in the pipeline
So, yeah… In my last post I said the site would be updated more frequently. Sorry about that! My life has been a bit chaotic to say the least.
For one, I’ve been dealing with a case of discrimination with the new gym I’m going to now that I moved. I was asked to leave the women’s locker as a number of women have complained that they didn’t feel comfortable having “someone like me” in there. They were actually being serious with wanting me to leave the locker room, and wouldn’t leave me alone until I left. They also wanted me to accommodate them by not using the women’s locker room until they figured out how to handle this situation… Meaning, they wanted me to use the men’s locker room. Yeah that wasn’t going to happen. Long story short, they actually DID have a clearly defined transgender policy and allowing us to use whatever locker room we identify with.
Let’s just say this is an ongoing situation going on, on top of everything else that is going on in my life right now. It’s been incredibly stressful and emotional, but I’m getting through everything in a MUCH better way than I was last year. I’m proud of myself with that.
Anyway, time to fill you all in on the things I have in the pipeline. Things I’m very excited to share a little bit of details. So, let’s get into them!
projects.
I’ve recently started a new project that I’m pretty proud of and excited about. I’m started a new community and movement called, We Can Tri.
We Can Tri is an all-inclusive community fighting for the same ultimate goal, gender equality for all. We Can Tri is a safe place for people to engage in a wide verity of topics, such as: seeking advice about getting into triathlon (as well as other sports), setting up and/or promoting local events or training sessions, respectfully discuss the current issues that are affecting our members, encouraging and fighting the battle for gender equality.
Our community leads by example. For instance, showing members of the transgender or LGBTQ communities that we can play, we can compete, and we can tri.
The primary focus with this project is making triathlon and other sports inclusive to transgender athletes regardless of your athletic level, but I’m also not blind to the other communities that are struggling for equality as well. This is why We Can Tri’s tagline is, “equality for all.”
I’ve been in the sport of triathlon for three years now, and I was in the sport of cycling before that (this was before I cam out and begin my transition journey). I’m noticing that no one is really fighting for trans equality. There’s a lot of groups out there that are fighting for equality of women, African Americans, etc… But, I’m not seeing sports make an actual effort to welcome, support, and protect the trans community. To be quite honest, this is unacceptable. It’s 2019, we should be doing more, and we should be louder! So, I decided to put my money where my mouth is! This is where We Can Tri comes in. This project is still really early, like barely a month old, and getting this community and project established enough to actually make an impact is going to take time. But, I’m serious about this project and I’m determined to see this grow into that community that will make that impact! It’s a lot of hard work, but the potential of this project and making sports be more inclusive to my community … it’ll be worth it!
Another project I’m working on, that also kind of relates to We Can Tri, is working with the wonderful Smashfest Queen limited edition transgender pride cycling/tri kits. We’re in the really early stages. I’m learning how much freedom we have before we can really get into the design stage. This is all new to me. The only experience I have with product design was designing graphics for skateboard decks way back in the day. That was a bit easy as you only have one side of a flat surface to cover, where as a kit you have to consider the natural flow of the human body and making the design work with going around the body as well. So, it adds a lot more dimensions to it.
Another project I’m really excited and worried about. I’m mostly worried about whether or not the kit will get enough pre-orders to justify the investment in the actual production. Usually pride stuff sell out really fast, but in those instances we’re talking about casual clothing or shoes. Cycling and tri kits are a pretty niche product, to then add the primary customer it targets being an even smaller demographic. I’m hoping the customer base willing to spend the money is out there and interested. Smashfesh is a pretty well known brand within the triathlon community, so I have that going for me.
writing.
I have a new article that just went to editing for Live Feisty. I previously wrote a two part story about my journey of second chances and self discovery, and talking about locker rooms. With what happened to me, which I wrote about above and the subsequent events that followed, I instantly came up with something I wanted to write about. My idea got approved by my boss, and so part two of the ‘Let’s talk about locker rooms’ is coming soon.
This article is different from the first two I wrote. Those were more of a cliff notes version of what my book is all about. My third article is a bit more journalistic and investigative. It was/is a challenge as it’s something I don’t have any experience in. So it was a lot of learning and freaking out that I bit more than I could chew. But I overcame those hurdles as best as I could and wrote my article. I feel sorry for the editor(s) that has to work on this, because as you probably could tell from my previous posts… I’m single handily the WORST writer in the world, haha, and I totally own it. Part of it is because of my traumatic brain injury (TBI); I don’t remember things. But I’m not going to use that as an excuse. I don’t know how to use punctuation correctly, I jump between past and present tense ALL the time, and my grammar is shitty. It’s terrible, but I don’t know how to learn before, I’ve tried trust me. I even call it out at the top of my ‘words’ page, so the disclaimer was given, haha!
I always appreciate and thank immensely whoever edits my writing, because I know how frustrating it is. They’re always super nice to me and keep their frustration and anger to themselves, lol! Editors have a thankless job, and should really get most of the credit. For someone like me, I’ve just vomiting words into a word document. They're the ones that actually make it into a true article or story. It should really be, <title name here>, by <editor name here>, from the ideas and chicken scratch of <author name here>.
Anywhoo. I think the article is going to be impactful, and eye opening for people in the triathlon community. Yes, it’s about locker rooms, but it’s truly about the transphobic attitude and actions of some prominent organizations within triathlon. Pretty heavy stuff in my opinion.
