Well, for all intents and purposes, I'm out everywhere in my life except at work now. I have a tiny handful of friends that don't know, but only because I don't talk to them often anyways, and only my immediate family is aware (and that's a whole 'nother bag of worms!). So, grandfather, 3 friends, and work, and that's about it. Even my in-laws know, and of course ALL of my doctors now as of today. I have also told 5 people at work that I trusted, but still present as some psuedo-feminine-male conglomeration, so I'm already visually preparing people, haha.
I had already notified HR that this change was coming down the pipeline like 5 months back, so she wasn't shocked by any means. I have just gotten to a point this week where it pisses me off that I have to censor myself when I come to work, and I feel distracted and preoccupied by thinking about how I'd like to be living at work, so I took the opportunity to address that with her this afternoon.
Once again, it went surprisingly well I think. My original plan was to come out at work next April/May, coinciding with my annual performance review, but I don't think I can wait that long now. So I'm thinking about coming out for like, January 1st. I need to put together a plan, what I want to do and what I think needs to be done and give that to her. From there we can pick a date and work backwards on developing a timeline and how to proceed at each step. She just asked that I don't catch her off guard and give her more than like, a week's notice to start the ball rolling, lol. I figure I'll need a meeting with upper management and I want to have a meeting with my department (only 6 of us, 5 of which work within 20 feet of me, so they see me everyday). Other than that, maybe a company wide e-mail and possible departmental training with each manager to discuss terminology, pronouns, sensitivity training, and what this all really means to them, my presence may or may not be optional for that.
She is surprisingly on-board though, so I'm happy. The CEO of the company is also aware and on-board, as well as the rest of the HR department apparently, she told them, not me. I was a little caught off guard by that, but it eases my stress a little to know that what's done is done.
So there you have it. Yay, one more ball rolling, slowly, but rolling, hehe.
