Want To Learn Something New In 2022??

Want to learn something new in 2022??

Absolute beginner adult ballet series (fabulous beginning teacher)

40 piano lessons for beginners (some of the best explanations for piano I’ve ever seen)

Excellent basic crochet video series

Basic knitting (probably the best how to knit video out there)

Pre-Free Figure Skate Levels A-D guides and practice activities (each video builds up with exercises to the actual moves!)

How to draw character faces video (very funny, surprisingly instructive?)

Another drawing character faces video

Literally my favorite art pose hack

Tutorial of how to make a whole ass Stardew Valley esque farming game in Gamemaker Studios 2??

Introduction to flying small aircrafts

French/Dutch/Fishtail braiding

Playing the guitar for beginners (well paced and excellent instructor)

Playing the violin for beginners (really good practical tips mixed in)

Color theory in digital art (not of the children’s hospital variety)

Retake classes you hated but now there’s zero stakes:

Calculus 1 (full semester class)

Learn basic statistics (free textbook)

Introduction to college physics (free textbook)

Introduction to accounting (free textbook)

Learn a language:

Ancient Greek

Latin

Spanish

German

Japanese (grammar guide) (for dummies)

French

Russian (pretty good cyrillic guide!)

Despite knowing better, I had given myself a deadline. Today. A big project that I've been working on for months and needs to be Finished already, thank you very much. It's all going well, I think I'll get it done and then ... I get lost in some very very specific sauce.

My therapist is in my ear as I slowly dig myself a deeper pit. Perfectionism, the bane of my existence. Well, one of them. It's at the origin of this particular time-lapse. I want to be Accurate and Complete. Before I know it, I'm covered in mathematics, percentages, statistics, graphs. I become very intimate with a graphics editor, discover functions and shortcuts that were a still a mystery to me three hours ago.

It's almost done when I realise it's wrong. Not inherently but vaguely, marginally, circumstantially. So I delete the work. Start again. It's all or nothing. It's a chore, a mountain, a this-and-then-that-and-then-thus-and-then-so, a finish line somewhere but not visible, not yet.

Then it is Done. I copy, I paste. Then I have something to eat. I've already decided, this deadline today, yeah, will be for tomorrow or the day after that. Time to relax and then go to bed. And then. My brain. Just realises. Out of nowhere. There's something not right. I check and my brain is - of course, flawlessly, inevitably - correct, for fuck's sake. It's fine, I fix. Re-copy, re-paste.

And I kid you not, this exact same thing happens as I am writing this post. So I've just, a minute ago, gone back into the graphics editor. A-g-a-i-n. I do the thing. I copy. I paste. Now, now, now it must be right. Please let it be so. But for all I know, my perfectionism-soaked brain will see it tomorrow and go, "Wait a minute ..."

My therapist just told me my problem is that I need to write more fanfiction.

I got to hold a 500,000 year old hand axe at the museum today.

It's right-handed

I am right-handed

There are grooves for the thumb and knuckle to grip that fit my hand perfectly

I have calluses there from holding my stylus and pencils and the gardening tools.

There are sharper and blunter parts of the edge, for different types of cutting, as well as a point for piercing.

I know exactly how to use this to butcher a carcass.

A homo erectus made it

Some ancestor of mine, three species ago, made a tool that fits my hand perfectly, and that I still know how to use.

Who were you

A man? A woman? Did you even use those words?

Did you craft alone or were you with friends? Did you sing while you worked?

Did you find this stone yourself, or did you trade for it? Was it a gift?

Did you make it for yourself, or someone else, or does the distinction of personal property not really apply here?

Who were you?

What would you think today, seeing your descendant hold your tool and sob because it fits her hands as well?

What about your other descendant, the docent and caretaker of your tool, holding her hands under it the way you hold your hands under your baby's head when a stranger holds them.

Is it bizarre to you, that your most utilitarian object is now revered as holy?

Or has it always been divine?

Or is the divine in how I am watching videos on how to knap stone made by your other descendants, learning by example the way you did?

Tomorrow morning I am going to the local riverbed in search of the appropriate stones, and I will follow your example.

The first blood spilled on it will almost certainly be my own, as I learn the textures and rhythm of how it's done.

Did you have cuss words back then? Gods to blaspheme when the rock slips and you almost take your thumbnail off instead? Or did you just scream?

I'm not religious.

But if spilling my own blood to connect with a stranger who shared it isn't partaking in the divine

I don't know what is.

When trans women are mocked and made into jokes in the media, I get very upset, and I am often told “Kay, you can’t go through life getting offended every time someone makes a joke.” And I sputter and object but they don’t hear me. So I want to be clear for once, about why the jokes make me angry.

I learned to hate myself for being transgender before I knew I was transgender. I laughed at the jokes in stand up comedy routines, and prime time sitcoms, and animated comedy shows, and in the movies, and in books, and in games, laughing at trans women for existing, about “men in dresses”, about people who “got their dicks chopped off”, and I learned to think that was worthy of ridicule.

And then a day came when I felt a pang of envy at what my female classmates were wearing and I repressed it, and felt guilty, and a day where I felt incomplete because I had no breasts and I repressed it and I felt disgusting And a day when I realized the only images of romance that made me feel anything showed two women together and I repressed it and I felt like a monster And a day when I realized I felt sick when I looked at myself in the mirror after every shower before work and couldn’t bear to look at my own face, and I hated myself. And then there came a day when I hated myself so much, and I thought I could never understand why, and so I just wanted it all to end. And it was just a miracle that I swerved my car back into my lane in time.

And all of it started with a joke that I heard on TV, and then kept hearing from all the voices from the ether, over and over and over, worming an idea into my mind before I was old enough to realize I was absorbing it, the idea that a man in a dress is funny, and that changing your body parts makes you a freak, and that women who have penises instead of vaginas are liars and hurt men. And they’re still making these jokes. And somewhere out there right now, just like all those years ago, there is a little girl in a t-shirt and cargo shorts with buzzed off hair watching the TV, hearing that joke and absorbing it without knowing it, who will someday have to pry herself apart to tear it out of her head, just like I did.

That is, if she doesn’t kill herself first.

While we are on the subject - financial abuse is not always just physically taking money away or not having a savings account or escape stash. For a lot of people it is the other spouse sabotaging your credit score, constantly overspending, and you being unable to trust that joint household bills and loans are paid. Did you know that once you add an authorized user to your bank account it’s nearly impossible to remove them without their permission? Did you know that your spouse, who likely knows your birthday and SSN, can often gain access and reset passwords for any online accounts and create new ones?

Financial abuse will ruin your life and there’s really nothing except significant time that fixes it. If you are in a situation where you think this might happen to you you should freeze your credit with all three major agencies. You can find info on how to do this at USA.gov/credit-freeze

This is not something that only happens to tradwives. You are not exempt because you are independent or competent.