If you haven't read the stuff I've done, for example, before, then let me fill you in: I used to do an obsessive weblog journal thing that I updated between a couple times a week and five or six times a day, depending on how much I was bugging out or how much I was depressed or whatever. Updating this often...

Okay, let me back up. Hopefully this will make sense. Consider dreams. I'm pretty sure everybody has had dreams that were scary- I mean, fucking terrifying- that you've tried to explain, and it just wouldn't work: "It was a train, man, but it had a face, and it was smiling, for fuck's sake." Or something. Here is what I think: The way dreams work is, you're asleep. Your brain is still working, having chemical impulses and things going on, and one of these chemical impulses is fear. Or horror, or whatever. And since your conscious, word-using, sense-making mind is sort of off, or in auxiliary mode, you have these fear impulses, and then your conscious mind needs to justify them, so it just comes up with something; a train, the moon, anything. It imbues whatever little image or plot or whatever with the original emotion, and that whole mess mutates into the scary dream. The important thing to remember is that it starts with an emotion, and then the conscious mind hangs a literal word-and-concept-oriented meaning to it.

I am generally depressive. Further, I am not particularly comfortable in a classically masculine role; I'm frustrated and a little bit angry that a chromosome, a penis, is supposed to determine my aesthetics, how I present myself, the clothes I wear and the way I behave. Call me an artist, but I thought we were allowed to choose- or at least, have some leeway- what we like, from movies and TV to painting and other visual art, all the way to personal expression. It's a continuum and it's all the same thing anyway, right?

Maybe unrelatedly, I find myself depressed a lot. I'm dysthymic, which- since it has a name- sounds like it's a real thing, something serious and medicatable or something, although it really just means generally predisposed to melancholy. So it's easy for me to be sad. Elsewhere at this site I think I talked a little bit about the relationship I was in, before, when I was doing all my online journaling; that contributed to and reinforced my sense of melancholy. I think it was really easy for me to hang that pervasive sadness on the fact that my aesthetics run to the opposite of what society tells me they're supposed to: I like having lavender fingernails, being skinny and not taking up space, aesthetically I think long skirts are cool. Journaling obsessively about it, seeing it everywhere because it was always at the front of my mind because I was journaling about it all the time, talking to people who, you know, were fascinating and cool and who kept gender in my head... you know, it wouldn't leave. I was obsessing, I was letting myself obsess, instead of actually, you kow, doing anything.

I mean, I was calling myself transsexual when the only step I'd taken toward it was growing my hair out. Pssh. That's nothing. And my constant inaction toward actually doing anything depressed me and started the cycle over again, reinforcing things.

So what happened was: I started, half-assed, experimenting. Womens' shirts and nail polish. This started a couple weeks before I broke up with my ex and ended that unhealthy relationship. And experimenting a little bit, buying bracelets and tight shirts, it kind of became apparent to me- no, not "kind of" at all, very much- that transsexuality per se wasn't the issue. Gender is certainly an issue in my life, but not in the way I'd let it be when it was all I was thinking about. And now, semi-paradoxically, now that I'm actually expressing gender-interestingness, it's not such an issue. I have a girlfriend who was going to buy me a tiara to wear on my birthday; that doesn't mean I have to get on hormones. She bought my the nail polish I'm wearing right now, because she saw it ant id reminded her of me; man, it sounds like I'm defining myself off her- hi- but I'm just using this to illustrate, man, things aren't as rigid as I'd always figured they were before I started testing them.

...Right, so the other thing, which is less resolved but which, you know, I'm working on, is transvestism. See, I can't deny that there's an erotic attachment to gender transgression, and that there are clothes that- uh- DO it for me, you know? But it's become apparent that "transvestite" is a painfully incorrect word for it, because gender transgression doesn't have to involve clothing at all. And gender transgression- not specific lingerie or something- is what turns me on. I mean, I'm attracted very much to some ideas of classical femininity, but I mean, I'm attracted to other things, to. You know?

So it's all up in the air, still, and probably forever. But I'm feeling a lot more liberated and a lot less oppressed. By myself or anything. And you know, like I said elsewhere at this site, I doubt I'll ever be content with my own expression, but that's okay. I doubt anybody is: we could all lose weight or wear skirts more often or have clearer skin or something. Right? So, that's what's up. Post-modern gender de-emphasis via expression of something.

Something something something. If this sounds like a bunch of nonsense, or if you think I'm an idiot- or a genius, hell, either way- you can always e-mail me.

Oh right! So the point of all this is, this site you're looking at right now? It's not going to have a regularly updated journal thing. I may set up something where I can spit out ideas or something, but online journaling has shown just to turn me self-obsessed and unhealthy, so I'm keeping my journaling to myself. I mean, doing this online, I was well-aware that my audience- besides myself- was almost solely people with their own gender issues. So that's what I figured would be important, and that was emphasised way above anything else, and I can't help but keep an audience in mind. So I'm going to keep to myself for now, and figure things out more evenly, deal with everything. Not specialize. I told you I was into buddhism.