w3bgrl.co.uk

Um… Where Did I Put That Plan?

Since my last post, things haven’t been going quite to plan. In fact, the housing front has been less than stellar. Our move has been delayed twice now. Should things get delayed again, we are facing having to move twice, once into temporary storage and once into some other house. So insert stress of moving plus a bit, stress of living with friends, stress of sleeping on an air mattress, and you are getting there. To be honest, though, work has been pretty good for me, so I have been coming home happy as a clam.

Now, if I can just get my head around the web services that they created at work….

Yeah, I know this post isn’t trans-related, but eh… we needed an update.

Everything Is Going According To Plan

As the title betrays, a large number of things are now going according to plan: girlfriend, job, house, moving, transition, etc. In fact, just recently, when I was in a bit of a funky, I suddenly realized that, for the first time in a year, my transition plans are actually on track. To now have all of these issues whistling like dixie at the same time, I must admit though, is slightly unsettling. I keep expecting shit to hit the fan at some point. Despite Aunite have the occassional wobble of late, I must admit that life has become just pretty darn good.

Speaking of Auntie and the aforementioned wobbles, she has been carrying a heavy load for quite a long time now. Additionally, I don’t think she quite has all of her stress-management ducks in a row just yet. But, in keeping with the optimistic tone of this post, I think she will get there. Oddly enough, her wobbles of late seem to stem from the post-transition depression, or a “what now phase” as she calls it, that many of us go through. I am hoping, though, that as our lives become a bit more stable, comfortable, and relaxed, she will be able to work though what is eating at her.

Anyhoo, life at my new job is progressing, however slowly. It took 3 days just to get a network ID and such, but it’s a corporation of considerable girth. Considering the weekly curry specials and how much I have been enjoying working there and meeting people, I can overlook some of its faults at this point.

Right, time for bed. Take care all!

The Future is No Place…

Things are going pretty well of late, and a song by Dave Matthews caught my attention today, spawning this line of though. Several years ago, folks might have said that I was full of quips and sayings like that. I am sure that I thought myself the cat’s PJs for far too long, but there was one aspect of my personality from that time that I do miss. The best name for it that I can nail down is centeredness.

Different folk, Buddhists and Hindus especially, have all sorts of takes on what it means to be centered. I’ve considered it to infer being at peace and mental … balance. If you have ever watched someone doing Tai Chi, it seems to feel like that on the inside. From it, though, has always stemmed mental acuity, something close to a holy grail for me.

As I look back over the past few years, though, I can’t remember many periods of that acuity or centeredness. In fact, most of the last few years have been marked more by pain and stress rather than peace and love. Perhaps I am just getting older and don’t see a place for conversational quips anymore. No, it doesn’t feel much like that.

What it does feel like is that I have been working so hard at paddling the ferryboat that I have forgotten to let the current take me once in a while.

Journey’s End, New Trailhead

Yesterday started off a bit like England’s traditional grey morning, overcast, and rather uninsipring. After a bit of confusion, Auntie ended up being able to work from home though. Despite this, she was still feeling a bit down, needing shnuggles and some encouraging words. At one point, she asked me, “How come your are feeling so positive?” After all, the whole “no job, no house, not heard about jack, and this is all getting really tough to bear” thing was getting to us both. I told her, “Because I need to be.” It was true; one of us has to be positive and help the other out of the dulldrums, even if we are thinking the same things.

The day continued along those same lines for most of the day with the occassional smooch, “I love you, too!” shouted up the stairs, and lots of clock watching. I must admit, my heart leapt each time my phone rang. Could it be a recruiter about one of the jobs I have interview for? Could it be the letting agency calling about the house we applied for? Could it be the garage calling about the highly expensive repairs that might be needed for my car? Most times, it was a recruiter, but not one that I was hoping for. To be honest, it has been like that for several months now.

But yesterday, all that changed. All the waiting, all the hoping against hope, all the money juggling — all of it changed.

We got two calls yesterday. The first of these let me know that the company that I really want to work for has decided to offer me a job!! I can’t give out too many details for obvious reasons, but I can say that it’s a contract position, probably long-term, and that the pay is quite good. Second, as I was finishing up with the recruiter, Auntie called the letting agency about the house we applied for. Just a moment before she rang them, they received the last required reference from our current letting agents. With all news being positive, we are going to get the house too!!

The last bit of good news from yesterday was that my current project for Two Guys and a Dyke is finally wrapping up, now that the XML import and export feature is complete. With the completion of a small reporting module, the system will be full-functional and ready for a full-QA cycle. We have done a few cycles already, but it appears that the core system is quite stable and fairly bug free, especially considering the scope of the development.

I can’t express how much I feel a huge weight has been lifted. Auntie and I were jumping up and down and screaming after I told her the news. Our relief has been palpable. We won’t have to kip in our friends’ office on a worn-out air mattress that has lost several its seams anymore. We soon won’t have to shlep it back to Reading on the weekends to take care of a house we don’t live in anymore. We won’t have to keep all of our clothes in a suitcase on the floor anymore. We made it through and we did it together.