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11/20/24 Movies I've Seen Recently

I have not historically been a huge movie watcher. I would watch things in theatres if they looked really interesting, and maybe I would watch a movie with my friends at a party, but I would not often go out of my way to watch movies that looked interesting. This semester however, two things have aligned to make me watch more movies in 3 months than I have seen in the past couple years. First, I'm taking a class on Egyptian cinema, which has me watching a couple movies a week on average. It has been interesting so far, and I'm really enjoying getting to learn Egyptian history alongside watching films I probably wouldn't have watched anyways. The second thing is that a very pretty girl in my co-op started having movie nights 2-3 times a week in the lounge, and I took it upon myself to go to as many as I could. For the movies, of course. She is really into films so again, there are good movies here I probably wouldn't have watched otherwise. With all this said, here is a non-comprehensive list of some of the films we've watched so far and any thoughts I have right now.

11/11/24 Being Trans

Have you ever procrastinated doing an assignment for so long and when you finally force yourself to do it 4 days after it's due, you realize it actually isn't that hard and you could have spared yourself so much stress by just doing it on time in the first place? That's how I feel about going on T. I want to clarify, I am not upset with the fact that I waited multiple years to transition. I think when I first came out, I had a lot of other issues with my body/ mental health, and introducing testosterone into that equation would not have helped. However, about 6 or 7 months ago I decided I did want to start taking t, and that's when I should have made the appointment. I couldn't get myself to make the call, and I doubted my feelings. It is hard for some people to get access to hormones, due to where they live, who they are, and various issues they are dealing with. This said, I did not run into many issues with getting access to hrt. I had worked myself up and convinced myself I would have to go through some painful process, but it was quite easy. My gender doctor is so nice and so cool and is great at making me feel comfortable. He's got lots of face and hand tattoos and a sick mustache, which is exactly what you want from the guy prescribing you hormones.
I'm two weeks in to testosterone right now, and I haven't noticed too many changes. The main thing is that my sex drive has increased significantly. I knew this was a thing that would happen but I greatly underestimated the extent to which it would affect me. I've been comparing it to how it felt in the week leading up to my period. The main way I could tell that I was about to get my period was that for one week, my sex drive would skyrocket. This is just like having that all the time. Other than that, I think my smell has changed a bit, which isn't too big of a deal because I need to get new (stronger) deodorant soon anyways.
I ran into a friend I knew last year, who I hadn't really talked to in a while and their voice dropped so much! It was incredible, I hope I get that kind of change. I don't really have issues with my voice as it is, but I won't complain about it getting lower. I think I might look up some resources for trying to retain some kind of a singing voice though. I don't sing seriously but would love to be able to continue singing to myself in my room at the very least. I ran into that person at a trans community aid event, which I found was a very cathartic space to be in. College trans meetings are sometimes hit or miss in terms of vibe, but I've been to a couple meetings in the past week that have really changed my outlook. Something something you have to be in community with people you find annoying sometimes. I hope everyone has trans community like this at some point in their life, and I hope you lean on whoever you are in community with right now.

10/11/24 The issue with Capstones

The issue here is specifically with people's performance art capstones. I have worked on 2 people's capstones so far, and both of them have had wild glaring problems I didn't learn about until just before tech week. To give some backstory, I have been doing sound for theatre for 4 years now. I started in highschool and was very nervous and excited to continue doing this into college. My second semester in college, I worked on a musical being put on independently of any on campus org. It was the director's capstone. The issue with capstones is that they are basically viewed as the peak of someone's college career. This is your moment, what all of this has been working up to. You're a senior and this is your moment for all eyes to be on you. This puts a lot of pressure on the person whose capstone it is, which then trickles down through the whole production. I have heard several people with similar stories, agreeing to dance in someone's capstone only to wind up getting yelled at by some stressed out director. In the case of this first production, this resulted in someone being pretty seriously hurt due to rushing and poor safety. Not only did someone's arm get broken, but I didn't learn what had happened until the first day of tech week! At that point, I had already done all the sound editing, which is a majority of the work. I also learned multiple of the other designers (costumes and one other I can't quite remember. Intimacy coordinator?) had quit and the remaining designers had not been notified in any way. This is a theme with bad theatre productions- suspiciously poor communication. I'm not going to say it was purposefully hidden from us that these people had quit the show, but I will say it's shady. The most recent theatre production I worked on had a similar issue I only learned about right when tech rehearsals were starting- deja vu am I right?? I learned that multiple actors had quit due to racism. I still don't have the full details of this, but I was told they left due to hardcore microaggressions that were lowkey just macroaggressions. It is my understanding this was both from the script and also directing. For some context, this show was written by a student as their capstone, but was directed by someone else. The production team was put together while the script was still being written, at the end of last semester, with the understanding that the script would be finished by the end of the summer. This didn't exactly happen, and I was told more than one actor quit because the script was stereotypical and racist, and they felt they had been "typecast" in a stereotypical role that was made worse by the director's decisions. I didn't know any of this until tech week because the director and stage manager did not tell us that multiple actors had dropped out until very late into the process. I find this so frustrating because by the time I'm learning about some director doing some wack shit, I have already put hours of my time into this and my name is associated with the production! A guy needs to be able to make educated decisions about these types of things. With all this said, I think I will start being a bit more choosy with what theatre productions I work on. Last year I was just agreeing to anything I was offered because I didn't think I would get any other offers. My time is not worth the emotional strife these productions have caused me.

