Gender Jumper

genderjumper @ 2026-04-11T23:42:00

2026-04-12T05:33:15Z

In their infinite thoughtfulness, flamingsword and others recently encouraged me to write my life story/ies here because there is still so much to learn about each other. I found it a delightful motivation, particularly when they requested "the Bildungsroman of your oppressed childhood?"

But if I was going to start such a project, I had to make sure I wasn't repeating other stories, and I found I'd written way more here than I recalled!

So here is a rough anthology of posts I've already make that would fall under "A Thousand Ways to Tell a Life Story":

Adverse Childhood Experiences
Burnout
Homes
Sleep
My fam-o's great expectations for me
Alcohol (I called it a "Culture Catalogue" there)
Friendships
Jobs & Employment

And as a treat, here's the first time I wanted to grieve my lost chance to move to Chicago.

I also cleaned up my tags (though I only got through the I's so probably needs a lot more work); as they get streamlined better they should help me as the writer and yall as readers to seek out specific topics more quickly. One thing I have not streamlined yet is which posts are public and which are access-only, so I apologize in advance if something isn't showing up for you. That's a DW etiquette thing I'm still learning.

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The Ten Thousand Things

2026-04-04T06:19:13Z

New ideas for storytelling I want to develop here (as practices toward future memoiring endeavors):

A Thousand Ways to Tell a Life Story: wherein I pick some recurring element of my life and recount touchpoints. Examples include:

karaoke
road trips
singing
autism (I know flamingsword wants to see that one)
etc.

and

A Thousand Lives to Tell a Story: building on my idea that though interesting things happen to me, my story is the least important to tell, this is just a catchy way to describe that process (and a nice counterbalance to the first idea.

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Pre-Internet Enshittification (a near-verbatim poesy?)

2026-04-01T07:51:07Z

( not rhyming tho )

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Memory Glitch

2025-12-16T07:08:30Z

Today we had a little power blip, so my computer (usually left on overnight) had to be turned on.

When I did, it sounded too quiet.

Where was the whir?

The screen stayed blank longer than usual (probably some background tests), but everything looked fine as soon as it loaded.

I stood vigil while it fully booted, turned it off, and turned it on again. No whir, no evidence of problems. I turned it off again until I was ready.

When I came back, I let it load and plugged in my external drive. Time to back up everything again, just to be safe. Took a few hours. But at the end, both devices seemed perfectly content.

I turned it off when I went out for a while. Turned it on once more, no problems, but still no whir. Opened the side panel and looked around. Not a lot of lights to indicate problems (this model is over a decade old), but definitely some dust. And three small fans, all running quietly. I looked around for extra drives (I've had it so long I start to forget specs), but everything was accounted for: one hard drive, three fans, one empty DVD-ROM, nothing else that would have made a lot of noise. I blew some canned air around and put things back, promising to keep an eye out.

It's occurred to me slowly over a few hours that some combination of helping Nesting Partner with her computer and the constant hum of A/C, air purifiers, and other computers around the house may have displaced me in time. As I thought about it more and more, I realized the "whir" I sought was probably from an earlier computer, probably my last desktop (purchased in 2001 -- I was so excited to keep MP3s for the first time!).

Sure, I'm a little behind on sleep and our fancy new Aranet says my whole house has too much CO2 concentration, but did I really just make up a memory from another era of my life?

It's not just that. I got a massage on Saturday, and was reminded of my regular LMT from caregiving days. I finally remembered her last name (a couple months ago I could not), but now whenever I try to picture her, her image starts to merge with that of my 8th grade English Teacher. Sure, they were probably about the same age when I knew them and roughly the same skin tone, hair, and build. But their personalities were night and day different, and I'm a little upset that I can't see her face. I wish we'd taken a picture together at some point, but I wish I could see the correct face.

Maybe this is something that happens when we age or maybe this is another tiny whisper of a future crescendo toward cognitive decline. As I've written about before, I have enough personal and academic knowledge of dementia to suspect that I'd be able to watch it in real time if it ever happens to me. Most people's brains start changing twenty years before symptoms become noticeable, but most people aren't as attuned to their own experiences and interiorities as I am and most who have been probably weren't tracking it closely to a specific illness.

