Lessons Learned

I got my end date for my trip. I'm driving home Saturday. Glad to be going back, but Ill miss some things here too. For instance, the ability to come home every night and be Leslie as long as I want. I could choose from outfits hanging in my closet, instead of rummaging through bags and boxes in various undisclosed locations. And I just found it great to be able to leave heels and makeup lying about my room without a worry.

I had fully intended to go dress shopping Thursday. Set my clock early (for me), had a plan, had built up a head of steam after my shoe escapade. The electricity went out at the hotel a half hour before my wake time. The power was out throughout the mall that I had planned to go to. The power came back on about five minutes after we left for work in mid-afternoon. I concluded that the universe, and whoever might be running it, was sending me a message. "Don't do this now."

Actually, I heard it in all caps, shouted. It was enough to make an agnostic wonder.

It was really fortuitous for this trip to come so close on the heels (pun intended) of my first outing as Leslie. I took the confidence gained, and got to bask in it and reflect on it, away from the stink eye that I might have received at home. And I was so pumped (pun again), I parlayed it into another first, trying on and buying heels in person as a male. This is all very exciting for me! Doing a little living...

My best girlfriend Shannon has repeatedly shown me, by example, the power of overcoming your fears. If you know the fear is irrational and unfounded, you just have to push through it. Just do it. Leslie is a lot more courageous than the Charlie Brown mope I was for forty-plus years. I still look more or less like that guy, but Leslie is in charge now. And she doesn't dither. She makes a plan and (eventually) follows through. And maybe it's time to stop referring to her in the third person.