A busy August and future plans
/I want to thank everyone who has reached out to me so far since my last blog post. The love and support I’ve received over the past two weeks has been, to put it mildly, overwhelming. I’m very lucky to have such accepting people in my life, and it’s a huge relief to finally be myself.
Coming out aside, the last month was a little busier than usual. I had my sisters visit from Fredericton earlier in the month, and my parents came down from Miramichi a few weeks later (a week or so after I came out to them). My parents and I ended up driving the Lighthouse Route between Upper Tantallon and Mahone Bay, going along the edge of the Aspotogan Peninsula. There is some gorgeous scenery along there along with more than a few beaches; we were all too exhausted for a swim, though.
They were good visits, especially since I hadn’t seen anyone in my family in person since Christmas, but surprisingly tiring. Between the visits and going back to the office every other day, I really haven’t had too much energy to do a whole lot in my spare time besides lay in bed and cuddle with Autumn.
Bayswater Beach
I’m slowly making my way through the list of all the legal and bureaucratic necessities of my transition, and that’s probably going to be my focus for the next few months. I’m still waiting for an appointment with an endocrinologist, but it’s still well within the waitlist timelines right now. When I leave the apartment, it’s in feminine clothing. I haven’t really bothered with the makeup in a while because of the heat and the need to wear a mask, but maybe when I have the time and energy I’ll play around with some looks.
I don’t know when I’ll be able to travel (mostly thanks to COVID, though I’ve got other priorities these days), but I’m trying to figure out where I would want to go next, aside from visiting family in New Brunswick. I sometimes look on Google Maps for travel ideas; nothing set in stone yet, but I think I’m going to stay in Canada for the next year or so, and I would love to either revisit Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg or Regina, or go somewhere I haven’t been before (B.C., Alberta or Newfoundland).
When I think about travelling in Canada, I’m torn between the idea of visiting people and just spending the time by myself. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of people I would love to be able to spend some time with in their respective cities, but whenever I travel I’m very much a “see where things take me” type, and people have their own lives and schedules. I also have to recover after I socialize, so I can’t pack too much into a trip.
Sometimes when I’m bored. I look at places where I used to live to see if the images on Street View jog any of my fading memories. Some of these towns and cities still square up with what I remember for the most part, but of course buildings get torn down, stores go out of business, or entire subdivisions or neighborhoods now exist that didn’t when I lived there. Pictou, Nova Scotia is still recognizable for the most part (though my elementary school was torn down quite some time ago) but Charlottetown’s changed considerably in the 33 years since I’ve lived there. I was also quite young back then, so these memories aren’t quite as vivid.
When I was younger, I thought it would be a cool project to visit all the towns, cities and villages where I grew up and take pictures of the streetscapes at set intervals to track what changed over time. I gave up on that idea a while back, mostly because of the cost and logistics involved, but sometimes when I look at the Street View images, I wish there was a time travel option to see how those streets and storefronts appeared back when I was living there, or see what was in the malls back then.