I fancy myself a storyteller, and my recent urges toward writing are as much about recording what I can as they are about giving my brain a healthy balance of stimulation. I think I've had a unique vantage point on this empire of ours, and if our history were ever told the way we tell Roman history, the best and most important lives would be lost. But if these stories start blurring together a little too often or contradicting accounts of other people who were there, I want to be able to own that, too.

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Love Story: We Started Nothing

2025-08-11T08:05:18Z

When we met, it was in a room full of peers, all flirty and attractively weird teens trying out for a recurring drama project. Then there was summer training and monthly meetings, intimate spaces where people laid in each other's laps and understood stillness. Then there were actual performances, though I barely remember us going together, and then our open house with family, which I missed for some devastating reason. I had a crush on her, but I had a crush on almost every girl in the room. I just loved the proximity of it all.

We stayed connected in the interim year, but nothing frequent or deep. She didn't come back while I was lost and afraid and just kept showing up without ever really asking the director. She, now a junior, was busy with her own school's theater program; I, a recent graduate who had failed to get into my dream school or have a backup plan, was languishing in limbo, from the minimum wage job to the clinically depressed girlfriend-roommate.

It wasn't until I was finally away at NYU that she told me. We were chatting on AIM about my new girlfriend (not the depressed one, but a respectable one who never really asked me, just sort of started calling me her boyfriend and I didn't argue). She was flirting, like we did, but when I laughed it off she clapped back:

"I'm serious. I was in love with you, ___ ___." Full name and everything.

I couldn't tell if she was hurt, only that she was serious. I was so stunned I didn't ask any of the questions in my mind. I just took a dramatic breath (this was before the days when you could see someone was typing a response) and answered,

"Then I'm the fool." Lacking any finesse whatsoever, I told her that I didn't think my new relationship would last very long and maybe some day we could find out what was possible.

We didn't really discuss it after that, but we didn't communicate any less, either. My first year at NYU was the first time I ever had high speed internet, and I chatted at least as many words as I expositioned. She wasn't even the only person to dance along the boundary between "proper" and "improper" monogamy (the month would turn into six years, but I would make it five before full-on cheating on her). But I started to get a sense of her as a person and I wanted to know more.

But we did share secrets, we discussed sex and desire, and we continued to tapdance around the boundary of flirtation that was neither harmful nor harmless.

My first winter break, we ended up spending New Year's Eve together -- not just New Year's Eve, but Y2K. My best friend from high school came along and we just wandered the park, watching people and fireworks and cutting up. We took wild photos in a statuesque nook. Her playfulness was endless. I

(It has only been in recent years that I realized I might have or could have loved that friend -- not the cop, but the fluffy learner -- romantically, as we met years before I allowed myself sexual thoughts about a guy.)

When the night came to an end, I think I used the magnitude of the occasion and the world not ending (...it was a thing... you kind of had to be there...) to surprise myself and her by kissing her goodbye. It wasn't even midnight. I don't know what I told the cop (he knew I had a girlfriend out East and he would forever be a stickler about monogamy). I just had to let her know that I saw it, too, some kind of spark.

The next time I saw her was the following year (summer I think); she'd had breast reduction surgery to reduce her back pain and I came by to wish her well. It was the first time I'd been inside her large, expensive home, or met any of her family. I didn't stay long, and I didn't kiss her goodbye.

And from there, we just lived our separate lives. We stayed in touch on AIM, and I kept her cell number long enough to put her in my first several phones (I didn't get one until the summer I graduated NYU and moved to D.C.). Our paths never crossed and our conversations didn't spark potent memories.

Until...

One day near the start of summer, I was scrolling through my phone and talking about all the old numbers that remained there. I was talking to someone, but I couldn't tell you who. It was 2008, ten years since the drama troupe and eight since Y2K. I'd been to D.C. and back, finished my 6 years with my college sweetheart, and was two years deep into nonmonogamy. I was depressed that year, grieving a heartbreak the previous winter, and not dating as much as I had in previous years. I was looking for connection. I was curious about that sparkle.

