The following is a stream of consciousness. It was originally meant as something more poetic, to try and share what social situations are like post transition. It is not meant as a call out post for any person or the conference I was at. I solely wish to share what my experience is like now, and offer some contrast to how it was. It’s hard to talk (as a trans person).

Every day people say horrible things to me, constantly judging me, tearing me down, and invalidating me. Sometimes it’s my friends, sometimes it’s my family, other times it’s just me looking in a mirror. It starts first thing in the morning when I open my eyes and I feel gross by the time I get out of the shower. Most of these things never actually come out of another person’s mouth though.

I wanna take a moment to to address what I like to call Burnout as a Service; how I see burnout as a product of the tech industry and culture. My friends, coworkers, and I have all experienced it in various levels, sometimes to crippling physical side effects. In this article I’m going to use strong language like need, and should, and I won’t work with you if you [don’t|do] $thing.

In my personal experience not everyone wants to be happy. When I say that I’m not talking about that one friend either. I’m talking about me. For a very long time I didn’t wanna be happy. It was a very frustrating time. I can’t say I knew I wanted to be unhappy, I just was all the time. I was angry, depressed, and off and on apathetic. It was actually my mother who coined the phrase “You just need to be unhappy.

I’ve spent the last week working on implementing chef. The experience is frustrating to say the least. Instead of whining I wanted to take the time to write out some of my pain points and hopefully offer some constructive fixes to what I see as the wall in the learning curve. Now to be clear up front. Most of my problems aren’t with Chef, Ruby, or most of the core product; it’s with implementing it.

Through my whole life I have always struggled to find the perfect tool for the job. No matter what I am doing I from the big to the little I question methods and tools I am using. Sometimes I find it, sometimes I struggle on and on. This is a story about how I think I found perfection. I have always had a fascination with wallets. They are where we keep the summary of our life and our valuables.

“Everything happens for a reason." I read this normally innocuous phrase on a friend’s blog recently and wanted to toss my coffee mug. The notion of the phrase makes me want to jump out of my chair and flip my keyboard. I’m not going to rag on them for saying or even feeling it, it’s simply not my place to tell people how to live their lives, however it bothers me that people who I care about in the world think like that.