Tag: Gillian’s blog

What time was I suppose to be at work?

On my tumblr I’ve written a little about the few “glitches in the matrix” I’ve experienced.  Most of them revolve around me knowing without a shadow of a doubt something and being told no you’re wrong.  It’s never major things like who’s the president or what month it is.  It’s things like what time does this store open or how long a season of a tv show was.  Mostly I just try to forget them or ignore them.  Sometimes it’s harder to ignore.

Monday evening I checked the picture of the schedule, on my phone, to see what time I had to be at work.  I saw 9:30 am.  I always give myself half an hour to get to work and an hour to get ready.  So I knew I should get up at 8 am.  I’m not a morning person.  Getting up before 11 am is not part of my natural rhythm.  Before I went to bed I set my alarm and because I wanted to make sure I looked at my schedule again.  9:30 am.

I woke up the next day, got ready for work, even took time to eat something, and walked to work.   I arrived at 9:10 am.  I don’t know if I left early or if I was unconsciously power walking but if I had left at 9 am I should have gotten to work at around 9:15 am.  That was the first weird thing.  I was let in by my manager, the store doesn’t open til 9:30 am.  She didn’t say anything to me other than “Good morning.”  I walked through the store to the break room.  On the way I stopped to check the daily line-up to see when my break was going to be.  I find my name and see it lists me as working at 9 am.

I head for the break room to clock in because apparently now I’m running late.  I clock in and check the schedule on the wall.  It too says I work at 9 am.  Someone most have changed the schedule without telling me, I think.  So I check the picture of the schedule on my phone.  It says 9 am.

I know I looked at the picture on my phone at least twice on Monday.  The second time I was very deliberately reading the time because I have made this mistake before.  I was looking at the :30 making sure it wasn’t :00.  I’m baffled by this ‘mistake’.

Here is where I give the evidence that mostly sinks my story:  The picture of my schedule is blurry.  The numbers are readable just not perfectly clear.  There’s a touch of blur but you can read 9:00 easily enough.  If you were checking the time carefully you wouldn’t think it read 9:30.

I now I will start to sound really weird:  I don’t remember the picture being blurry.  I read the time clearly on Monday and on Tuesday when I checked it again it was blurry.  Blurry in a way that might make me think I had just misread the time.  While writing this I looked at the image a few more times and noticed the blur isn’t across the entire image.  It’s a band of blurriness that runs straight over the row of my schedule.  The schedules above and below mine are less blurry.

It’s subtle.  The top of the image the farthest from my schedule is clear.  The picture of next week’s schedule I took at the same time is perfectly clear.  I normally retake schedule pictures if they look blurry, so why didn’t I retake that one?  I don’t know.

In the end, it doesn’t really matter, I guess.  Whether my schedule was changed through some sort of reality glitch or I just misread the time, it doesn’t make much of a difference.  The end result was the same: I was late to work.

Dream – Suburban Trans Mom

Last night, I dreamed I was a single mom in the suburbs.  I was a stealth trans woman.  There was a kind of Donna Reed/Leave It To Beaver aesthetic to the neighborhood and people but it was present day.  Through most of the dream I felt this undercurrent fear of being outed as trans.  It felt like someone had found out and I was waiting to see if they would spread it around or keep quiet.  It wasn’t a nightmare.  It was like an anxiety dream.  Is that a thing?  Google says it’s a thing.

An anxiety dream is an unpleasant dream which is less disturbing than a nightmare. Anxiety dreams are characterized by the feelings of unease, distress, or apprehension in the dreamer upon waking.

So, yeah I had an anxiety dream about being outed while being a mom in a nice neighborhood.  I normally don’t know where my dreams come from.  This one I know exactly where it came from.  The having a kid was likely from the elementary school email list I got put on a few months ago.  The other part was from something that happened at work.

Last night after we finished cleaning up the store, we watched a training video about how to help customers with disabilities.  After the video our manager asked if we had any questions.  One girl asked if we were doing the same thing that Target is doing, that is allowing people to use the restroom that matches their gender.  Our manager said, “Yes we are,” and then girl made some comments about men going into the women’s restroom.

The first time I used the women’s restroom at work I was scared but I knew that management would back me if there was a conflict with a customer.  That first time there was no one in there.  The second time as I was leaving one of the girls I work with came in.  I froze unsure of how she would react, even after the generally positive reception I had gotten during my coming out process.  She walked right passed me to the sink and said, “I cut my finger,” while rinsing it off.  Total non-issue for her or any other co-workers as far as I knew.