On a whim, I texted her. She didn't recognize the number, but it was still her line. She said she was glad to hear from me, and almost immediately suggested meeting up. She sent me a picture and I barely recognized her. She explained that after the breast reduction, she'd made some different life choices, lost weight, and kept it off. I confess I was a little disappointed; not only was she just about the most attractive person of size I'd ever met, but I had way more experience connecting with fat people than thin people. I couldn't put it into words, especially since I was still pretty thin myself by most accounts, I just knew I had an easier time relating to people who had come to terms with their imperfect bodies than those who never had to.

The intimidation only got worse when we met at Barnes & Noble. I had recently started to develop a working knowledge of zodiac signs, and all I can say is that she was extremely Virgo (my opposite sign, which can evoke dangerous attraction among other things). Just when I thought she'd become coiffed and aristocratic (like the sexy, expensive dress that clung to her thighs), she'd inject the best kind of chaos (like telling me that she'd taken her panties off due to VPL). I had absolutely no idea who this person was, but I couldn't look away.

I told her about New York, D.C., and polyamory. She told me about learning to reckon with the body she had, and her college days. She now worked in high end catering, and had recently started a relationship. We wandered the aisles and commented all the way. It was hard to look away, but sometimes it was hard to absorb this new version of her. I took strange solace in the thin smile lines on her face, a lingering artifact of the cheeks I remembered.

Over the PA came a powerful album intro that distracted me for a couple of tracks. When I confessed this to her, she grabbed my hand and marched me over the the music counter to ask the cashier. The cashier had picked it herself, and showed us the CD on display. I bought it immediately. This totem gave me strength, all the more as it continued playing overhead.

"I feel like I owe you an apology," I blurted at no point in particular.

"For what?"

"I feel like I didn't really make much sense back in the day. Like, New Year's Eve, when I kissed you. Like maybe I led you on and never showed up for you."

She turned her head but grinned potently. "Don't you remember what you told me? After?"

"After New Year's? No, I don't remember at all."

"When you got back to New York, you messaged me and you said, 'Thank you.' You said that kissing me helped you realize that she was the one for you and that you were going to focus on being present for her."

Years later, I still have no memory of these thoughts, only of her repeating them back to me. "Wow, that was kind of an asshole thing to say."

(More than kind of...)

"Yeah."

She was not locked away, nor conflicted, but I had no idea how she was feeling.

I couldn't have put it into words at the time, but my journey was opening me up into an over-communicator, a processor, and a space-holder, and she neither wanted nor needed any of that. I'd never felt so hyper-aware of the class difference between us as I did walking around the parking lot of the richest mini-mall in town; besides the nicest B&N in town, there was a Williams-Sonoma, a Crate & Barrel, and clothing stores I'd never set foot in. We were much closer to her territory than mine. And however mystifying the dynamic and beguiling her slightly tamer eyes, this was the closest we'd ever get.

We hugged goodbye, a little stiffly. We added each other on Facebook. I think I dropped by her work to say hi once, but she wasn't in. She got married a couple years later to that guy she'd started seeing. When she got pregnant, her face filled out again.

I still think of her whenever the Ting Tings get stuck in my head.

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Am I Still a Good (Process) Writer?

2025-07-19T07:08:13Z

Poking at my resume, I looked up an old blog and was surprised to find it only contained a couple or three dozen entries. I ended up reading the first five entries or so and skimming the rest. And it got me thinking about how my mind used to race and interconnect ideas well enough to dash off 1000-word entries like that. (Not that I was ever much of a blogger... my output was too sporadic and often went far too long.)

I'm not surprised that my "voice" is so different -- the early entries sound so unlike me! But also, I had to ask myself if I keep telling myself and others what a good writer I am simply out of habit. What if that changed after my last illness? Or COVID? Or general disillusionment? As Janet Jackson might say, "What have you done for me lately?"

I think it'll take a few months to answer, but I needed to put the question out there.

