Tina's not-so-secret diary 📓🔓

[14:21] I envy my mum's ability to just make small talk without any thought, especially with women. Before I transitioned, I learned from experience that women saw me as a potential threat, so I avoided chatting with them or really interacting in any way unless absolutely necessary. My coworkers have all been women (mostly) but we were in an office, a school gym, or a shop together for extended periods of time—long enough for them to know what I was like. Most people aren't going to be around me long enough to know that, so rather than run the risk of someone being afraid of me, I just didn't say anything, apologised a lot, and vacated the premises as soon as I could. Was that wrong of me? I don't know. But I do know that I matched the physical description of someone who was going to knock you down and rape you. I'm sorry I look like this. I'm sorry you have to be afraid of me. I'm trying to look different, I really am.

[16:33] When I was playing The Sims 1 just now, I had my sim take a nap on the couch for a couple hours before dinner, but I lost track of time and she slept there until 02:45, completely energised. A very similar thing happened to me this morning at 01:00. I accidentally fell asleep on the couch and woke up 6 hours later totally refreshed—although I did end up blowing through a series and a half of The Joy of Painting on Freetube because I wasn't awake to turn it off. It's amazing how tranquilising Bob Ross is.

[08:17] I wanted to make a blog post about the circumstances surrounding my most recently uploaded song, but it turns out I still can't discuss that bit of my life without crying. The short version is: I wrote it at college in 2011 because my roommate introduced me to Tetris and I found playing "Korobushka" was pretty easy. This roommate also started a fake Facebook page for a girl cousin who didn't actually exist, and it turned out to be her trans awakening. Anyway, I think about her everytime I play "Korobushka" these days.

[06:36] So, it turns out that I like Linux Mint A LOT. The difference from Windows 10 is like comparing a seder meal to a pop-tart, to the point you don't even need to bother trying. Microsoft's profit-focussed antics are a fading memory, and my computers are a lot happier now that the corporate entropy accellerator processes aren't running anymore.

[06:41] Apparently the Neocities microblog has a post limit of 10, and I reached it. So... I guess I'll be writing in here a lot more.

[16:37] Things to tell my gender care specialist:
1. Since getting my oestradiol increased, I can get really sad for no apparent reason.
2. Also since getting my increase, I've been almost tunnel-focussed on nesting. If this truly is what teenage girls have to go through, it's no wonder teen pregnancy is at an all-time high (well, that and the abstinence-only sex ed).
3. Assuming I'm able to stay on E for the next 60 years, am I going to develop ostaeoporosis or any of the other deficiencies that elderly women get?
4. Is vaginoplasty covered under my poor-people insurance, and if not, how many limbs will I need to sell in order to afford it? Do they need to be my limbs?

[13:15] I am SO tired. So sleepy. I can't sleep yet though, I have appointments every week for the next month and I need to have not the opposite of regular people hours for that. HOW did i get so busy all of a sudden? I don't know.

[03:15] *me talking to other zillennials* Married? You're not married. What're you talking about, "married". You're not pregnant, you don't have children. We're kids. We have a science test tomorrow.

[04:08] "Why haven't you drawn anything lately?" I have drawn lately. Just tonight as a matter of fact. But, I haven't put it in the gallery. Why not? Well, I've been having a really hard time drawing anything SFW lately. Actually, it's not that it's NSFW, it's just that it's kind of... personal? I guess? Anyway, it's nothing I want to display on a website. Maybe I should start drawing on my phone again? Haven't done that in about 4 years. I used to do it a lot. Fortunately, all the personal/NSFW stuff I've been drawing is really good practise.

[14:23] My mum was a little concerned when i said I wanted to wear eyeshadow. Not the "oh no, my child is trans" kind of concern (which has never happened, I might add) but more like "you're not going to look like a clown are you?" But I used Cmdr. Spock as a model. Success on the first go. 🖖💋

[00:02] New Hogwarts Legacy mod idea: when you start the game, Doomslayer busts through the wall and disembowels and de-faces the player character like they're Wolfenstein SS in Project Brutality before teabagging over their corpse until the game is turned off. It also permanently disables your GPU's heatsink fan and writes itself to the registry a bunch of times in several different places, so you can't uninstall it, even by uninstalling and reinstalling the game. Sucks to be you now, but you were the asswipe who decided to play Blood Libel: The Game. Fuck you and your $5000 gaming rig. Computius Meltdownius.

