Apr18

Untitled First Blog Post

on April 18th, 2012 at 11:04 pm
Posted In: Words

There have been two noteworthy days labeled Tuesday, October 16, in my life. For the first I was a naval officer on a ship crossing the Pacific Ocean from Hong Kong to Pearl Harbor. If you don’t know, when crossing the International Date Line overland (or over sea) from west to east, a day has to be repeated, so aboard our ship that Tuesday lasted for 48 tedious hours.

The second such was in 2007. That’s the day Sewell Brumby, my boss at the Georgia General Assembly’s Office of Legislative Counsel, called me down to his office, told me my previously-declared intention to change gender from male to female was “inappropriate,” and fired me on the spot.

That day seemed even longer than the first. I was hustled out of the office carrying the contents of my desk area (including a box of colored editing pens and a worthless Magic 8 Ball) and a month’s severance pay. I had direct deposit; I wasn’t literally carrying the severance. On my drive home to my three confused but supportive cats, I phoned Lambda Legal and asked them to release the hounds.

This was the beginning of an odyssey, a climb, a trudge, a schlep, that took four years, one month, and 23 days to complete. On December 9, 2011, I returned to my desk at the Capital, unsealed the box with my belongings in it (the severance pay, which again had never actually existed physically, was long since spent, along with my 401k and most of my savings), and went back to work.

I interacted with the media many times during this process, but I didn’t have a public blog. I would have liked to, and could have, but I figured the danger I’d put my foot in my mouth and say something to damage our case was greater than the benefit of making the world aware of my feelings about dryer lint (Or what have you. I’m not likely to blog about dryer lint, and have no strong feelings about it.). So my interactions with the public were limited to a few print and televised interviews approved in advance by the good people at Lambda Legal.

With that ordeal in the past, I figured now was a good time to join the conversation. I have ideas and opinions, and I want to share. I won’t only talk about transgender or LGBT issues; there are already many great blogsites and bloggers that do that, like Pam’s House Blend, Bilerico, Sincerely, Natalie Reed, and Transgriot. I couldn’t improve on, or even equal, any of those.

As I told Emma Lacey-Bordeaux of CNN back in December (and you should click that link, because her story about me was awesome), I like to think there’s more to me than my gender identity. I’m a runner. I’m involved in organized skepticism. I love to lift the lid off the English language and study its moving parts. I study everything I can find about the planet Mars, humanity’s next home.

I do have opinions about subjects like Chaz Bono, Jenna Talackova, the “cotton ceiling,” and Dan Savage, but I won’t be saying much about them here. At least, I don’t think so now; this blog is a work in progress and I don’t expect the “brand” to emerge immediately.

A main focus will be my own story. I’m working on both a memoir and a one-woman show about my experiences and about the impact of Glenn v. Brumby, and much of that material will begin life here. I encourage feedback about everything you see here.

The title “Fibonacci Spiral” reflects my rationalist worldview. The Fibonacci sequence is a very simple algorithm, Fn = Fn-1 + Fn-2, but it unspools into patterns of unlimited complexity and beauty. The universe is accidental and random, but it’s pretty wonderful all the same.