Author: Alyxander James

Brain Fog

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I am, for no particularly good reason, having a bit of a rough week. Maybe it’s the constantly-shifting weather that’s turning my body into a constantly-achy mess. Maybe it’s the largely cloudy weather. Maybe it’s the cold/possible sinus infection I’ve been fighting since Christmas. But the past few days, mornings in particular have been really rough. I wake up later than I mean to, and then wrestle for a long time with the reality that I need to get out of bed.

This morning, I woke up and everything felt heavy, and I realized that this is probably me sliding down toward the depressed end of my Bipolar cycle. I almost called off, but I’m leading a training this morning at work, so that really wasn’t an option. I’m on my way to work now, and hoping that the coffee I picked up on my way to the bus helps.

In an effort to turn my morning around a bit, here are a few things I’m currently grateful for, despite feeling crummy:

  • A somewhat flexible work environment. I’ve been able to take days off or work from home when I’ve needed to.
  • Technology. It’s maddening a lot of the time, but it’s also the thing that lets me have text conversations with friends.
  • Songwriting/songwriters. I haven’t been writing as much recently, but I’m getting back to it, and I’m grateful to have such a great community of folks to get feedback and inspiration from.
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I’m feeling pretty under the weather today. The cold I caught shortly before Christmas has ebbed and returned at least three times now, and I’m very ready for it to just be done. I made the choice to work from home today to try to recover a bit more completely.

Despite feeling physically off, it’s been a decent week. Here are some things that I’m happy about right now:

  • On Saturday, my partner and I went with a friend to the penultimate day of the Science of Pixar exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry. IT WAS SO COOL. It blows my mind that there are people in the world who can take math and science and turn it into art like that. After going to see the Pixar exhibit, we parted ways with our friend, and my partner and I went to 57th Street Books, which was absolutely delightful. It has a very rabbit warren feel to it – winding rooms of books all connected as you go deeper into the store. I got Binti, by Nnedi Okorafor (which I proceeded to devour in one sitting on Tuesday evening – it’s a short book, and very good), and we also got a puzzle and some Chicago-themed holiday cards.
  • On Monday after work I had a consultation call with a potential new therapist, and we set up our first session for a couple of weeks out. Based on our phone conversation, I’m hopeful that this will work out – it’s a bit of a trek to get to her office, but I think it will be worth it.
  • Tuesday night was the first songwriting class of the year. I’ve taken a couple of sessions off from songwriting classes at the Old Town School of Folk Music, and I was weirdly nervous going in. But of course, it’s a delightful group of people, and I’m looking forward to digging back into writing, which has fallen a bit by the wayside the past few months.

Now, fingers crossed that I can kick this cold!

2019

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Hello, dear readers, and happy new year! I hope you enjoyed whatever holiday festivities you took part in (or chose to abstain from).

I’m starting 2019 feeling a little scatterbrained, but I want to take some time to acknowledge what 2018 held for me, and look a bit at what I’m hoping for in 2019.

So here’s a (far from complete) list of what happened in my 2018:

  • I completed my first FAWM.
  • I started going to a Unitarian Universalist church. I joined the choir at the church. I quit the choir and stopped going to church.
  • I turned 30.
  • I played a lot of D&D with some really awesome folks.
  • I wrote 48 songs (blowing away what I thought at the time was an impossible goal of 40).
  • I played five Acoustic Explosions.
  • I went to Song School for the second time.
  • I hit five years on testosterone.
  • I made new friends and strengthened some existing friendships.
  • I reconnected with my grandmother via letter writing.
  • I finally started to really track my finances.

I’ve been thinking a lot about possible themes for 2019, and I think I’m going to steal mine from Ellis (a musician I greatly admire who I met at Song School), who posted on Patreon that her word for 2019 is Embody. I’ve been feeling very disconnected from my body, and I think this is my year to really get grounded and learn to sit in my body through all its aches and pains and quirks. There’s also something in the word embody that feels like reaching for more genuineness, more honesty…and I think that is going to start with me being more genuine and honest about my needs, rather than constantly worrying that I’m being an inconvenience.

Other things I hope to do this year:

  • Find a new therapist.
  • Complete a second FAWM.
  • Write 30 more songs.
  • Read more (I fell short of my Goodreads goal of 30 books in 2018; I’m hoping for better focus this year).
  • Go back to Song School.
  • Play out at least four times.
  • Find at least one opportunity to play out somewhere that isn’t an Acoustic Explosion.
  • Play more D&D.
  • Keep tracking finances and get to a point where I feel solidly in control of my money.