With regard to my own website, I do have a couple posts that I’m bouncing between when I have time to give them some attention.
One is titled, self-image, I talk about my struggles to figuring out who I am and what my purpose is. Self-image has always been a challenge for me. I’ve always changed aspects of myself to fit in or to become attracted to someone I’m attracted to and really interested in. I’ve done it so much, on top of my TBI and memory loss, I don’t even know who my true, original self was, so it’s been a long journey for me to actually find that lost version of me. I know coming out as trans and finally living my life as the women I’ve should have always been was only the beginning. It’s extremely difficult, but I’m determined to finally have both my outer and inner self match who I truly want to be. It’s hard to write about this topic, because it exposes a wound that no one really knows about. It’s a very personal topic as well, but I feel strongly that it’s something I should share because I know a lot of people struggle with the same problem. It’s also something that has pushed all the people I truly loved out of my life. So, for me, this is critical to work out and figure out because I don’t want to lose anymore people I love in the future.
A second one, still untitled, but I believe it is time to share with everything how I partially bounced back from my severe depression. It’s no lie that 2017 and 2018 have been the lowest with regards to my mental health. Multiple suicide attempts, multiple visits to the ER for suicidal thoughts and attempts, shit most of my Facebook friends have seen the photos I was stupid enough to put on there - not entirely proud of those impulse decisions, thanks TBI. As well as two voluntary admittance into a behavioral health unit. So, yeah 2017 and 2018 were pretty bad. But, at the end of last year an event happened that knocked me out of that severe depression and made me look at myself and my life. It constructed an idea, a mantra, that helped me overcome my mental health issues, and a mantra I continue to use today. It’s been incredibly helpful so far. I still struggle is depression, but taking my new approach and outlook allows me to manage that depressive state in a much more positive and productive way. This post talks about that mantra I’ve discovered. Will it work for others? I hope, but I don’t know, what I do know is that it works for me.
The third post is titled, flinch. I actually used this idea in the article that I’m working on for Live Feisty, the one I talked about above. In this post, I expand on what I mean by it and where I learned about the concept of flinching in life. After learning more about this concept it opened my eyes on about my true feelings about my triathlon career, if you can even call it a career to be honest. It was really interesting to learn and dig into that aspect of myself.
Most people know that I started writing a book about my life since my devastating accident back in 2015 that changed my life forever, both negatively and positively. This continues to be an ongoing project. I’ve been having a case of writers block on it. It’s challenging to talk about my life prior to the accident because of the amount of memories I’ve lost because of my traumatic brain injury. So, it’s been taking a little more time and effort pieces information together from photos, notes, journals, childhood projects that I still have for some reason.
I’ve been debating whether to start over and take a completely different approach to the book that’s something I haven’t really seen in biographies. Take my disadvantage, having no memories to pull from, and turn it into an advantage. I’ve always taken a lot of photos, before and after my accident. When you look at most of the photos, those still images actually shows/writes its own story. I’m thinking about letting those photos tell a visual story and then accompany it with more detail through text. I’m calling it a coffee table book that’s not a coffee table book, haha! Let the reader see the human side of my story, and if they are interested in diving deeper, they're welcome to read the larger more detailed story below it.
I haven’t decided what I want to do yet, as a lot of my childhood photos are physical, which would require converting them to digital. I also have to consider the added size to the overall file for the digital book. I’m most likely not going to have a print version of the book, and I know photos can be large, so I’ll need to see what size limitations there are for ebooks. We’ll see. Even though it’s on the back burner for now, I’m still actively thinking about it and writing down my ideas so I can pick it back up quickly.
in closing.
The last few months have been a lot of identifying flaws in myself and my life, which is allowing for a lot of personal growth and development. I’ve been reading a couple of personal development books to help with my self-image struggle, one in particular that I’m currently reading, The Code of the Extraordinary Mind: 10 Unconventional Laws to Redefine Your Life and Succeed on Your Own Terms, talks about how to “question, challenge, hack, and create new rules for YOUR life”. The use of the word “code” in the title is more of the computer programming sense. Giving you the toolset to hack and recode yourself and your life. It’s been a powerful read so far, and I’ve only scratched the surface.
This book and another one that I finished recently has really helped give me a path and ideas on how to better myself, and be my own person. It’s been exciting to learn so many new concepts. I’m trying really hard to retain the information by highlighting important parts of these books so I can go back easily to refresh my memory. In case you are aware, due to my TBI, I have a hard time retaining information and new memories. This is why I keep a daily journal and keep notes on every person in my contacts (if the person is in my contacts then they are obviously someone an important person in my life). This allows me to go back and relearn or remember important details of that day or that specific person.
It’s a workaround, out of many, that I needed to learn to function better in my life and in this world. I no longer can trust my brain, so I learn how to workaround that and many more limitation that stem from my TBI.
So, it’s been pretty busy, and I’m trying to keep myself engage in all of it. Lots of times when something becomes difficult or has too my hurdles to jump over I tend to give up on it. It’s something about myself that I’m trying to hack into and recode, haha, see that! Already using what I’ve learned to better myself, woot woot :D
Things are coming down the pipe, and I’m excited about all of it! Stay tuned!