Musak Blues

I’ve had trouble as of late getting into new music.  At the very same time, I’m having trouble enjoying my own collection of music.  I WANT new music, but none of it is making me happy.  I’ve been using iTunes for my music since late 2003 and have purchased 875 pieces of music from them.  Here’s how that breaks down by year:

2003 – 8 (My first purchase was November 24^th of that year!), 2004 – 87, 2005 – 125, 2006 – 104, 2007 – 102, 2008 – 65, 2009 – 47, 2010 – 56, 2011 – 42, 2012 – 60, 2013 – 57, 2014 – 36, 2015 – 37, 2016 – 31

2017 – 16

Obviously the first few years I went a little crazy on purchasing music.  And simply by the numbers, this year is on track to be average for the last few years.  But here’s the rub.  This year PI purchased one song in January, one song in February, 11 songs on May 25^th, and 3 songs in the past couple days.  Most years I have a steady stream of new music.  I might go a month or two without something new, but not this long.  And that big burst of new music in May?  8 of them were from artists that I already knew and was simply exploring their back catalog. 

Goodbye Ginger, Hello Isabella

So back in November I posted my thoughts about my next car.  I was hyped about getting a lease and finally getting into smaller payments for a better car.  Well yesterday morning I finally took that leap.  The decision making processes to get here was tough though as I have had two leading drives for my cars;  fun vs goodness.  And I just kept sliding between those two drives.

Up until Fiona I had such a small budget for cars that I really just had to take what was available at that time.  When I got the Black Shadow of Death and Bellulah I wasn't looking for a fun car.  When I got Belinda and Lita I wasn't looking for a good car.  Those were just the best cars available when I was stuck looking for new cars.  But in 2013 when I had the opportunity to get a much newer car with a much bigger budget, I consciously made the decision to get a fun car.  I was considering the Hyundai Veloster, the Chevy Sonic, the Ford Fiesta, and of course what I ended up with, the Ford Focus.

Now, like any spectrum it wasn't JUST about fun.  With that purchase I was looking at two hours of driving a day so gas mileage was really important as was basic creature comforts.  A good stereo, comfortable seat, and techy toys.  But the reason I got Fiona was that gorgeous Yellow Blaze paint job.  For a year and a half I had a mile wide grin every time I walked out to see Fiona there waiting for me.

But after that year and a half I realized I could afford a lot more car.  Reason started to take over and I wanted a more 'mature' car.  Something that would look all adult and proper if I drove up to a job interview or meeting.  As I didn't want to lose out on the gas mileage and most small cars are on the fun size, I went with a Fusion Hybrid.  Ginger.  So long as I was driving that long every day, Ginger made the most sense.  Seriously, there wasn't another car that could do what she did without soaring costs in fuel.  Then the local job came up.

Hi There!

Hello World.  If you're just stepping in here for the first time, let me explain what exactly you're seeing here.

I have a blog called Caitlyn's Masks.  I create and share stories, illustrated stories, and captioned image stories that all relate to TG or transgenderism.  It's... well to be frank... it's graphic.  At it's most polite it can be called erotic fiction.  At it's most overt it can be called porn.

Anyway, I started that blog years ago and have a feminine persona to go along with it.  Caitlyn.  But I'm not Caitlyn... or I guess to put it most clearly, I'm not JUST Caitlyn.  I'm a guy.  When I started the blog I was at a dark time in my life.  I didn't realize it at the time, but I was grasping at straws to find something to like, enjoy, love, and participate in.  I was dirt poor.  I had recently given up a career that with the schooling involved took up over a decade of my life, and was going back to school to start a new career.

When I finally got that job, when I got the chance to start my life again... I lost something.  I lost Caitlyn for awhile.  But I had such good relationships with the people I'd met as her that I wanted to continue to share with them.  I couldn't share the TG side of my life because that all but disappeared... but I could share the rest of my life.  Calvin's side of life.  The only problem is that I was incredibly nervous about someone in my alternate life (other people call it Real Life) would find this more open exploration of 'me' and connect the dots.  I could just picture a family member stumbling upon this new blog, connecting the dots, and realizing that this is in fact me.  And then following those breadcrumbs further back and finding...