So here’s to a new year and new opportunities. May the lessons we learned in 2018 not be wasted so we don’t need to learn them again this year!

Happy Holidays!

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Somehow, we’re suddenly less than a week from Christmas and less than two weeks from the end of the year. I’m a bit in disbelief. In some ways, this felt like a very long year. In others, it flew by.

I’m going to save my reflections on 2018 for the next post, though.

This week, I want to talk about what I’m looking forward to in these last couple of weeks of 2018.

  • Road trip: Since it looks, at this point, like the weather is going to cooperate for our trip, I am looking forward to the drive. My partner and I enjoy road trips. We don’t own a car, so it’s always an interesting change of pace.
  • Family: I am looking forward to seeing both my partner’s family and mine, even if family events around holidays sometimes feel daunting. We don’t see our families all that often these days, so the chance to get together is great.
  • Friends: We’re scaling way back on social commitments for this trip, but I am extremely excited to see the couple of people we were able to work into the schedule.
  • Time off from work: Work has actually been pretty okay lately, but I’m excited to have some time away from the office.
  • Lights: There’s not going to be snow on the ground for Christmas, but my favorite part of the season is the lights everywhere, at this darkest time of year.

I am not sure if I’ll be posting anything next week – we will be traveling home next Thursday. May you and yours have a merry end to the year, and may we all find some light in the midst of the darkness.

Creativity Abounds

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I am dashing this post off on Thursday morning before I really dig into my work day. I am working from home today (I’ve been dealing with a lot of body/joint pain as the weather shifts, and it’s been exhausting, so I’m giving myself a little break from major activity, and I hear the internet at work is spotty, so I will probably get more done here than I would there, anyway), and am currently enjoying the morning sunlight and the glow of the Christmas lights we have strung around our living room windows. It’s peaceful.

The past week has highlighted how much I love being creative. Here are three ways that’s shown up:

  1. Last Thursday, while I was volunteering in the library area at the Old Town School of Folk Music, I finally finished the sweater I’d started working on over a year ago.  A couple of weeks before I’d been panicking a bit, because I wanted to get it done by Christmas, and I was in what felt like a bit of a black hole with the knitting – I’d knit and knit and knit and it didn’t seem to get any larger. Suddenly, though, it was done, and I got it sewn together, and it fits like a dream and it’s the most successful sweater I’ve ever made. I’m so excited to show it off at Christmas (and I’ve worn it a couple of other times already). Now that I finally have that project off the needles, I feel a little lost as to what I want to cast on for my next big thing. In the meantime I’ve started a new pair of fingerless gloves to replace some that got a hole torn in them last winter (I’m going to repair the torn ones, but I want a non-patched pair, too).
  2. On Saturday, my partner and I attended a songwriting workshop with one of our favorite teachers at the Old Town School, Sue Demel. (Sue is just one of my favorite people, period.) In the workshop, we went over a chapter from Italo Calvino’s Six Memos for the Next Millennium, the chapter on “Multiplicity,” and Sue talked us through how we could use Calvino’s insights to improve our writing. We did a bunch of writing exercises in the workshop, and each left with at least one verse. After the workshop, I was once again volunteering in the school’s resource center, and I got a chance to work more on my lyrics. I managed to get I think four verses and a chorus worth of lyrics out before the end of my shift. I haven’t had a chance to go back and finish it yet, but I’m excited about the unexpected places it’s been taking me.
  3. On Sunday, I got together with my D&D group for the first time in a couple of months. I hadn’t fully realized how much I missed these friends and our shenanigans until we were playing together again. I love collaborative storytelling so damn much, and I’m glad to have people in my life who are just as into it as I am.

Five Years

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I completely missed it when I posted last week, but on Friday, Accidental Fudge turned five! For five years I’ve written and posted a blog almost every week. That feels like a pretty big accomplishment.

Accidental Fudge started as a blog to document my gender transition. I had enough weird and amusing anecdotes in my first month on testosterone that I thought it would be fun to share them with the world. And that was great, to start. It quickly became apparent, though, that there wasn’t going to be a “here’s a weird thing I’ve noticed about my gender” moment every single week. The blog pretty steadily evolved into me telling you all about how my weeks were going – a brief newsletter of sorts. That’s also been great.

Every time the blog is another year older, I think it’s worth pausing to reflect on whether this is still something I want to invest my time in. While I often feel like I don’t have anything of value to say, I do still enjoy the challenge of coming up with something each week. And I love hearing from those of you who comment (either here or on Facebook or in person). It reminds me that I’m part of a much larger community than I sometimes realize.

So thanks, Accidental Fudge readers, for your support. Here’s to five years, and here’s to at least one more!

