Anna, finally but not yet final.

[Finally Anna]

End of day #2 of transforming flatpacks into furniture. Tomorrow is day #3 and then everything will be in place. I'm intentionally working a bit slowly since that keeps me in a good mood.
I have also been doing "electrician" and will need to be "internet connection fixer" as well.
Carpenter, electrician, painter, concrete worker, chef, sommelier, baker, driver, gardener, cleaner, lover, ... the list of chores and entertainment is long and varied, but that is one of the nice things of retirement.

[Emma1017]

Anna, I love that you have your own pace.  I also agree with Lori that you should continue with therapy.  It's the one place where you can have unrestricted time to be totally honest with yourself and with a trusted person who has only your needs in mind.

[Finally Anna]

Thank you, Emma! 💕

I cannot have any other pace than my own and I hope that I am neither speeding (I am definitely not speeding) nor braking (which I might be).

My wife has asked me if I go slowly out of consideration for her. She has asked that on two separate occasions so she sees that I have not added much to my presentation the latest 1-2 months. But of course I go a bit slowly out of consideration for her, though not only because of her. Also because of me, to feel more confident in my changes as I am past all the subtle integrations and my next steps most likely will be a bit more noticeable.

Yes, I am defintely speaking to myself - and it helps. I am not overly afraid or anxious, but now and then I still feel the need to build some extra confidence in myself and my journey, and repeating affirmations and other positives is one way of doing that.
🥰

[Finally Anna]

TLDR: A bit of deep thought on the mind's fascinating properties, unrelated to clothing or other worldly things, but probably related to coming out and integrating Anna into my life, her life.

🤔

This post started out as a way of putting forward my thoughts on why people fall for the anti-everything rhetoric, and my answer follows the lines of Kahneman and attribute substitution. Don't look it up unless you have an actual interest in how the mind works and why we think we have more control over our thought processes than we actually have.

But, halfway through I realized that I was weering into a more personal corner of the mind's fascinating board of Go. So, here goes. The rewritten blog post.

As a reader of my small blog posts, you may have realized I have a mind that is constantly thinking about things, imagining tings, looking at things from various angles, wondering about the what-ifs, about the thats-interesting-i-need-to-have-a-look, finding interest in the process of finding out, and so on.
Constantly? Yes. Meaning all the time. Either consciously when digging into things that catch my interest, or subconsiously so that my mind actually thinks about things without me really knowing and then a thought or decision comes back when the background processing has reached some interesting result (and this happens often, not just now and then). I find it relaxing to just dig into various facts, findings and knowledge. My brain rests when doing this, when gaining knowledge by inputting infomration. It sounds contradictory but it is the truth.

What is interesting to me is that when I wrote this blog post about Kahneman's views on how the mind works, I suddenly realized, as one of those results of the background processing, that I suspect that this 24/7/365 activity has been slightly lowered, that it has gained the ability to switch into a lower gear. Maybe, just maybe, it is now sometimes in Neutral? A dizzying thought, since it has not been in Neutral for as long as I can remember. It. Was. Never. Ever. In. Neutral. But now I actually think it sometimes is.

There is no certainty in this and the cause, if there is a cause, is unknown. But I cannot help but think that this is a consequence of Anna's emergence. Maybe my mind is more at peace now? Maybe it does not have to stay on high alert for identity protection reasons, all the time? And maybe this also makes it go into lower gear more often? I don't know, but it feels that way.

If I know myself correctly then I will now think quite a bit about this and dig into information about this. Perhaps there is also a subconscious process starting about this? A self-feeding loop of thoughts, thinking, results and re-evaluation.

Weird? Perhaps. But this is how my mind works and regardless of Anna's emergence it is likely to continue to follow those paths, even if it now seems to have a low-speed gear, or even a Neutral.

[Lori Dee ✅]

That is fascinating, and I do the same thing.

I have had many interests throughout my life, and when I find something useful, I study it. When I have a firm grasp of the subject, something else catches my interest. I have always enjoyed learning new things, and that led me to conclude that learning and changing our way of thinking are part of our spiritual evolution as humans. I have written numerous articles about it. Maybe I'll assemble them into a book one day.

[Finally Anna]

Lori, don't you ever sleep? It was 2AM Mountain time when you replied.

[tammy753]

I do the deep dive on things to. I think I get obsessed with an idea and I research it until I get tired of it or some other idea sparks an interest. I find if I am driving I will ask out AI overlords questions in my car. Example I saw a wind mill and thought I be they use planetary gears to increase rotational speed so I then had a talk with Gemini on how wind mills work. FYI they do use planetary gears.

[Finally Anna]

Lori, don't you ever sleep? It was 2AM Mountain time when you replied.

But 2AM is just the beginning, if there is something interesting that has to be studied.
🤔🥰

[Finally Anna]

I do the deep dive on things to

I don't always do the deep dive. I often follow some interesting lead and then something else makes me jump on to that track etc. Several hours of lateral jumps and brief dives into various areas will follow.

