New Clothes

I'm starting to feel like I look good. I'm more confident. I've got more spring in my step. I'm excited to go out. I also am in need of a new wardrobe due to losing a packet of weight. I like new clothes.... always have. It's kind of a guilty pleasure. Though I love also the worn-in t-shirts of ten years plus, and the tracksuit pants for slacking around on a winter morning that are so old there's not an ounce of elastic left in them.... Mmmmm. New clothes are just brilliant for feeling spiffy.

Secondy Puberty

Zits!!!



Fucking hell.

Coming Out/In

Today I came out as trans to some of the guys I've worked with for years and grown to think of as good friends. It was far harder than coming out to my workshop counterparts - I haven't known them or loved them for long at all and therefore can take or leave whether they like me or care at all. The guys today, though... I've known them for longer and don't want to lose them.

Typically I put myself through hell before telling them. I was nervous as hell. I was trying to escape my own ultimatum to do it today, before I take my second shot, before I go too far into my changes to be being polite about it and more like treating them as an afterthought. But... it's one thing to think Well if they can't handle it they're obviously not friends and completely another to face the thought of losing them as friends but still having to face them at work.

Also typically, it appears I put myself through hell for nothing. Everyone was great - no stars and banners, no shock, no turning away. Just a calm response of Whatever makes you happy. You're still Vic. I love this industry. What a great bunch of guys.

Helmet Hair

I used to love caps. I still do. But now.... I have to be able to commit to wearing them all day. There is just no room for off and on with them any more. The hair does not put up with it.

The hair misbehaves. It is already protesting that I don't like it's cowlicks being wild and awkward. I try to tame them with product. I chop them. They fight grimly and mock my attempts. Introduce a cap into the equation and they are stirred up to new heights of disobedience. If the cap is coming along, it is to stay all day and lock the disobedience away from public viewing.

Enter the worst of all into the equation: the necessary hat. The work helmet. Where all element of choice is removed. Must wear helmet.... most definately will come out with bad hair.

"So You're Going Down the Trans Path, Hey?"

Wow. How do I write about something so deep in me and do it justice?

Hmmm. Maybe I'll leave that one for later. For the moment I'll just state the facts.

I've changed my name, driver's license, work details, bank details, even my fucking gym membership. When I think I'm done, yet another letter will turn up with my old name on it. Some systems will let me change my gender marker and title, some won't. It will get better eventually, with a bit more fight if I can muster it up, or at least when I take the surgery path.

I started testosterone on the 28th of February this year. Just over two weeks ago.



I've found it most difficult to tell the people that I care about the most. I find it hard to even organise my thoughts around how to say it sometimes. But... I'm still Vic, right?

Ten Words

It's now the end of adulthood. I bought a Playstation.

Write a Diary?

It got suggested to me yesterday that I write a diary to push some of the stress out of my head and onto a page instead.

I've tried that shit off and on for years.

There really weren't any better times than when I was blogging every day and I miss it. I know I keep coming back for a few posts and then become elusive again but who knows? Maybe I'll be better at it again. I'm giving myself a limit on word numbers for a while, just to see how I go.

Here goes nothing, hey?

I'm kicking back watching The Dish. What a classic Australian film. It's all about the role that one of our telescopes played in the moon landing - one of my favourite films of all time really. Many moons ago on this blog I posted some photos of the dish that was in the movie. It is such a magnificent structure.

Back to the movie, though. Australians have grown to be so good at taking the piss out of themselves, even within a serious context. A bunch of guys playing cricket in the bowl of a telescope is so... us. That's our culture all over.

"You just bullshitted NASA!"

Music taste

What kind of music do you like?

I like anything.
All types.

Actually, no. A few things could have happened there. One possibility is that you've just been put on the spot about what you like and your head froze up. Another is that you don't want to offend a prospective new friend by saying their favourite music is shit. Who knows? That person you tell to listen to some real music when they confess their love for the Spice Girls could have been your best friend, but you'll never know because they've fucked off to spice up their life without you.

I love those sorts of conversations. I had one recently with a work friend who is thinking about having guitar lessons from me. He's had them before from someone in the past, and told me he lost interest and got bored. I told him my perspective is that especially for adult learning, you have to be able to justify your means toward a goal. And so I asked the question:

What's a song you really like?

I like lots of music. All types. Even classical.

Really? Woohoo! Let's learn a classical piece then!

Oh no, I wouldn't want to play classical.

And we're back to square one.

Old is the new Old

For fuck's sake. The bands I listened to as a teenager are releasing new albums. Some are bands I thought were long gone. Some are bands that have had a really good bash at longevity. Some are bands that have evolved into playing completely different music over time. But that's beside the point.

