Last September I shared that I was likely not going to renew with the fertility clinic, after ten years of storing material there. This is still the case. I’m still messed up about it.
I ran out of time. If life was longer, then I would have had time to work through my trauma and how I was a piss-poor girlfriend, save money for IVF and a house amidst prices tripling, find a partner with compatible desires in the limited dating pool for trans folk, etc.
I did a lot of that, just didn’t get all the way there, and now I’m too old. Two decades of adulthood sounds endless when its ahead of you, but when its behind, it’s much more finite. Different starting points and challenges unique to some circumstances make a big impact.
My friends either have kids, or are child-free by choice, so I don’t have anyone to talk to about this.
I’m trying to vision a future, and I don’t know what that looks like. My recent search history includes “finding purpose after infertility”, the closest proxy I can think of. Is this what a mid-life crisis feels like? I’m sure I’ll look back at this as a turning point.
Hey future me, give me a clue, won’t you? I feel lost over here.
For the last six months I’ve been working on the screenplay for a trans adventure movie/play. I just completed the first draft.
The story is about two French-Canadian trans people as they attend the World Lumberjane competition in the UK. At one point these absent-minded characters get lost, and are seen close to the axes on television. This kick-starts a new moral panic that devolves into “Rapid Onset Violent Transgenders”. The rest of the story is the characters trying to get home and all the ridiculous things that happen on the way.
This first draft isn’t good. The writing is juvenile overall; it’s preachy; the dialog is too similar between characters; the end too abrupt; etc etc. Furthermore, the humour in this screenplay relies on the absurdity of this anti-trans moment, but reality just keeps outdoing anything I come up with. We’re in the third week of January, and there’s already 321 bills in American legislatures this year to purge society of trans people. My hometown saw unprecedented organized transphobia. Politicians are jumping on the trans thing being more transparent than ever about eliminationist objectives:
So I come up with absurdly terrible stuff for this screenplay, and then these transphobes just outdo the fiction. I revise my work accordingly.
My current intent is to get to a second draft. I don’t know how long that will take.
2023 included trips to New Orleans, Nashville, the Grand Canyon, Vegas, Montreal, Sudbury, Paris, Marseilles, Nice, Cannes, and most importantly the Midland Butter Tart Festival.
It also included facing off transphobes multiple times, as they harassed young families and performers at the NAC, harassed three schools in the west end, harassed attendees at a small pride event in Vanier. I also went to the trans march in Montreal and pride in Ottawa.
I went off-roading for the first time, and took to the water with my kayak. I saw a number of shows. I went spelunking. I lost 35lbs. I built up my little library of queer and trans history. This was also the year that I found out I would never have kids, and started grieving that. I also broke up with my partner and lost three friends.
I have a small list for what I’ll get up to for 2024. I can’t see a future anymore, not like before. But I can see one year ahead, and I’ll take it.
A month ago, I spent two weeks in France with my dad. We spent time in Paris, Nice, Marseilles, with day trips to Monte Carlo, Cannes and Èze.
Relaxing in Nice.The view from the Nietzsche path in Èze.View from the hotel in Marseilles.
This was my third time in the country, but the first time outside of Paris. French as spoken by French-Canadians is difficult for people in France to understand, to the point that my last times there they switched to English. Annoyed by this habit, I decided to alter how I spoke to approximate Metropolitain French. Twice I heard people remark that I was Belgian and never once switched to English, a win.
The intent of the trip was to live well and relax. We checked out Versailles, where we were evacuated due to a bomb threat. We went to the casino in Monte Carlo, and ate a great meal at the Salon Rose. I took a train to Èze, and climbed up the Nietzsche path, and visited the medieval village on its summit. I took another train to Cannes, where I had a glass of wine by the beach. I got to try socca, pissaladière, bouillabaisse and a salade niçoise for the first time. Delicious pastries and downtime abound. I heard the name Maëlys twice in the wild, and got a bracelet with my name on it.
Getting around was really easy; the train system (SNCF) has an app where I could buy tickets minutes ahead of a departure, and public transit similarly had apps that made it trivial. I also used Uber a number of times.
My only regret is not having checked out Antibes. If you come this way though, do visit Èze.
My first website was around 2000-2001, when I had a presence on GeoCities. At the time, this was the most common way for someone to have their own place online, as this was before social media.
My GeoCities website. The weather map no longer loads as it is from a long-gone source, and the transparency effect for all the blue boxes no longer works as it was made in a way before browsers took on standards, but it gives you a rough idea.
What would become this incarnation was put online in November 2003. For context, MySpace launched only three months earlier.
A lot has changed since this website has gone up for millennials:
Music used to be listened to on CDs
Spotify launched in 2008
Movies watched in theatres or on DVD
YouTube launched in 2005
Netflix streaming launched in 2007
Apple TV+ in 2019
Games played on discs
Steam launched in September 2003
Books were physical
Kindle first came out in 2007
Maps were on paper
Google Maps launched in 2005
Programs were listened to on radio
The term “podcast” was coined in 2004
There was no contactless payments
You needed to sign a receipt if you paid by credit card
A lot of smaller places were cash-only
There was no self-checkout
Cashiers handled every transaction
Other jobs – like handling payroll – had dedicated people
There was no billion-user social media
MySpace peaked at 300M users in 2007
Facebook launched in 2005
Tumblr in 2007
Instagram in 2010
Snapchat in 2011
TikTok in 2016
There were no apps or infinite scrolling or cellphone addiction
iPhone launched in 2007
You ordered cabs with a phone call
Uber launched in 2009
You stayed at hotels
Airbnb launched in 2008
Payphones were a common way to place phone calls on the go
Cellphones were only starting to pick up, and could only call and text
Banking was done via ATM or with a bank teller
Cashing a cheque couldn’t be done via app yet
Cheques were the most common way to transfer money
e-transfer launched in 2003
At work, conversations were in-person or via call
Slack launched in 2014
People still sent letters
E-Mail was a thing, but most companies would communicate to you via letters, and some acquaintances as well
Bills came in the mail
CRT televisions / monitors were the norm
Light bulbs were predominantly incandescent
LED light bulbs hit the market in 2009
Buses didn’t report their position with GPS
You consulted a schedule to know when it was expected to show up
You consulted a map to know which streets routes operated on
I focused on millennials for the above because for the elderly, my parents’ generation now, they largely do things as it was done in 2003. I don’t think they’d attempt using a self-checkout, tap to pay, navigate by GPS, subscribe to a streaming service, etc.
Other changes since 2003 include the cost of living:
Average home price in 2003 was $220,000
In 2023, it was $745,000
Median income in 2003 for 35-44 year olds was $45,200
Now at best the company might contribute a single year’s worth of income to your RRSPs over 30 years – if job security weren’t similarly a thing of the past
And the matter of rights:
Same-sex marriage was not yet legal across Canada
First jurisdiction was Ontario in 2003; across Canada in 2005
Trans people had to have surgery, even if they didn’t want it, to update legal documents – and surgeries weren’t covered in Ontario
CAMH was practicing conversion therapy on trans youth until 2015
Employers were firing staff for being gay or trans in greater numbers
There was a physicality, and inherent slowness, that existed in 2003. What we do now is broadly the same, but this is accomplished is completely different, bequeathed to software. I’m not only talking apps; but products invisibly eliminating careers altogether and substituting them, if at all, with lower paying precarious alternatives. Similarly, those careers that remain face downward pressures on job quality, that is, unless they are in the business of contributing to those downward pressures for others.
