Thank you.

(Estimated reading time: 2:14. Contains 448 words)

1. No alternate narrative will save us — you’re the best and only adult for this situation you face right now.

Sometimes when we procrastinate, we are really waiting for an imaginary expert “in charge” to fix it, squandering newfound authority by passing the buck, or distracting ourselves with low-hanging bad apples. Like well-trained dogs, we’re still waiting for permission that will never come, and training others to wait for permission fails to rescue our confidence. Guilt and anxiety often warn us of this familiar cycle, but we keep listening to dead peer pressure.

‘Perfect isn’t done,’ ‘set expectations’, ‘ it’s easy to win when you make the rules’, ‘perfect is the enemy of good’, ‘there is always someone better’, ‘you make your own happiness,’ ‘imposter syndrome,’ or ‘nobody is coming to help’: whatever you want to call it, no one else is looking through your exact eyes, piloting a flailing skin-bag churning with biochemistry. If the resources aren’t there, including your own abilities, you’re the only one to call for a re-try.

I’ve met many people unwilling to rearrange their priorities yet still expect change to happen, when it never comes. We’re teaching our children how we want to be treated when we’re elderly and vulnerable. We’re already the expert for our experience, and our existential power in the moment behooves us to act.

2. Desensitize yourself to uncertainty: better focus your fear to avoid worrying distractions.

Listen to your body’s warning flags of anxiety, fear, and panic; they might be trying to protect something you love but aren’t fully recognizing. Check your body’s not overprotecting you from a zombie memory. Is that fear a useful reminder or its own problem?

Law school gave me practice reducing a byzantine complex of inconsistent narratives into a sparse set of objective descriptions, but life experience gave me an album of examples for applying the issue to get what I want, and accurately focusing on what I love recharges my motivation.

Dissociation skills might help me calmly organize chaos, but stripping bare the “window dressing” reminds me to ask:

what part of this eventually contributes to what I love?
is this a savior complex trash-fire for my time, energy, & resources?
what parts of this will I care about this years from now?

3. Life is simpler and happier after I accept that most of my gender transition is my own recovery from the long-term trauma of my body betraying me.

Like many immigrants, I learned to survive so I could one day live. At age 3, I first became aware of my gender sorting error and instinctively suffocated it to survive.

I even desperately underwent the extreme denial phase some transgender people experience, of “performing” my assigned gender in hopes of finally feeling in congruence, a multi-year project a close friend later typified “always felt like you were in drag.”

Eventually, it wasn’t only social acceptance or only medical intervention, but rather eventually learning that my gender was no longer a painful thing to hide, that fueled the big positive changes in my world. Things are less scary now that I’m no longer fighting the truth. I’m happier and more loved than I’ve ever been.