly become something that’s not only very public but (fortunately) not really a big deal to the people around me. That is, they’re supportive and they care because it’s important to me, but don’t care because it’s ‘weird’ or anything.
I’m also aware that it wasn’t really suddenly, since I’ve been out to most of these people for months and going by R today was the result of a gradual process and conversation. But still…it felt pretty damn sudden.
I mean, shit…I’m living full time now. I will now be spending more of my time interacting with the world as R than not!
Aaaand now I’ve gotten myself in a panic because I hadn’t thought about things in those terms before. Ah, good…
I should go play some Rock Band 2 that I just bought! Rock on!
-R
I’m going into work as R tomorrow! Like, at my job! What the hell am I doing?!
I’m mostly sure it’ll be a good experience, but I’m still having a little bit of panic about it…
-R
Coming out to my highschool class ended up going pretty well. The board member liaison and I hashed out language for the email and letter going to parents, which included (basically) the following bathroom language:
We are sure some of you are curious about the restrooms facilities at our building, and we would like to reassure you that there are both public and private restrooms available.
Basically, this was a compromise to not explicitly indicate that I’d be using a private bathroom (I won’t be) but to let parents think that if they want, and let them tell their kids to use the private bathroom if need be. I still didn’t like it, but was willing to agree to it in the interest of diplomacy and compromise.
Continue reading 'One down, oh-so-many to go…'»
Unfortunately, it’s of stresses, not of how I judge the children I’ve been spying on all year long. (A subject for another post!)
- Transitioning at my full-time job, because I still need to talk to my occasionally-less-than-sane bosses (who I’m out to, but who I doubt have thought about the ramifications of my being trans…)
- Transitioning at my part-time job, because even though I’ve been there for a million years (first as a student, now as a teacher) and the staff and artistic director are being crazy-supportive, their board of directors is being somewhat weird. I think it’s out of trying to protect everyone involved – me, the rest of the staff, the students, their parents, and the organization as a whole – but meeting being told they met with a labor lawyer still doesn’t make me feel all warm and fuzzy…
- How all of the transitioning stuff affects G and I. This is stressing me less than it had been, since we’re talking about things now, rather than always Talking about Things.
- G and my relationship, having nothing to do with transitioning – she’s working on a show right now and we haven’t had much time together. Also better than it has been, but I’m still ready for her show to be done.
- Stress at work having nothing to do with transitioning, but due to my (again) occasionally-less-than-sane bosses and, among other things, the new website that was supposed to launch yesterday and did not.
- Dealing with the theatre company some friends and I started last year and trying to figure out A) what I can contribute (currently I’m not contributing much) and B) what I need to get out of it (currently I’m not getting much out of it either)
Phew! No wonder I’ve been stressed!
-R
coming out, emotion, mundane, random, the workshop, theatre, transitioning
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emotion, relationship, stress, transitioning, work
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