But now I have to wonder about this girl.  Does she count me among the men ‘invading’ the women’s restroom?  Does she see me as a threat?  Do any of the others see me that way?  These thoughts were all I could think about while trying to get to bed last night.  I tried listening to Lore, a podcast about creepy/unsettling history/folklore, because the narrator speaks in an even tone.  I did fall asleep during Lore but I still had that anxiety dream about being outed as trans.

 

 

Welcome

Today is the official start of my website. I’m slowly reposting older stories for now but new stories will also be coming out soon. Read the blog post for more details.

New short stories or the current serial story are posted on Mondays.  Flash fiction stories are posted on Fridays.  Blog posts will be when every I have something to say about my own life or reviews of movies, books, or tv shows.

Continue reading “Welcome”

Dream – Flame Tender

I woke up from a dream this morning that I could only remember a bit from just before I woke up. There was a person tending to small blue flames. I can’t remember what exactly these were, candles or magic flames or matches, but they didn’t last long. Someone asked them why they were tending to the blue flames if they couldn’t last. The flame tender said something that seemed really profound about the sun being a blue flame as well. I’m not getting the phrasing correct so it doesn’t make sense or maybe it was one of those dream things that seems profound until you wake. When I woke up I could remember exactly what was said but I didn’t write it down and it’s faded now.

I think the sentiment the flame tender expressed was that these tiny flames that last only for a few seconds are just like the sun. The sun which seems to us to be ever lasting but it has a beginning and an end. On the right time scale it too is a brief light in the darkness.

I just wish I had written down exactly how it was said in my dream.

My Future is Not Bright

Sometimes I realize that my future is a series of minimum wage jobs until I can’t work and die.  That’s many years from now unless something drastic happens. I don’t have the qualifications to get anything other than a minimum wage job. I’m not fit for anything else. I tried working as a coordinator at my current job but it started to burn me out and I had to step down. I’m trying to make my writing a thing I can fall back on but I just don’t think it’s going to work out for me. I know this is inevitable. My future is a dim hallway with locked doors.

And yet I keep trudging along. It’s not hope at something better coming along. Nothing better is coming for me. But I want what is owed to me. What pleasure and joy I can get out of my life I want it. It’s not much but it’s mine.

“It’s little, and broken, but still good. Yeah – still good.”

 

I’m okay.  This is just some thoughts I wanted to put to post.

Patreon

I’ve launched a Patreon for my writing.  Every story I write will still end up on my website, www.Gillian-Ybabez.com.  Patrons will get early access to new stories and the chance to read first drafts/sneak peeks.  I will also be posting weekly updates about stories I’m working on just for patrons.

Right now I only have two reward tiers.  For $1 you can suggest character names for me to use in future stories.  For $5 you can suggest names + get PDFs/e-books of completed serial stories.

My first “State of the Writer” update up as a public post as an example of what I’m doing over there but future ones will only be for patrons.

An Idea

So I had an idea today.

I’ve been thinking about my zombie story(trans woman in a zombie apocalypse, you can find some early sections on my fiction tumblr). It’s the longest single piece of fiction I’ve written(I have a series of stories that’s longer combined). It’s not novel length. At around thirty thousand words, it’s in the novella range. This is the first part of the story that I’ve written, there’s a second part that I have outlined but not written.  While the first part is not completely stand alone, it ends at a good transitional section.  The first part is about 90% written. I’m going to make a push to finish this first part soon(I’ve said this a few times before but I really mean it now). So soon I will have a finished draft, which I will have to spend lots of time editing before I begin putting up parts on my website.

Or do I? What if I ran Kickstarter to turn this draft into a polished ebook? Hired an editor, hired a typesetter(or whatever you call someone who can turn a text document into an ebook(yes I could learn to do it myself that’s not the point), hire a graphical designer for the cover, maybe hire an artist to illustrate a few scenes(this would probably be a stretch goal).

And what if I hired only trans women?  I can think of a few off the top of my head that might be great for this. At the end of everything I would have a shiny ebook that I can sell, I’d have briefly employed 3-4 trans women, and backers would have gotten a copy of the book and some rewards.

I’m mostly thinking out loud at the moment but it’s an idea.  I’ll have to actually finish the story and then figure out what it would cost for editing, typesetting, cover design, and illustrations.  And I would need an actual audience to buy into the Kickstarter.

Is this idea workable?

Two kinds of customers

This is not a definitive guide to customers you will encounter working retail.  This is just a recounting of two encounters I had today.