[Petunia]

I don't always do the deep dive. I often follow some interesting lead and then something else makes me jump on to that track etc. Several hours of lateral jumps and brief dives into various areas will follow.

Once again Anna you posted something I could have written.

If it's something I really want to know about I go headlong until it gets too hard to understand or remember, or if I come across another more interesting thing that diverts my attention and then off I go on that.

[Lori Dee ✅]

Lori, don't you ever sleep? It was 2AM Mountain time when you replied.

I don't sleep well, but in this case I had been writing. I was working on a long chapter and wanted to finish up before going to go to bed. Then thought I'd pop in here real quick first. So, yeah. You busted me.
😁

[Finally Anna]

I think I will have a little talk with my wife, perhaps even later today. As I have previously written, she has asked how i feel a couple of times, and I have answered a bit plainly - like "I feel ok, good-ish" (which is true, but is not detailed enough).

But.
Today I realized that I actually feel very good and that there's two sides to my well-being and they need to be separated.

On the one hand, my MTF journey continues and it will most likely carry me well into androgynous territory, probably also to femme-leaning androgynous, and just maybe even into pure feminine land. Exactly where the journey goes it not important because it is guaranteed to lead me to the place where I belong. This journey will take some time and I will have good days as well as bad days. But this does not define how I really feel!

On the other hand there's my general well-being, my long-term well-being, the real measure of how I feel, and this is so good compared to how things were before I came out to myself. There's really no comparison because it's like black to white, night to day, thunderstorm to sunshine, denial to acceptance. And this is the important measure of my well-being, so this is what I should tell my wife.

🥰

[Finally Anna]

A reflection, ref the previous post.

A bit of self-therapy again. I find that this kind of self-therapy works quite well. You can all walk tall because it is all of you here that make it work. 💕💕💕

I feel good. Really good. Because I realized that the scale was incorrect.

The right scale isn't the one that has "what do I dream of and what if I had lived my whole life as a girl/woman". That one is virtual. Desirable, oh so desirable, but totally virtual. That life-path does not exist anymore and it was probably not really achievable 50 years ago either.

The scale to measure against is: How did I feel before I accepted my transfemme identity? How was my well-being, then? How was my overall quality of life, then? And then compare to how my life is now.
It is of course this scale I should use for a kind of measurement of well-being and quality of life.

The answer is in the previous post.

[Finally Anna]

Affirming myself, am I? You bet I am!
Boring self-therapy posts? Yep.

The thing is that it works surprisingly well when the arguments used are reasonable/rational (I can't find a better word right now) rather than just a stab at being positive.

[Lori Dee ✅]

As they say, hindsight is 20/20.

I have seen countless stories from transgender people who have come to the same conclusion. When they look back at who they were then, they admit that they were miserable people and that transition has made them a better version of themselves.

Myself included. I sought therapy not knowing anything about being transgender. As I tell in the Story of Lori, all I knew was that I was unhappy. I wasn't a nice person to be around, and even my wife told me I complained a lot. I attributed it to high pain levels while recovering from injuries and surgeries.

In therapy, I learned that the cause of my unhappiness was not due to pain; it only gave it a place to focus. Deep down, I was unhappy because I could not be the person I really was. Once I accepted myself with all my faults and began my transition, I became a much better version of myself.

I am by no means perfect or even content with how far I have come, as I realize how far I still have to go. But I am getting there. Baby steps, but still moving forward.

[Finally Anna]

Lori, that is very true as a general picture also for me.

The thing is that I have never thought of myself as unhappy. Ok, that is not true. At times I've been really unhappy, even miserable, because of the effects of my transgender identity, but my life as a whole has not been unhappy. Once I accepted my transgender identity, those periods of misery just vanished. They disappeared instantly and I haven't had even a whisper of those things since. So, yes, I'm well. I'm feeling both fine and good. I'm less moody. I am more content, more positive, happier, more caring, and the list goes on.

The baby steps are a companion for life.

[KristaFairchild]

As they say, hindsight is 20/20.

I have seen countless stories from transgender people who have come to the same conclusion. When they look back at who they were then, they admit that they were miserable people and that transition has made them a better version of themselves.

Exactly. Only I thought I was ok. I was blind to my gender and life was great in many ways. There was an addiction issues that had been tamed for a decade. 

Until the window on my gender opened. Then I dive into my addiction and ultimately transitioning assisted my 12 Step work until I was, and am, deeply sober and serene. 

Funny, a year ago I only dressed up fully female when I was alone. There was a period about six months ago when I would present nonbinary until right before a Genderquest meeting, when I would change in my car. 

Now I wouldn't think of going out in public without my wig and forms. At home with my wife, my appearance varies with comfort and my mood. 

What a healing journey it's been