[05:45] I'm about 4.25 hours away from completely abandoning my comfort zone. It's only for 3 hours, it's not like I'm stowing away on a train truck and starting a career as an itinerant toilet attendant or anything. Really, I'm not worried about it, though. I'm probably not going to get reduced to a quivering mass of carbon over this, because leaving my comfort zone occasionally is the reason why I'm doing this at all. Otherwise, I'd be perfectly content to waste away inside, waiting for unspecified things to happen. The only thing I'm a little concerned about is the fact I haven't slept yet. Oh well.

[18:36] The art fair got rained out. They rescheduled it right in the middle of my jury duty, so... yeah. Is it just because I signed up for it? My statistically-anomalous ass caused the rain storm and the thing wouldn't have needed rescheduling if it hadn't been for me. If I were superstitious, I might just think it got rained out and rescheduled to specifically to keep me away from it.

[22:31] I don't think I'm gonna be able to reset my regular-people hours for the art fair. But, if I can maintain my current hours, then my shift will occur near the end of my optimal uptime. I can make that work. I can't dress as feminine as I want, but at least I have clothes and I can suggest my femininity with a ponytail and makeup. Oooff, wearing makeup in public for the first time... that's going on my calendar.

[03:56] They say that you should beat depression by doing something that takes you out of your comfort zone. So, I signed up to volunteer at the art centre's annual summer thing on Sunday. I'm not sure what they're going to have me doing, but this'll be the first time I present as feminine in public. I don't really have anything explicitly femme to wear except for some basic makeup though. Well, not unless I wear my Hardcore Devo Live tour shirt crop top... that's a little more adventurous than I want to get right now. if i wear that, people are likely to ask when the baby's due. honey, i'm not pregnant.

[00:18] Someone just bought Source Port from me on itch and I discovered $25 in my Paypal acct that I'd forgotten about from my last sale on bandcamp. I think I might cry 🥲

[16:56] It never fails. I follow someone at random on neocities, and I'm like "yeah this site is run by a cool person" for a couple days before they show up as a Harry Potter fan. They post some shit like "Just played Hogwarts Legacy and OMG it's so good" or like putting their Hogwarts house in their aboutme page or say something like "Watching: Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows (for the 18th time!!!)".

Oh, or my personal favourite: "I like HP but I don't hate transwomen or Jews." Gee, thanks for your unequivocal ambivalence about my gender and faith. I guess that's why I don't browse on here very much.

[20:49] Rachel Lillis died a couple days ago. Considering I never really watched the Pokémon anime when I was a kid or really played any of the games but Super Smash Bros. where Jigglypuff voice clips were used, it's still affecting me. I guess it was the manner of her death; fading away from cancer like that. I guess it's also the fact that people whose names I remember from childhood are starting to die, and it's just highlighting the fact that it's not the new millennium anymore.

[13:52] I hate having 0 spending money. My entire salary goes to rent and bills. That's why I started my bandcamp account, so i could sell my music and get some money I could buy things with. But I only made about $300 in 6 years there. No one has bought anything from my itch.io page at all, so I don't even know if it's set up properly. I asked my family to help me with that but their answers were always the same: "We'll have to see how much we've got leftover at the end of the month." That was last year. I need a new chair but the only money I have is going to keeping my bank account open. If it drops below this point, they'll start charging me $50 a month to keep the account open, which is convenient for them considering on the second month that will overdraw my account and I'LL owe THEM money. At this point, I don't see any alternative if Trump gets elected again but killing myself. It's either die quickly in a manner of my own choosing, or die slowly as my pre-transition self returns and I can't stand living in my own skin anymore. I don't want to talk about politics, it makes me want to fall asleep.

[15:23] I made the best ramen soup of my life just now for lunch. The secret is boiling the noodles in plain water first, then poaching an egg in a ladle in the cooking water before ever adding the soup powder. Since i can't get traditional Japanese ingredients out here in Armpit, USA, I just use hoisin sauce, soy sauce, sesame oil, sriracha and a little water for the tare. I'm not much on recipes, but maybe I should publish this one.

[13:25] The answer to last night's conundrum? Close the windows and play The Sims with my headphones on. Of course the flat below and over one is still vacant, and the cute boys downstairs and next door are single, so i probably wouldn't have heard anything from them.

[14:25] School may be starting, but summer is NOT over. It's so humid outside that the puddles from the lawn sprinklers haven't even evapourated yet, and they came on at 04:30. It's 14:25 as I type this.

