A Few Days

Betty & I are off to visit some friends who live in the country around the New Year’s celebrations, so have a good one, and be safe. (Please do not drink & drive.)

52 Things

Here are the final entries into NCTE’s “52 Things You Can Do for Transgender Equality”:

  • #48 Collect and share stories of discrimination
  • #49 Set up a training in a hospital, nursing or medical school
  • #50 Help an organization become more trans-inclusive
  • #51 Write an op-ed
  • #52 Make a New Year’s Resolution to Advance Transgender Equality

It’s been 52 weeks; how many have you done? Did you do other things they didn’t list?

The System

So I said the other day that I have a system for seeing what change I will try to effect for myself in the upcoming year. I came up with it a couple of years ago when I realized I had certain goals re: my writing career but ones that I could easily & endlessly put off if I didn’t pay attention. They weren’t big things – things like getting an essay into an anthology, or getting 10k copies in print – but I simultaneously realized that I tend to be somewhat Auspergerish in my single-mindedness, so that if I focus on one thing – like weight loss – I tend to get it done & then everything else turns to crap.

A friend of mine used to refer to this as Getting Your Ducks in a Row: that once you got one errant duck back in line, another, or two, would have slipped out & wandered off.

So in order to be effective I had to keep my eye on a couple of ducks at a time, I decided I’d have four areas of self-improvement (or self-actualization, or whatever New Age-y thing you’d like to call it). Within those four areas, I break the larger goal into 12 smaller ones, & then try to get one done a month. I “check in” with my goals early in the month to see how it’s going.

& No, I’m not kidding.

Still

I am still sick, dammit, & I already had this cold this year! Isn’t it someone else’s turn?

Upsetting

The Task Force recently issued a report about homeless youth: up to 42% of homeless youth are LGBT (even though only 3-5% of the population is).

While I’m glad to hear NYC has stepped up funding to help serve these kids, I wonder if a public education campaign isn’t also in order. That job, however, might need Federal support, which we certainly aren’t going to get just yet. Still, you’d think we could maybe let people know that throwing their LGBT kids out on the street is not a solution to anyone’s problem.

These throwaway kids are one of the ‘side effects’ of all the anti-gay rhetoric being thrown around, & that includes the anti-gay marriage rhetoric, in my opinion. Define a group of people as second-class citizens and this is what you get.

You can read the full report at The Task Force’s website.

Boxing Day

So how did it get to be December? – and not just December, but the day after Christmas?! That seemed fast. I’ve had people older than me tell me that the years go by faster the older you get, & some days that seems to be very, very true. Now there are these few days between Christmas and New Year’s Day left of 2006, and it was – looking back – an exhausting year. Granted, a year goes by very quickly when eight months of it are spent writing a book, but still – December already! Astonishing.

Sometimes at the end of a year I like to wonder what (1) I want to be different in my life a year from now; (2) what I thought would be different from a year ago that is or isn’t, and (3) which kinds of changes I seem to be the most effective at bringing about. There are wishes of mine that are totally unreasonable – like living in a less cluttered apartment – that will probably never happen; now I’m of the opinion that if we moved to an 8-bedroom house we’d still have too much crap – it’s just who we are & in the greater scheme of things, it just doesn’t matter to me very much. But then there are other things, like losing weight, that can be more feasible some years but less feasible even than getting rid of clutter other years.

I’m sometimes good at predicting, but I’m better still at pushing myself to achieve more than I think I can & so achieving some respectable changes. These are the kinds of things I think about when I put together my New Year’s Resolutions lists, so I don’t feel like a failure when I haven’t totally reorganized our bookcases by the end of January or something.

I’ve got a system, even. Maybe I’ll share it on another day. Right now I’m still getting over a cold, though, so it will be another night of Nyquil sleep for me so I can kick this thing once & for all.

Quiet Xmas

We’re having a quiet Christmas this year: my sister threw a gathering for my family last week, so we both feel like we had a premature xmas this year. Plus, we spent anything you might call a gift budget on clothes for that TV taping a week or so ago.

But we were very glad to enjoy the company of our fellow mHB board locals for a lovely holiday party, & we’ll be going upstate to visit friends for the New Year.

Have a good holiday, everyone.