It only struck me yesterday, when I discovered that No Doubt is giving it all another go. The memories came flooding back of having friends wanting me to play Don't Speak for them while we rammed into a tiny boarding school dorm room. Those same days of bunches of teenagers screaming out Alanis - "Are you thinking of me, when you fuck her?". Oh and I can still picture clearly my mother's face when she decided that Matchbox Twenty were no good because you shouldn't sing about pushing people around, it's not nice.

All that isn't yesterday any more. Not by a long shot. It's a long time ago now. I've lost a good sixteen years bumming around and these guys are still out there making music and flogging it to the world.

I feel old.

Now listening:

I've been on a music binge lately. Actually, I think that every day should be filled with a background of music... So maybe, rather than call it bingeing, I've been returning to a more natural state of order.

Surround sound. What a great combination of words. I bought a nice little system for my laptop. Now the loungeroom of my brightly coloured little living space is now truly a home. 4:15am and I'm already out here grooving! Take that, motherfuckers!

So here's some of the top choices for the moment:



Foster the People - Call it What You Want. A classic pump-me-up song. There's a particular stretch of road I drive before work that I now associate with this song because I've played it so many times as an energy kick to get the day rolling.



The Black Keys - Little Black Submarines. This is from the latest album, with the hit Lonely Boy on it. In fact, the entire album is an absolute pearler. I'll be driving down a haul road, filthy and fucked off after a day in the pit, and bashing the hell out of the steering wheel to that fantastic rum beat in the last section.

Socks And Vibrators Don't Mix

When your ex packs all your stuff from the bedroom into bags and leaves them out front of what used to be your home, just check - before you throw it in storage for four months - that your jelly sleeve vibrator IS NOT NEXT TO A SOCK. The two may become one.

AusArt Monday

One of my favourite artists of all time, Brett Whiteley.

Safety Plus

An emergency stop button on a drilling machine...

Fuck off Summer!

Second day of the New Year, and summer decided to come around and make an apology for being late. It made up for itself with three bakingly hot forty-degree days, and then promptly up and fucked off again yesterday.

Every year I forget just how bad an open cut pit is when it's a hot day. It's like being in a desert. No shade. Surrounded by white rocks and plenty of dust. You're out in it in your mandatory long sleeved shirt and pants and your ridiculous metatarsal boots, sweating a river by eight thirty and wondering how you're going to last the rest of the twelve hours, let alone actually get anything done. Any water you have is hot by midmorning. You're glad for the rule about carrying gloves at all times because everything metal that you touch has become super heated.

I'm not much of a summer person at all. I'm a prolific sweater (sexy, I know) so especially at work my face ends up red raw just from wiping it constantly on my long sleeves. At least with winter you can pile more clothes on and still be able to do what you want (I bet I'll say different when I'm out in it, though). Days like those last three, woah. I felt like I wanted to die but didn't have the energy. Every movement was lethargic. Every movement was downright difficult.

Summer should either be three months off for the entire work force or six-hour days with a pool provided.

Sun Non-Sense

Some days you have to take your cues from Lawrence of Arabia...

Brand New Year, Happy New World

I'm back home after a lightning trip to bring in the New Year with IcePick and KelSuperStarSinger, surveying my surroundings and being happy with what I have.

Jonah is looking out the window. He plays a game with the three little dogs who border our flat. They like to hunt him from window to window and bark whenever they come across him. Jonah feels that he has the upper hand, because jump and carry on as much as the little tackers like to, they can't get past the fence or anywhere near him... and he knows it.

He'll lounge around on the sill and look down his nose at them for a while until they get bored. Then abruptly he'll disappear and reposition himself at another window. Fun and entertainment for all, except maybe the neighbours!

Brutus the oversize goldfish is wriggling away in his not-so-clean tank. It seems like he gives an extra happy wriggle whenever he sees me. The guy is a legend. He floats around giving a fuck off world I can't be bothered look until his light comes on late in the morning, and then it's all wriggle and happiness until about eleven at night when the light switches off again.

I have a guitar beside me on the lounge and plenty of friends to talk to. I have a job that is interesting and cool and pays well. I have goals to set and bridges to burn.

Life is good.

End of another year

I'm not going to see the fireworks spectacles anywhere.

I'm not going to wear a stupid mass-produced hat with too-tight elastic and the staples barely holding it together.

I'm not going to have one of those god-awful noisemaker things hanging out of my gob, and I'm certainly not going to explode any party poppers.

I will try to count the countdown in real-time, rather than join in with the pissed over-excited crowd that always rushes it exponentially the closer they get to one.

I'm not going to hug random people I've never met.

I'm not going to have a million facebook photos of me with some other person.

I will, however, farewell a rather shite year with my good friends and contemplate the goals I will set to make the coming one a tad more enjoyable.