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Two Sides of Mindfulness

2024-02-13T23:36:40Z

Sometimes, mindfulness looks like maintaining awareness of others, so when your best friend starts picking a fight because you reached out on a bad day, you don't take the bait, back away, and wish her well.

Sometimes, mindfulness looks like pacing around your kitchen, seething, forcing yourself not to yell at family members who you know - logically, at least - have done nothing wrong.

Mindfulness is about protecting yourself, but it is also about protecting others around you. Mindfulness is about knowing your surroundings, but also about knowing yourself.

I've spent the better part of the last year documenting hypomanic cycles that I've only recently realized as such. When I first told my therapist about ten years ago that I thought I had a mild form of bipolar that I keep in check through extreme self-control and consideration of others, she just said, "Yeah, that tracks," but it's only been these past 10 months or so that I realized that beyond circumstantial cycles - lack of sleep, grief, working too hard - I experience three seasonal hypomanias each year, lasting 3-6 weeks each. Since they have different personalities and I wasn't confident in the dates, I've been trying to pay closer attention and write down the patterns. (It's also a capstone project with my therapist, who is recommending we wind down after exactly a decade of working together)

The past 3 weeks might have slipped past if I hadn't been watching for it: abrupt irritability, a low-grade but constant hunger headache, a little clumsier than usual... It's like being on steroids (not, like, the athletic kind, but the ones an ENT gives you when you get too many sinus infections). But the past couple of days I had to talk myself down, and today I awoke early and energetic (normally I snooze a few times and need extra time to get going) and couldn't lay back down once my head started spinning.

So here I am, bursting with energy but unmotivated to channel it any particular direction. But at least I'm aware of it and I can grant myself some leeway to find what's best. Writing helps. Writing always helps.

*****

Since I woke up somewhat fixated on a past era of my life, I was able to put all this processing to one mystery solved: I have, at times (one stands out), experienced close friends or lovers who could not understand (or sometimes even tolerate) why I made so much time for people who did not obviously align with my interests in the moment. You could call it their "vibration" or "level", though that shit gets hierarchical uncomfortably fast (I never told them that, but I see it plainly now), just something about them that others find disruptive to their own calm in a way that I didn't to mine.

And now I can see plainly that it's because I have been that person and I love them and want to affirm their journey. The other calm people I've known, the ones who stood with me when things were good but struggled in long-term chaos, who didn't like seeing me lose control (even when it was consensual and planned to do so), who didn't know how to argue without lashing out or shutting down...

They were all... faking it?

The mild-mannered accountant who buried a lifetime of shame, held grudges, and ghosted me in grief. The spiritual educator who was secretly an alcoholic. The sex-positive blogger who didn't like how my words made them look. They never shared their full, true struggles with me (and perhaps assumed I had never shared mine fully, when openness and a focused sense of self were my hyperfixation for a good long while) and were intensely devoted to projecting calm more than they were capable of cultivating it.

I don't know, maybe this is why I don't bother judging people who lose their calm. Because I've been there, too, I just always found my way back on the path. I can always do better, but I rarely do bad and it always comes from my experiential skills, not my affectations.

I don't really have anywhere else to take this, just gonna sit with it and hope that they're all doing okay out there. I doubt any of them ever would have guessed how much they broke my heart, but they definitely would have judged me for how easily I could forgive them for doing so.

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Stuff I Meant to Do During the First Lockdown

2021-08-23T21:52:13Z

Play through Final Fantasies 2-X?
Code into Roam

my Master's thesis*
my subsequent publication(s)
my presentations and/or notes

Print copies of my thesis & send them to places I want to work
Watch through my DVDs and get rid of a few
Complete (or reboot) my ambitious MP3 project
Start a YouTube channel
Start a Patreon
Start writing letters by hand
Explore publishing my autoethnography/memoir
Read up on Womanism & other theories*
Organize my academic sources*
Read more books*
Get back into art*
Voice acting lessons
Dance more
Learn to sew a button back on a shirt
Go through childhood toys and sell them
Clean out the garage*
Rake all the leaves*
Overhaul the yard*
Adopt an exercise regimen

Guess I've got another chance now...

*indicates some amount of progress was made, but not even halfway.

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