Low Key

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It’s been a pretty laid-back week. I feel like I don’t have a lot to talk about. But here’s a quick list of a few things I’m grateful for or excited about right now:

  1. Knitting. I am a few hours of work away from being done with the sweater I’ve been working on. I’m hoping to have it done by the end of the weekend. It’s going to be gorgeous.
  2. Good food. My partner and I didn’t do a traditional Thanksgiving feast last week, but that’s not to say we didn’t cook! I think we counted eleven different dishes between Thursday and Sunday. Highlights that we’ve been enjoying all week: slow cooker carnitas, kharcho (a Georgian beef and rice stew), and about three gallons of borsch. We also had steaks cooked in our cast iron skillet one night to celebrate our anniversary, with a couple of hot dish sides. We’ve been eating well, for sure!
  3. Music. I’ve been reminded many times recently how much I love my Old Town School of Folk Music community. Also, my partner and I are both playing sets at an acoustic show on Monday, and I’m very excited for that.
  4. Nerdy friends. Earlier this week some friends and I resumed a DnD game we’d had to put on hold a couple months ago. It’s been so fun to dive back into the world we’re creating together!
  5. Snow. It may be a pain in the ass sometimes, but it sure is pretty.

That’s it for this week. I’d love to hear from you! What are some things you’re excited about right now?

Gratitude

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I’m not big on Thanksgiving as a holiday – it feels like colonialist propaganda, mostly.

However, I can see the value in taking time to be grateful. So here are a few things I am grateful for today:

  1. My partner and I celebrated our 8th anniversary last weekend. I’m grateful to have a partner who gets me, and who I am still having fun with eight years in.
  2. After months of feeling like I was just sort of drifting, I finally feel like I have a little more direction at work. I’m talking with my boss about the future direction of my job tomorrow, so fingers crossed that this continues.
  3. My friends in California have made it through the wildfires and the smoke. I’ve been really worried about them, and I’m glad to see folks are as safe as they could be given the circumstances.
  4. Things are going pretty well with my immediate family. It’s been a long road with a lot of detours and ditches, but I’m optimistic.
  5. I have so many wonderful people in my life. I’m grateful for all of you!

Slow Recovery

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I’m on my way into the office for the first time in a week.

Last Wednesday I felt like I was coming down with something. My partner had stayed home from work and I seemed to be about a day behind him in terms of symptoms, so when I left the office that day I brought my laptop home and warned my office mate that I might not be in on Thursday. Sure enough, I woke up Thursday feeling feverish. I worked from home.

Friday I felt so miserable I called off altogether and slept for what seemed like half the day. Aside from the rally we went to on Saturday, the weekend was spent laying low, only leaving the house to feed our friend’s cat.

Sunday I realized I was losing my voice. Normally this wouldn’t be huge cause for concern, but I had a gig scheduled for Monday night. I hydrated as much as I could and tried not to talk much. I worked from home again Monday to try to save what little voice I still had. I figured out if I played my first song a major third lower than usual (I usually capo at 4 for that particular song, so I took the capo off entirely), that warmed me up enough that I could get through the rest of the set.

Thankfully, my voice held out, and the set went well. I had fun. Tuesday my voice was back to being scratchy, so I worked from home again to try to get it back. Yesterday I was planning to be back in the office, but my office mate was afraid of getting sick before her flu shot today, so she asked me to stay home again, so I did.

It was hard to get up this morning, and harder to leave the house. But I managed. I’m hoping to have a quiet, productive day. We’ll see how this goes!

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I’m writing this post on Thursday morning from my armchair at home, rather than from the bus. I have been feeling increasingly crummy every day this week, and this morning I finally woke up feeling definitively sick, so I’m going to work from home and keep my germs to myself.

So, this is going to be a short post today, because my brain is pretty foggy. Usually when I’m feeling like I have nothing to talk about, I go for some sort of list post. So…let’s go with three things I’m grateful for today:

  1. I can work from home. My boss told me I could just take an actual sick day if I wanted to, and I know that I technically can…but I’m almost out of sick time and I have to save my vacation time for Christmas travel. I’m glad to be in a position where it’s possible to do my job remotely when my body doesn’t feel up to commuting.
  2. Things are going better with my family. We’ve worked through the most recent round of hurt and seem to be closer to being on the same page, which feels nice.
  3. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here yet, but thanks to the adjustments that were made to my med regimen over the summer, my anxiety is much better controlled. So much so, in fact, that I’m able to drink regular coffee again! It had been about two years since I’d been able to handle that much caffeine. As I sit here and sip my coffee this morning, I am grateful for that.