Next On The Journey--Or: Where Is This Going?

After writing yesterday's post, I noticed something interesting, at least to me.  

I began this blog twelve years ago.  You might say that I spun it off from an earlier blog, Transwoman Times.  I started that blog a year before my gender-affirmation surgery and continued it for several years after.  About a year after my surgery, I--and at least one reader--noticed that I was also writing about my rides and bikes, and cycling in general.  I didn't think bikes or cycling were out of place in TT:  After all, they--and the fact that I couldn't ride for a few months after my surgery--were an important part of my gender affirmation process, as they have been in my life. 

After I started this blog, I wrote less about cycling-related stuff on TT.  So, perhaps not surprisingly, I found myself posting less on that site as I had less and less to say about my gender affirmation.  That is to say, rather than a process of affirmation, my gender identity became a fact of my life.

But now I find that I'm writing more about, if not gender-related topics, then political, social and cultural issues, on this blog.  Those subjects are, of course, related to cycling, especially if it's your primary or a major means of transportation.  You know that from my rants about bicycle "infrastructure" planned, designed and built by people who haven't been on a bicycle since the day they got their driver's licenses. 

I also, however, see that gender-related issues are "creeping" into this blog.  In one way it seems ironic, or at least odd:  Am I coming full-circle (or cycle)?, I wonder.  Then again, this shift in focus, if indeed this blog is moving in that direction, is a fulfillment of what I say in my masthead:  I am--as always--a woman on a bicycle--and something else I say in my profile--this is a blog by a transgender woman.

While I haven't posted on Transwoman Times in a while, I have no plans to let this blog lie fallow.  I just hope that the twists and turns of this blog, and my journey, continue to interest you, and others.  But I must warn you:  I won't stop being "political."  I can't.

How Is It Aging?

Aged 12 years.

When I saw that phrase--on a bottle of Scotch whiskey--I wasn't 12 years old.  I couldn't quite fathom that grown-ups drank something older than I was.

Now I am at an age when I don't think of something as having occurred 12 years ago.  Now I'm more likely to round it up or down to 15 or ten years.  Someone, I forget whom, told me that it happens when "you get to a certain age":  According to that person, you start to see your life, and the world, "in five- or ten-year increments."

There are, of course, some things I can pinpoint in time.  One of them is the subject of today's post.  

Exactly twelve years ago today, this blog was born. At least, that is the day on which I wrote and published my first post.  For two years before that, I'd been writing another blog, Transwoman Times, which I continued for a few years into the life of this blog and, in a way, this blog is an extension, continuation or simply a relative--I'm still not sure of which--of that one.

Now, some might say that I've reached an age when I can no longer say I'm in "mid-life."  To them, I'll repeast something I've said in this blog, and elsewehere:  If I don't know how long I'm going to live, I can't know whether or not I'm in the middle of my life.  Given the typical and even the longest lifespans of humans, I can't plausibly say I'm at the beginning or even early in my life.  But as long as I don't know where I end, I'm in the middle--just as I can't know whether a ride I take will be the last, or one of the last--or even whether it's the last time I'll take a particular ride, such as the one to Greenwich or Point Lookout.

Whether you've been reading this blog from its beginning, or found it yesterday, I thank you for taking the time to read it.  And however long this blog--and I--last, I hope you're with me for the journey.  We're only in the middle of it, after all!