9/30/24 September reflection

This month has been an absolute whirlwind. Transition has been the theme of this month, and I suspect that will continue being true next month as well. I started my classes, and I've been enjoying all of them except for Astronomy which has been a slog. I oversaw interim in Hark and got elected as DLEC, and dealt with all the crisises that have come up. I started my pottery exco, so far I've just been making pinch pots but we're movin up in the world just you wait. Once we have things fired and glazed I might post some pictures, because it's just so cool. The play I'm working on (Miss Ermintrude's Guide to Etiquette, written by someone at my college) is almost in its tech week, and I've edited together all the sound cues. The weather has changed completely from the beginning of the month to the end of the month. It's been cloudy and raining this whole week, and we did have a tornado we had to hide from. Three weeks ago, it was so sunny out I had to wear a hat and sunscreen every day! I've started going to the gym, and while it's hard to find time to go every week, I've been enjoying getting to do it. Going to the gym is something that I never thought I would be able to do. For the last couple years, every attempt to workout has resulted in a panic attack. Somehow, I have healed. It's funny because most people don't think of this as being an achievement, but it is so significant for me. There's something about coming to school that makes it easier to make life changes. When I'm home for the summers with my parents, things feel stagnated. It also helps that when I come to college, there are a lot of really easy ways to get into new interests. There's the pottery co-op, there's several very accessible gyms, etc. I wish all of my friends from home could be here with me and we could all do fun stuff together. I have my midterms coming up, and tech week for this play, and then finally fall break in late October. I have a lot to look forward to, which I'm very excited for.

9/16/24 What if a lemon made a website?

When I say I'm bad with computers, I mean the back end stuff. My skills perfectly match my use case- I have never had a use for more complicated tech skills. I'm not some old man who doesn't know how to google, but when it comes to %appdata% and sorting through files and doing fancy stuff, I have to run to my girlfriend and ask her for a step by step guide. However, I am smart. I don't say that as some weird internet brag, I mean I can learn new things- even if I don't always believe in myself. After talking to my girlfriend about making a website, and looking around neocities, I said maybee I would give it a try. So, I set out to start learning. Luckily, these websites aren't written in a code I knew anything about- C++ and Python and all those still seem really scary! Thats the stuff for a computer science class, not for me to learn on my own. Html however, is shiny and new. With the help of an online guide (that you can find a link to here ) I started my journey. It started out well, but I quickly had to set some rules for myself. First, and most important, no coding after 10 pm. I found myself getting frustrated and on the verge of giving up several times, usually at 11:30 pm. Writing code feels like trying to untangle a string of led lights. There is no way I can do it when it's dark, I'm tired, and nothing seems to be going my way. The other rule I had to set was to swallow my pride and ask for help if I needed it. One issue with a lot of online resources, is that they tend to assume familiarity with coding and computers. Certain concepts take a little bit to understand, and most of the guides skip over the explanation part of that. Luckily, I have easy access to a wealth of nerdy website developers, who I can ask to help me troubleshoot, or just vent my frustrations to. Slowly, I tried out various layouts and aspects of website building, and started putting this website together. As you can probably tell, I wanted a notebook paper and sticky note vibe. One thing about me is that I am a biig bullet journaling fan. I lean into the artsy layout side of things, and my bullet journaling spirit could not be squashed even in online design. While looking through other people's neocities sites, I noticed so many people have a technology type theme to their websites! I think this is really cute to be honest, there are so many computer nerds making their personal websites so obviously they would theme their sites after old versions of windows and all that. The "old web" nostalgia has y'all in a strong grip. I like it though, it's very charming. However, I have no nostalgia for the old web, so I wanted to things a bit differently. I am still struggling with getting the formatting exactly how I want it, and I will continue tweaking things, however, I am very proud to have this website mostly up and running.