St Paul Girl

A lot of people have asked me recently why I moved to St. Paul. Please hold that thought and keep reading.

For the first time in 2+ years, I have a reliable internet connection. What does that mean to you? Or me? I, for one, would like to use the opportunity to write more often online. It's hard when you don't know when you can actually get online, but that's not really a problem now. I can just leave it up like I used to and add to it as I go along. But what does that really mean?

I have several ideas for what it could mean. For reasons that probably deserve their own entry, my blogging will probably never be at the pace that it once was. Mostly, I think this has to do with Facebook, but there are other reasons. But I've had a couple ideas for creative projects recently that I've been mulling over, one that I might kick-start soon, and I always like to use the Internet to share those kinds of ideas. Certainly I could have done those things without an internet connection, as people have been doing that for thousands of years, but that isn't the only reason I haven't been terribly creative.

Blaming transitioning feels a bit lazy, but I think about the amount of energy that the past two years have consumed and I realize that probably plays into it. Someone once told me that I should be writing down everything that's happening to me because I'm not going to feel these feelings again; that used to be how I functioned, but this time, I didn't do that. Why not? I think a large function of the writing I did before I started living how I wanted to (at least from a gender identity perspective) helped me handle those inchoate feelings. Feelings of not being happy with who I was, feelings of never being able to be happy, feelings that I could never let anyone know what was going on inside me because obviously there was something wrong with me, etc. So it came out sometimes in veiled ways (mostly personal journal sorts of affairs or poetry in the Emily Dickinson tradition), efforts of subterfuge and misdirection (short stories and poems where I can't tell sometimes if I'm trying to convince you or me that's how I feel) or it didn't come out at all (most of my blog entries). That isn't to say that writing isn't heartfelt or true or didn't come from someplace meaningful. It's just that in every aspect of my life I deliberately omitted something that was obviously integral to who I am, and that's bound to have an effect. It doesn't mean that I have a problem with a lot of what I wrote before, though. There's some fine quasi-essay work in this blog, some damn fine poetry that I'm proud of and I'd publish under any name or gender identity (here's looking at you, Beauty Of The Fall), and some short stories that I really should have done something with other than write. I didn't, but you know, they're not going anywhere, and that's a problem for another day. Granted, some of the essayish writing got better post transition as I explored topics that I'd kicked around for a long time, but been afraid to write about, but that's neither here nor there. It has been at best sporadic for some time, though.

I feel that I have to find my auctorial again because while I'm still me, obviously I'm not the same. The past two years have shown me that. Occasionally, like last night, I'm reminded of that when someone I used to know orders a drink right next to me or walks by me. It's hard to pretend someone you know or used to know is a stranger. But I suppose to a lot of people that's what it's felt like getting to know me as Jane. I may not like it, but I do have to respect it. Hell, some of them might not even recognize me anymore, so it's possible that I am a stranger. As I stated before, I've had some trouble finding and sustaining my voice. So that's the first goal. The form that it takes on, whether in a blog entry, a poem, or something entirely else that never makes its way to the web, doesn't matter. Just that I do it. I know there's a part of me that will never feel like I stop transitioning (I never really do), but for all intents and purposes, come February 2011, I'm done. And I've mostly accomplished what I set out to do in the first place, which was to get my shit together and learn how to live more wholly than I had in the past. And if I turned a few heads along the way, then so be it.

All of which brings me back to the first question. Why move to St. Paul? Why did I transition? As I told many of you who asked, and some of you who didn't probably inferred, because I needed to. Now, I didn't have to leave 612 to get a working toilet and internet, but I chose to. It feels like the right decision for me at this time. So I sit in a studio with exposed brick and all the amenities I've been missing from a place and it's a camera crew away from feeling like the set to a post college kids growing up into actual adults sitcom. It's got a piped in stream across the street and a farmer's market a block away. The Mississippi has never been closer to my door. I've got a luxurious alley view. All of which may sound horrendous to you, though likely the most abhorrent thing to all the West siders out there is that I even chose to live in this city in the first place. But I needed a change of pace. I had lived in Minneapolis for almost 7 years (hard to imagine, but true) and some serious wanderlust had set in. I've already seen how the other half lives in a lot of regards, so what is it to do that one more time? Maybe I need change to function. Or maybe everything else in my life had finally calmed down enough that I could address some of the other feelings in my life. Because there's more to me than my gender identity, though it has certainly felt consuming of late. Now, it's just time to get out there and start expressing all those other things.