so long, and thanks for all the fish

forced myself to do the one big important career move that I've been poking around and hesitating on all summer long (text a complete stranger like "hello I got your number from mutual colleagues of ours; please consider strengthening our professional connection for both our benefit but mostly for mine"). considering spending the rest of day in bed to recover from this immense effort; thank you for your patience and understanding

you know what's nice though? I'm not dreading having to answer the phone as much as I used to, now that my voice is actually mine. my voice used to be too high and full of trickery but now it is deep and manly and mine, and that honestly removes a lot of my social anxiety around phone conversations. maybe I can use this newfound strength in additional ways throughout my life. maybe one day I can even make a call... the power..,

forced myself to do the one big important career move that I've been poking around and hesitating on all summer long (text a complete stranger like "hello I got your number from mutual colleagues of ours; please consider strengthening our professional connection for both our benefit but mostly for mine"). considering spending the rest of day in bed to recover from this immense effort; thank you for your patience and understanding

I'm pretty sure he's cool with sharing it. I think he would probably like that a lot, actually

you know-- it's funny because I've already been going by Kat for such a long time that my deadname has not felt like me for over 2 decades now (even to my friends and family, who are always like "who the fuck is [deadname]; that's not you"), but I always still had a sort of begrudging "yeah I guess technically that's me" reaction to seeing it in my email inbox, or on medical paperwork, or whatever

but now that I'm actually going through with the official legal work of changing my name, seeing my deadname just makes me go like "that's not my fucking name. how dare you." lmao like, I have to PERSONALLY update my name everywhere but I can't do that until my SSA and DMV changes go through so it's whatever, but my brain has already changed its routine like "okay let's go, chop chop; this is no longer our name and these M-F-ers need to get with the program already; the Unbelievable Disrespect of it all,"