So, about a month from now, I'm off to San Francisco. I'm jumping off a really big bridge and I'm not really sure if there's water under me. Even if there is, water has the tendency to be hard upon landing. this year is going to be the most stressful of my life so far but I'll get through it. The year after may very well be even more stressful. However, I have a plan. First, I may or may not do my name change in the next month, so I can get my driver's license with my new name and apply to SFSU under my new name, with my new name on my diploma. Second, I will establish permanent residence in San Francisco. Third, I will take the GRE. Fourth, I will successfully apply for admission to SFSU's MA Museum Studies Program. Fifth, I will graduate from New College with a well-written, valuable thesis. Sixth, I will get an apartment in San Francisco and a job-- I have a lead on the latter, which is the important thing-- and I'll start my MA in the fall of 2005.

Seventh, I'll be transitioning in San Francisco. I have decided on hormones and top surgery, hormones in the next year and top surgery in the next three.

I know I promised my friends I would still be here in Florida when they got here. Well, even if I'm not living here I will be visiting, very frequently in all likelihood. And they should not forget their other friends in Florida who also desire to see them more often, and will play with them, and will drive wherever to visit them. And people should visit me in San Francisco because it is after all a really cool city and not as full of the HATE and DEATH as New York.

This may seem very chaotic and sudden and, perhaps, poorly planned to many of the people who actually read this (meaning all one of you). But I made the decision with regard to hormones and surgery a long time ago, I was just too scared of it to tell anyone-- including me, until recently. The MA in Museum Studies at SFSU is definitely the right thing to do, I would love to work in a museum and I could conceivably have a job doing that while I get my Ph.D. And then when I have a doctorate I'll have something to do while I'm waiting for a teaching post. I really wanted to take a year off before I went to grad school, but I also want to get a doctorate before I'm 35. I really wanted to transition before grad school, because New College seemed like it would be welcoming of that sort of thing, but really, nowhere on earth is more accepting of gender variance than SF. I have a lead on a job, which gives me a leg up on many people who live in SF. The flow is going this way and I'd better just go along with it.

I feel excited about this, I know it's the right thing to do... just all these changes at once are scary. But I've never asked that the Universe go easy on me. If I'm going to be tested, let it be fire...