Something my therapist has been encouraging me to remind myself of is that I deserve to take good care of myself.
So I’ve decided that in 2019 I’m going to take everything I’ve learned from this year and try to take good care of myself. I’m emphasizing good because if I just take care of myself I get what I’ve been doing all year which is giving myself enough love and sustenance to survive but nothing more than that. I’m here to tell you that was a terrible decision and it sucks and I deserve better from myself, so I’m going to try to do better next year.
For the first time in a while I actually have Specific Things I Want To Accomplish next year, that fall under my larger goal of taking good care of myself.
I want need to be able to pay rent.
Financial instability sucks and since I lost my contracting gig last January this year has been incredibly hard with being in school full time. I’ve been getting by between my patreon, side-gigs, and school scholarships, but none of those combined have been enough to cover more than my bills, groceries if I’m lucky. I’m stressed to the point of sickness and I haven’t been eating to save on going shopping, so that has to change this year.
Some of it already is, I have a part-time minimum-wage ($13.23/hr) job on campus doing organizing work, and I have another long-term side gig lined up, but neither of those are going to be enough to contribute to rent so I have to come up with something to do in between to make ends meet (while also in school).
My goal is to get my patreon to at least $1k/mo this year (in addition to working multiple jobs while in school and organizing). I don’t currently offer many perks besides warm fuzzies of knowing that I won’t die while working for social justice through art/writing/podcasts/on the ground activism, but my patreon is the reason I’ve been able to manage at all this year so the help really goes a long way (and I super appreciate it).
I want to stop being consumed entirely by school.
I feel like I lose myself and stop existing and being a person when school starts and all I can do is think about homework and worry. It’s exhausting and I don’t like it. I’ve worked so hard to get here and I have to climb so many mountains and I’d really like not to sacrifice my humanity for education, you know?
I’m laying a lot of groundwork for that with on-campus organizing, to make being there less stressful (bathrooms should be ready as soon as Peralta finds money for a locksmith), but I think what’s more important is what I’m doing around school, so my vague plans are these:
- Have a bedtime routine – skin care, teeth, read something fun (not homework), unwind
- Have a morning routine – Actually Make Breakfast while the coffee brews, have a lunch plan
- Block out a time for homework on my calendar – then it will happen and I won’t stress about having time to do it? maybe? we’ll find out.
Along that vein my goal is to eat and rest better.
My sleep has been fucked all year and so has my eating (for various and somewhat entirely self-inflicted reasons) so I talked to my doctor about getting a nutritionist and doing a sleep study this year. I don’t know if I’m just stressed and that’s all or if there’s something bigger at play. I’m also not eating enough to keep up with my apparently skyrocketing metabolism and I’ve been losing more weight without even trying (I weigh the same as I did 12 years ago now and I’m not here for it). I’m hoping a nutritionist can help me figure out what I need to eat so I don’t inadvertently starve because my body thinks it’s a pubescent boy.
I feel like if I can get my sleeping and eating sorted that a lot of the other things will be able to get better from there?
I want to have more sex with more people.
I’ve been in a weird headspace all year with it and also with dating and I had an epiphany a bit back that none of that actually really mattered. I want to unpack more of that in a post of its own but the synopsis is: it’s a mindfuck going from being perceived straight, to lesbian, to straight again but this time it’s you who’s getting the checks, and also like, NONE OF THOSE PERCEPTIONS ARE TRUE (bi erasure ftw). But that’s not even the point really, the point is that it’s a weird mental place to be, between being socialized one way and perceived another – neither being correct -, and I talk over people because I’ve been shouted over for so long and it’s so weird being suddenly assigned a male space when that isn’t…. anyway.
I miss having fulfilling romantic relationships with more than one person and the people who I would want to date are the kind of people who already understand me. I don’t have to date someone I need to handhold through my transness. it’s fine.
Additionally, I can sex people and not have to date them???? This is something I want to also…try..more.
I haven’t started anything this year because I was eaten too much by school to have the time and spoons to invest in another relationship the way I would want to. This year my goal is to intentionally make room for that to happen.
I told my therapist about some of this earlier today, especially about how what I really need is rest. My homework this week is to spend the next 3-4 days doing nothing but resting and learning how to ask for help.
In 2019 my goal is to learn to be compassionate to myself in the same way that I am for other people.
And also maybe look into a metoidioplasty.
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