My New Blog

Today I started something new.

No, I didn't meet the love of my life or establish a business.  I also didn't undertake a construction project or enter another twelve-step program.  Nor did I write the first paragraph of my latest book.  (I'm still trying to publish the one I've already written and finish the one I've been working on!)  However, this new beginning does involve writing.

It's the new blog that I more or less promised a while back.  It's called Mid-Life Cycling and, as its name implies, will focus on the experiences of a female cyclist of, shall we say, a certain age and an unusual life circumstance.  In it, I will certainly talk about past and current rides as well as equipment I have used and am using.  

The real reason I've started it is because I've come to realize that, apart from a few family members, cycling and writing have really been the only constants throughout my life.  Almost everything else in my life--including my gender identity, transition and surgery-- is, was or became entangled with one or both. So, you will probably find posts on any number of topics and subjects.  But they all relate, in one way or another, to cycling--or my experiences of it, anyway.  I don't plan to focus on my experience as a transgender or transsexual:  After all, I've done, and will probably continue to do, plenty of that in this blog.  However, I will probably mention it, as it is affecting, and being affected by, my cycling.  

Finally...The way it looks now is not "set in stone."  Like the content, the layout and overall visual style (to the extent that I have it) will evolve. 

So, whether you're a cyclist or someone who just wants to read about someone who wants to read about how someone is navigating her new life as a middle-aged woman, I hope you'll read Mid-Life Cycling and steer your friends to it.

My Next Blog.

Coming soon:  New blog.


Yes, I've decided that I am going to start another blog.  It will be related to bicycling.  I'm just thinking about whether I want it to be free-form or to have a focused theme.  I'm leaning toward the latter, as there are a number of cycling blogs on the web already.  I just happen to subscribe to a few of them, in addition to Gunnar's blog, in which he often mentions bicycles and cycling.


That doesn't mean I'm going to discontinue Transwoman Times, at least not yet.  I'm not quite ready to let go of it, even though I'm starting to sense there isn't as much for me to say here as I had, say, a few months or a year ago.  


I'm guessing that my new blog will start some time around Memorial Day.  By that time, the current semester will have finished.  Plus, ironically enough, the holiday seems appropriate for starting a new venture. No, I won't drape my new blog with banners and flags and such.  However, if my new blog has begun by that time, I will at least make mention of the tributes made to those who serve.  Now, what they serve is definitely debatable.


Now I'm thinking about that because I just may have talked a student out of joining the Armed Forces.  Like many others who've joined, he sees it as a way of guaranteeing that he has a job for at least a year or two, and of paying for college.  I pointed out that there are other ways of getting the same things, and though he may have to spend more time, effort or money in the beginning, those outlays will be worthwhile.  No matter what else he does, he will have more freedom than he would have in the military.  "Once you sign up, they own you; you're their property," I pointed out to him.  "And they can do whatever they want to you.  In fact, when your tour of duty is finished they can keep you."


He thanked me for telling him those things.  I think that deep down, he knew he didn't really want to join, but he has all sorts of pressures and is therefore anxious about the future. Those anxieties are still better than the alternatives.


Anyway, I'm feeling very sleepy, so it's good night and fair adieu and all that.'

Mournings and Beginnings

"Velouria" has an interesting idea:  I could start a cycling blog.  That intrigues me.  No, better yet:  It seems completely logical, perhaps even inevitable.  


I wonder whether I'll continue this blog after starting that one.  I'm not saying I must make an "either-or" choice.  I'm just starting to realize that, well, this blog has become a sort of friend to me.  And, if you read what I wrote yesterday, or some earlier posts, you know what I've been learning about friendships:  Most cannot last forever, and holding on to one that's outlived its life span--or trying to revive one when whatever made it possible is gone-- can turn what could have been a sweet memory into a sour or bitter lament.


If and when I end this blog, it will be a sad day.  And I might mourn it.  But the reason you mourn something is because it's not coming back--or, at least, it seems not to be coming back.  I must say, in some way I'm mourning my days as a "trans" person.  Why?  In a lot of ways, it was a very exciting time in my life.  During the year before I started to live full-time as Justine, I spent a lot of time in therapy and support groups, started taking hormones and met lots of people who were very different from anyone I'd ever known, and came to love people I never knew I'd love.  The last time I learned as much in a year as I did during that year was probably some year early in my childhood.


Plus, that year, and the ones that followed, were the first time in my life I didn't feel like a victim.  Perhaps that seems paradoxical, as I undertook the journey I've made because, really, I am what I am --at least in one way--through no choice of mine, and I decided to embrace it because I couldn't run from it anymore.  


Mourning something is not the same as missing it.  Whatever you miss is not dead or finished:  You still have access to her, him or it in some way.  That's how I feel, oddly enough, about my surgery and the days immediately afterward.  I was describing this to a woman I know.  She, who has grown children, said, "Well, you were giving birth to yourself.  Why wouldn't you miss that?"  She explained that she still sometimes misses giving birth to her children; she would do it again because "nothing else has given me so much joy."  This woman has many other personal as well as professional accomplishments. But none, she said, gave her quite the same sense of fulfillment and joy as giving birth to, or raising, her kids.


I'm not saying that this is true for all women.  Indeed, I've talked with other women who say that their decision not to have children is the best they ever made.  And there are still other women--and men--who simply should not have children, for any number of reasons.  For that matter, it's probably a good thing I didn't have children.  That was a conscious choice:  Twice I've been with women who wanted children and were perfectly capable of having them.  My wish not to have children is one of the reasons I didn't stay with either of those women.  


If we follow the "birth" analogy, at what stage of "motherhood" am I now?  Friday will mark ten months since my surgery.  What do mothers do for their ten-month-old children?


One thing this "mother" (or "daughter," depending on how you think of it) did late today was to go for a bike ride.  My little trip took me down to the Red Hook piers.  I called my mother from there.  Not having been anywhere near that waterfront in at least thirty years, she wondered what I was doing there.  "Even when I was a kid, people thought it was a rough area," she explained.  I described how it's slowly being turned into Soho-by-the-bay:  Abandoned factories and warehouses have been turned into artist's lofts and studios as well as office spaces for small not-for-profit organizations.  


"Things change," my mother declared. "Time moves on."