Battle plan

4 days to my first visit to the counsellor at the Gender Centre, and I've just realised that I've double-booked myself! This is what happens when I forget to update my schedule on my Palm. So I've had to decide on either going for the counselling session or going for a compulsory motorcycle course (from letting my bike licence expire) - I've decided to go for the counselling session and do the course in March.

This upcoming session makes me think about what my "plan of attack" is with this whole transition thing. Firstly, I've always dressed in more masculine or gender-neutral style clothes but not exactly "as a man", so it's not going to be as seemless a transition into transition mode for me within my social circle. The biggest reason for this is that any excess weight I put on goes straight to my hips - if you recall an earlier post, I am currently carrying quite a bit of excess weight and hence my ample child-bearing hips are a dead giveaway. That is, if my 34D breasts don't. So it's a bit of an uphill battle here when it comes to passing.

On a side note, having lotsa of time to myself in the past couple of weeks has improved this situation tremendously. I've had the time and energy to go walking in the morning and evening, as well as a good walk/swim with the girls (my dogs S & N) on hot afternoons. I normally eat relatively healthily, so I've definitely dropped a bit of fat and lost a few inches, although I suspect my weight hasn't dropped too much since I'm doing weights as well. But the spike in the amount of energy I have is quite scary - I hate to think that the stresses of my daily life has taken such a toll on me! Some changes are definitely in store for this new year.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. At this point, I've figured that the best way to do this for me is to start on T while still living as a woman, until the point where I've lost enough weight and completed top surgery. I've been a jock all my life, so I have confidence that with a change in priority, I will be able to go back to a nice lean physique within a year or so. Now, if I'm able to start on T by June, that will mean that by mid-2007, I should be ready for top surgery, saved up enough money and had the time to do my homework on the right surgeon. I imagine that it will be the perfect time to officially start "passing" then, so I will work on telling my friends and family before this time.

The other reason that I think this will work is that I won't have to deal with office colleagues and conservative bosses for a while. I've planned on working as a full-time tennis coach for a while, and might go back to uni in the meantime, so I won't be considering a career-furthering proper office job till 2007 at the very least. If things go well, I'll probably put off getting that office job till after surgery, and enter the new workplace as a bio-male as far as my colleagues will be concerned.

Of course, there are so many variables that there is no sure-fire way to plan this, but I'm glad that I can see at least one way of getting through this relatively unscathed. The main issue now is that I'm not sure if there is a mandatory "living as a man for a year" before being given the green light to start T. Most of these questions should be sorted out next week, so we'll know how feasible the master plan is then!

Posted in transition, motorcycle, personal, physique