Is it time?

So I'm fairly sure I'll be moving out of this home soon.  Soon being within the next year or so.

Before I go into the whys, whens, wheres, and such I should probably give a quick history.  I think I've talked a bit about this before (I mean you know I lived in Chicago right?), but I'm not sure I ever laid it all out straight.

I was born in this house.  Well...okay, not born in this house, but when I was born this is the house that Mom and Dad brought me 'home' to.  Mom and Dad had bought it just before my older brother was born in 1972.  I stayed here through all of my childhood and into young adulthood.  I spent two years at the local community college and never really gave much thought to moving out during those two years.  For a solid year (not just the school year), I moved away for the first time to college.

That was up at Ferris State University in Big Rapids Michigan.  If you've never heard of it, don't even worry... it's the smallest of Michigan's 15 State Universities.  I was there for three semesters starting with the summer semester in the dorm.  Yup, dorm life.  Thankfully I had a room all to myself, but there was a shared bathroom with the guys next door.  The next semester I stayed in the dorm but started to hate it.  Thankfully I had a friend at the school (yeah... just one friend), and she had an apartment with two room mates.   One of her room mates moved out and it put them into a bind.  I came to the rescue and moved in with them.

After Ginger...

Since around June of this year, I've had one thought going through my head over and over and over again.  What's my new car going to be?

I know what you're probably thinking;  Yes at this point I've only had Ginger (my 2015 Ford Fusion Hybrid Titanium) for 21 months.  Not even 2 years.   But when I purchased Fiona (my 2012 Ford Fusion Titanium)  I wasn't sure I could afford a brand new car.  I bought her used.  When I purchased Ginger I could afford brand new, but because of the miles it would be a purchase made over 5 years.  And the miles did pile up quick.  In the 9 months that I drove an hour to and from work five days a week I put 20,000 miles on her.  In the 1 year since taking this new local job I've only put an additional 5,000 miles on.

Put those together... and I can now lease a car.  If my car's trade in value is at or lower than what I owe on it, I could drive off the lot in a 2 year newer version of my car and end up paying hundreds of dollars less for three years.  And at the end of those three years I'd be free to pick out a new one and have similar payments for another three years.

Now as a far younger man, I hated the idea of a lease.  I looked at it as never owning your car.  The bank or the car company owned it.  You couldn't modify it in any significant way.  You would do nothing but sweat for every single mile driven knowing that you were limited on how many miles you could have.  You'd have to do all the maintenance and be able to prove it was done.

Hate Trumped Love

I'll just start out by saying that I voted for Clinton.  To say I'm disappointed in the election results is to not really understand my state of being right now.  You see, I didn't really want Hillary Clinton as president.  Sure, she's a fine stand in for a fairly conservative democrat, but she's far to moderate/conservative for my tastes.  I didn't think that Bernie would have done well in a general election, but maybe he would have done just fine.  Maybe this was the year that the liberal call for social and economic justice would have found that broader audience.

Or maybe President Trump was inevitable.

You see, I voted for Clinton not to elevate her to the Presidency but to keep Trump out of it.  I'm not going to go through the list of  disgusting and/or bigoted and/or stupid things he's said.  Instead I want to try to lay out how I think of him as a man.  Because deep down, that's who won.  Not the person they voted for, not the candidate, not the nominee.... the man.

In my view, Donald J Trump... er.... President Elect Donald J Trump wants to 'Win'.  Now you and I can't decide what winning is to this man.  But at his core, he wants to win.  He has the 'best'.... his things are 'huge'.... he's the 'smartest'... over and over and over.  He compares himself to others and declares that he's better.  They're terrible, terrible, people.  He's a good guy.   They lie, he tells the truth.  They cheat, he strives to be true and honest.  They commit crimes, he is the pillar of legality. On and on and on.  There is no comparison that he can't make because he doesn't seem to pull anything from factual objective evidence.

So what's five months between friends?

So yeah... sorry.