The first was the rare treat.  The talkative customer that is actually interesting.  Very subjective because one person’s interesting is another person’s boring.  This customer was buying some small cherub angel statues, about the size of a softball.  As I’m scanning and wrapping them in paper, she asks me if I’ve ever heard about setting out angel statues to get rid of, or quiet down, a haunting.  She tells me her house is haunted, she’s heard things, a photo album that plays music when opened started playing, her tv has turned back on, she’s heard thumps in the night, and she’s even gotten scratches.  I love paranormal stuff.  I listen to a few podcasts on the subject and in fact on my way to work, I was listening to one about a haunted cemetery.  She says she’s not scared of the ghosts or what it is.  Then she confides in me that she has a bit of second sight.  She’s made predictions for people and they’ve come true.  I have no way of confirming any of this but why would she lie.  Even if she did lie, it was still an interesting few minutes.

The second type of customer I encountered today is more common.  The customer who wants a discount.  This customer takes many forms.  The one who want’s a discount on  dusty shirt.  The one who wants a larger discount on an item already marked down.  Today’s customer insisted that we had a senior citizen discount.  I’ve worked in this store for almost four years and I know for a fact we have never had a senior citizen discount.  But she doesn’t believe me, so I call over our headsets, “Do we have a senior citizen discount?”  I make the call because sometimes that’s enough for them and maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe I have misremembered  the last four years.  I get a response, “No, we don’t have a senior citizen discount.”  I tell her this hoping I have reached the end of her inquiry.  She asks again if I’m sure.  I tell her I will call the manager for her.

Once upon a time I would have gone one or two more rounds with her.  These days I’m old and tired of people, so I don’t bother arguing with them anymore, I just call the manager.  I’m not paid enough to run circles with these people.  So the manager comes to registers and tells her, “No we don’t have a senior citizen discount.”  She now has no higher authority to appeal to.  She has to accept that we don’t have a senior citizen discount.  Which she does and I can now begin scanning her items.

The interesting talkative person and the discount seeker.  Two of the many types of customers you will see working retail.

Every Day (audiobook)

This is not really a review just so thoughts about the book Everyday.

I started listening to to this book Every Day by David Levithan a couple of months ago and finally got around to finishing it. Every Day is about a person who every day wakes up in someone else’s body. Always someone around their age, never the same person. They call themselves A.

Read the rest here.

This is not really a review just so thoughts about the book Everyday.

I started listening to to this book Every Day by David Levithan a couple of months ago and finally got around to finishing it.  Every Day is about a person who every day wakes up in someone else’s body.  Always someone around their age, never the same person.  They call themselves A.  A has been hopping from body to body their entire life.  One day A wakes up in Justin’s body and falls in love with Justin’s girlfriend, Rhiannon.  Most of the book is about A revealing themselves to Rhiannon and trying to have a relationship with her despite changing bodies every day.

I’ve been mostly enjoying Every Day.  A is agender and pansexual.  They have no problem with whatever gendered body they wake in.  Through the multiple bodies A inhabits we get glimpses of different lives.  Twin brothers, a suicidal girl, a gay boy, a trans guy, a runner, an alcoholic, a immigrant house cleaner, and more.  I’ve felt like the author showed me these lives, even the flawed ones, fairly with little judgment.  There’s minor digressions about gender that aren’t bad.  It’s not perfect but it doesn’t hit any major sour notes for a while.

And then we got to the Fat Body, three hundred pounds, and there is nothing but judgment.  Suddenly A is disgusted with the body.  It’s too heavy to move, every motion is an effort.  The body is ‘sphere’.  We’re told the owner of the body gave up on being skinny.  A considers implanting a memory of the day that would scare the body’s owner skinny.  Then later the date with Rhiannon is all about how fat A is and Rhiannon “can’t see” A in that body(this has never come up before even when A has been in a girl’s body).  Being fat is presented as the worst thing A has ever been.

Just after the fatphobic chapter, the story take a bit of a turn toward resolving the main plotline of the novel and a couple of minor plotlines.  I honestly wasn’t happy with the ending.  I’ll write more about the ending under a cut for spoilers.

Overall I liked Everyday.  Even through I spent half this post grumbling about what I didn’t like, I did enjoy the majority of the book.  It’s unfortunate that it’s the ending that disappointed me.  If it had just been the fatphobic chapter I might have given the book another listen one day and skipped that chapter but knowing that the ending is unsatisfying, at least to me, kind of kills that desire.

My thoughts on the ending under the cut. Continue reading “Every Day (audiobook)”