[16:35] Having a pretty big case of impostor syndrome just at the moment.

It's Friday night. It's nice outside, my windows are open. Probably everyone else's are open too. I'm going to be able to hear every single orgasm that goes down in a 1-block radius tonight and I can't say I'm looking forward to that. This has been a pretty low week and the sounds of cishet couples having sex just going to make it worse. So it comes down to, do I keep my windows open, save money on air conditioning, and be driven mad? Or do I shut the windows, eat the cost, and stay sane?

My sports bra arrived. I didn't realise just how big my boobs got until I put a shirt on over it and looked in the mirror! It doesn't bind me completely flat, but it'll do the job fine. I'm gonna test it out by wearing it to the park tomorrow, so i can see if it'll give me a rash or not. Either way, it's my first bit of explicitly women's clothes (which is ironic considering I need it in order to look more like a man at jury selection).

I'm serious—I thought I'd need surgery to get my boobs this size. But i'm breasting boobily down the stairs and feeling pretty sassy about it ;)

My site is stagnating. It's starting to look like my kitchen catch-all drawer—I claim it's organised but only insofar as you understand how my brain works, and I don't even understand that most days. As opposed as I am to bringing work home with me, I think I need to get some iframes all up in this piece. Nothing fancy, just a title bar, a navbar, and a text box. Maybe a background image, maybe not.

I got a questionnaire for my jury service in October. I can't talk about most of it, but it's pretty clear they're looking for, basically a panel of 12 bible-thumping evangelicals. I didn't realise it at the time, but a couple of the questions sounded like dealbreakers. Should I have perjured myself? I don't know, but it's all academic now. They don't know I'm trans and I'm not gonna tell them; I hope the sports bra I got binds my chest enough that I can pass for a man. Not looking forward to being deadnamed and called "he" for 10 straight days, but those are the breaks I guess. Better than getting arrested.

"Nicole" moved away. I hope I remember her so I won't feel less like a woman when i wear clothes that the corporate feudal state only wants size-4's to wear.

I love kids. I love their innate, natural curiosity; their wonderment at the mundane; their ability to find something fun about nearly every situation. As adults, it's our duty to teach them positivity and show them how wonderful life is. The thought that anyone could even think of doing a child harm fills me with the darkest melancholy possible. But, I guess it's a by-product of making sex into a sin and abortion into a crime.

Some people say you should treat your body like a temple. Wrong. You should treat it like a beloved plush toy, like a teddy bear or something. Love it. Appreciate it. Confide in it. Take care of it. Have fun with it. Apologise if you accidentally mistreat it. But do not put it up on a pedestal and worship it. Worship is passive, appreciation is active, and your body craves activity above all else.

Is it weird that i've never heard Cisco Opus Nr. 1 before? It's supposed to be the most overused piece of hold music ever written but I looked it up on invidious just now and it was just. Not familiar at all.

Nice... 69 followers.

I promised to write a new song for Myshuno 2 based on SimCity Societies and then... I just... didn't. Well, that's not fair, I did, but it's not finished, so it's like I never wrote anything.

I had an inexplicable sense of anticipation all day yesterday and now it's mutated into being on the verge of tears. Like I could cry if I dropped my toast. I'm 90% sure this is just hormonal, but that doesn't make it any better.

The Sims 4 doesn't spark joy anymore. I never play that game, I only build stuff. My ideas for improving it exceed my abilities, but when I think about learning how to mod it, I don't care enough to follow through. I've built so many houses, my tray folder is almost a gigabyte in size now.

There was a cute guy with a laundry basket full of his belongings sitting out on the front steps of the flat this morning. He got picked up by an older man in a white work truck. I hope that he felt relief at seeing the truck come for him and is off to somewhere he feels safe.

I'm not going to bother with stylesheets on this website. I spend all day writing CSS for other people's websites, why would I ever want to bring my work home with me? I WANT this site to look like it fell out of 1995 fully formed. Plus i can't be arsed to redefine all of my formatting, so there's that as well.

I don't want to be one of those transwomen who transitions and then starts hating men. I felt that I was boring and incompetent as a man, and now that I'm a woman, I'm in danger of generically ascribing those traits to all other men; especially cishet men and in particular men in relationships. I need to stay vigilant against all the internalised TERF rhetoric I absorbed as a man, but damn is it hard... especially on low days like today, I feel my vigilance slipping away. Use your brain, Tina! You're stronger than this!