life

Progress

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

Sometimes, progress is obvious and happens quickly. Other times, it can feel like it’s not happening at all. This week has largely been one of those other times.

FAWM marches on, and I have been writing – I’m up to 12 songs and it’s the 14th of the month. This week it’s been harder, though. I’ve had trouble waking up early to write. Still, I’ve written some keepers, and that’s exciting. Here are a few of the songs I’m proudest of so far:

Work has been frustrating, not because of anything specific to my job, but because my brain has been extremely foggy this week. I haven’t gotten much done, because I can’t keep my train of thought on the rails long enough to see things through. I feel stuck, and it’s not a pleasant feeling.

I am looking forward to the weekend. A friend of ours is coming down from Minnesota to hang out for a couple of days. I’m looking forward to some low-key hangouts and pizza.

February Madness

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FAWM is in full swing, and I might be losing my mind.

I’ve written 8 songs so far. Yes, it is February 7. I don’t know if this pace is sustainable, but I’m riding the wave while it’s here.

It’s been fun so far. My partner is also participating this year, which is great, because it’s always nice to have someone who gets what’s going on. On the other hand, we live in a one-bedroom apartment and are both a little shy about writing near each other. So we’ve had to negotiate terms and territory – we’re both getting up early in the mornings, and then he goes in the living room and I stay holed up in the bedroom and we work in our respective bubbles until he needs to leave for work (which is earlier than I need to leave but signals that I should also start getting ready). It’s a solid system so far.

I’m not writing gems every time, but I have to say I am pretty happy with how things are turning out overall. It feels good to be writing, and it’s nice to feel good about what I’m writing, too.

Work is stressful right now – last Friday I had a particularly bad day which I’m still mentally recovering from. But I’m reminding myself that I am a capable human who’s good at my job, and things are going to work out.

Brain Fog

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

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.

Happy Holidays!

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

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.

Five Years

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

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

/ Alyxander James / 1 Comment

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?

Slow Recovery

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

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!

/ Alyxander James / 1 Comment

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.

Fears

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

Friends, it’s been a week. And while I try to largely focus on the silver lining on this blog, I need to be honest with you – this week, there are several things I’m feeling scared about.

The obvious one, on a US-national politics scale, is that it’s looking likely that Brett Kavanaugh (who’s been accused by multiple women of sexual assault and who is clearly temperamentally unfit for the job) will be confirmed as a Supreme Court justice. It’s horrifying. (John Oliver’s take on all this is on point and wonderful. Long, but worth the watch.)

In local-to-me news, two men in my neighborhood were shot in the head with the same weapon over the last few days. One was an older gay man walking his dog around 10am, and the other was an orthodox Jewish man walking near the lake late in the evening. Yes, I live in Chicago, but this feels different from past instances of gun violence in our neighborhood, which have historically been either gang-related or connected to muggings. There’s no telling at this point if these homicides were specific hate crimes or the result of a more generally misanthropic hate, but I admit I’m worried about how gay I might look walking down the street.

The world is often a terrifying place these days. I’m trying to look for bright spots to push back the dark. So here are some happy things that happened this week:

  • We went with friends to see Cameron Esposito on Friday. It was exactly what we all needed.
  • A couple we’re friends with had their baby on Saturday, which has inspired me to knit some baby things. They knit up so quickly!
  • I went to the dentist. This is generally not a happy statement, but it was the first time I’d been since moving to Chicago six years ago. No cavities in these teeth!

I’d love to hear how you’re pushing back the darkness this week, friends. (Or if you’re not, I’d love to know what I can do to sit with you in the dark a while.) Hang in there.

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

I have been super distracted this week.

Some of this is probably the continuation of holidays – having so many extra days off has me feeling a little discombobulated about what day it is. (Which is not at all a complaint, because the days off are lovely. Just an observation that it’s hard to keep track of what day it is when I’m out of a routine.)

I’m also fighting a bit of a cold, which has had my whole head feeling stuffy, including my ears. This is also disorienting, because I have to focus harder than usual to hear and absorb auditory information.

It hasn’t been a bad week, though. The weekend was fun – lots of time with friends, and I was able to make it to my LGBTQ+ rock ensemble class at the Old Town School. This week has been pretty laid back. I worked Monday and Tuesday, and then yesterday went with a friend to the Art Institute, which I’d only ever been to once before (and not under the best of circumstances), so that was a lot of fun.

Tomorrow my partner and I are both taking the day off to go to an all-day songwriting seminar/workshop at the Old Town School. I have not been writing much at all since getting back from Song School, so I am looking forward to that and am hopeful that it will give me some solid inspiration and motivation to get back in the saddle.

I hope your weeks are all going well, dear readers! I’d love to hear about what’s making your weeks fun in the comments.