I know, more or less, what happens when I stop feeling like Caitlyn and lose interest in making caps and playing at D+X.  But I'm not sure why I lost interest in posting here.  I mean since I made this into 'Calvins Musings' and started posting more personal things, this has more or less become my journal.  My diary.  I don't post daily as that just wouldn't make sense.  I'm not one of those people that post a photo of every meal to instagram or post everything funny I see to facebook.

But I DO get something out of putting up ideas here and working through them.  Even if I'm just working through whether to buy an iPad, or getting excited about another trip.

Anywho... I don't know why I stopped having interest in posting here.  It's not as though nothing happened, and it's not as though I haven't struggled to get my thoughts together on certain subjects.  So I'm not exactly going to go through everything that's happened to me in the five months since I posted.  But I will catch up on some things that were in motion and mention a few things that have come up since.  If I want to go into any real detail about things (I might with the whole car thing), I'll make another post later for that.

Fuji X-T10

So most of my current co-workers know that I was a photographer in my life before nursing.

I guess it's not surprising that they don't find it amusing or strange that I came from a photography background as most of them came from another background.  Many nurses choose it as a second career.  In fact the rarer find is a nurse who graduated from high school, got their nursing degree, and continues to work as a nurse.  I have to pause and wonder if that's a comment on the career of nursing or a comment on how our system of careers work in theses United States.  Hmm.... possibly another blog post later.

Anywho.

Like most groups of people there are various levels of photography experience within my coworkers.  Most of them say they take photographs too... on their camera phones.  I always fight the urge to puke when I hear that.  One nurse tried to defend their statement because they use an iPhone.  I suppressed the urge to slap that Apple arrogance (iArrogant?) off their smug face.  Three of them actually have real photography equipment, and one has a rally nice set of Canon camera's and lenses.

I've thankfully gone through most of the standard questions and answers about my photo career:

Take my mind and take my pain

I visited the doctor last week.  The shortest version of this post is this:

I'm healing

Obviously that doesn't cover everything, so let me dig a little deeper.  This started with my 6 month lab work.  My main focus was on my diabetes.  My A1C last time was 6.7.   My goal is to get that as low as possible, but that isn't a bad number.  If it goes much higher, I'd have to add a different medication... and adding medication is the road to adding insulin.

NO NO NO

Thankfully my A1C was at 6.8.  That's a good number and according to the doc, one worth holding pat on.  There were two alarming numbers in my lab work though.  My cholesterol and my microalbumin. I'm sure I don't have to go into what cholesterol is, but let me say that it's broken up into four numbers.  Total Choletserol, Triglycerides, LDL, and HDL.  You want Total Cholesterol, Triglycerides, and LDL to be as low as possible while you want your HDL to be high.  Now I've been taking fish oil capsules twice a day for about a year now as that raises HDL, but it doesn't do a damned thing for the other three numbers.  My last lab results showed that I was 'borderline high' on all of three bad numbers while my HDL was in the 'good' range.

It's really (not) good to see you once again

I'm feeling depressed.  I'm feeling depression.  And for the first time in a long time I'm feeling suicidal.

If I were at work and someone told me they were feeling how I currently feel, I would put them into protective custody and refer them to mental health.  I would do almost everything in my power to stop them from acting on their feelings.

There's several things to consider about a person's suicide intentions.  The first is suicidal thoughts.  A person imagining a better existence after they die (heaven, hell, purgatory, nothingness... an end to their pain).  A person picturing their death, but not in a participatory way.  Next there is suicidal ideation.   Think of suicidal ideation as the beginning of making a plan.  It's not imagining the result, but the method of suicide.  Hanging?  Gunshot to the head?  Jumping off of a high ledge/roof?  Pills?  The penultimate step is a plan.  It's knowing how one would kill themselves and moving on to the peripheral acts... giving away their things, saying goodbyes, writing letters.

I'd say I'm somewhere between ideation and plan.    I know I'm there because I've been feeling more and more 'down' over the past few weeks.  This morning I went though the suicide prevention screening I'd give a new patient.  I don't have a specific reason to kill myself, but many people who commit or attempt suicide don't have a specific reason.  I have attempted it in the past.  I have a method in mind.  I've begun formulating letters and figuring out to whom I'd write those letters.  I even have most of the plan in mind.