Useful terms for this post - I had these as footnotes but they were too hard to understand that way (this is why editing matters, friends). Church: Technically, my congregation does not consider itself a church. I'm attending the Vancouver Unitarians and their slogan is "spirituality without
This evening, I was at an event about finding joy in writing poetry hosted by the Vancouver Public Library. The poet leading the event was Ellie Sawatzky and I enjoyed the parts of the presentation I heard, but I'll be honest that I spent most of the time
Ask a trans man is a work of love. I believe that many people don't ask questions because they are afraid of being judged, so I'm giving people a place to ask their questions anonymously. I'd rather have you asking me than AI. I
For literally 20 years, I have been describing myself as an optimistic-realist. It's a concept a lot of people struggle with so I've discovered a million ways to define who I am with only those words as a guide-post. Yet, as I've discovered myself
Today, I sat down to write this post and needed a link that I had posted on Threads, only to read that the Mormon church is arguing in the supreme court that trans people's existence infringes on their rights to religious freedom. (Of course it's a
Tonight, I'd like to introduce you to my daughter, the Bee Whisperer. From the moment I first met B last fall, I admired her. I loved her spirit and her innate confidence as she moves through the world, absolutely sure that what she is offering the world is
One of the silliest things I learned in my life was that you can tell if spaghetti is cooked by throwing it at a wall and seeing if it sticks. To be clear, this is not how I test spaghetti to see if it's done today, as a
Ask a trans man is a work of love. I believe that many people don't ask questions because they are afraid of being judged, so I'm giving people a place to ask their questions anonymously. I'd rather have you asking me than AI. I
When I was a child, one of my favorite books was The Secret Garden. In chapter 12, Mary askes Mr. Craven "Might I have a bit of Earth?" All she wants is to dig in the earth and make things grow. When I was a child, we had
I am very good at being vulnerable. At least that's what most people think. They see this blog, or one of the other many blogs I have had over the years, where I share deep, powerful, intimate moments from my life and they say "ah, yes, look
This was written 12 March 2026 but I had issues with getting it posted. I have since learned that I have better options than I thought I did that day, but I'm sharing it as I wrote it. Enjoy. ~PSX Today, I'm at my professional development
When I was 17, I moved to Germany. I went as a foreign exchange student and spent my entire senior year of high school in a small Landkreis (similar to a county in the USA) called Heidenheim. The first week I was in Germany, I woke up every single day
PTSD
Have you ever woken up from a dream and looked at the world around you and been like "thank god I'm not there in real life?" I feel like that right now, except none of it was a dream. It all was real life. A stark
TheLifeofSimon
When I was a kid, I watched Star Trek a lot. It wasn't as much as my best friend, whose dad was obsessed with it and recorded every episode on the VHS. It also was definitely more than any of my other classmates. My favorite series was Star
Kismet
The definition of kismet is "fate" or "destiny". I don't know why, but in my brain, but fate and destiny don't do justice to kismet. It's the magic of everything working just right. The energy is like that of the
When I was a kid, I heard a lot of bullshit about "the gays". I grew up in the 90s and early 2000s. Gay was an insult slung at anyone and anything you didn't like. I never was okay with that. Even when I was my
When I was a young adult, I used to call myself a walking contradiction. I felt like I was consistently dancing between the two ends of any spectrum I came in contact with. That dichotomy only got worse as I aged. I was the happiest depressed person I knew. I
At some point in my life, someone told me that in the bible, when they used the number 40, it rarely, if ever, actually meant "40" of the thing. It was just the then culturally relevant story-telling exaggerated way for saying "Yeah, there were a lot of
TheLifeofSimon
Before we can begin the Saga of the Boner, there are a couple of useful terms for the uninitiated. 1. To Pack (verb): Stuffing something into your pants/underwear/jockstrap/special-packing-apparatus in order to appear like you have a larger dick. 2. Packer (noun): The "something" you uses
Did you know the word gratitude can be a trigger for trauma? Me either. But I guess it can be! I'm actually living that fun reality right now. It's wild to me, because, on the one hand, YES BE FUCKING GRATEFUL! It makes such a huge
One of the fun things that happens with having Surprise Step Kids is I get to feel really, really, old. The other day, I was trying to explain to the 12 yo about how dial-up internet worked. He knew the sound it made, but he didn't really get
Last week, I had nose surgery. The finest rhinoplasty the uninsured can buy! It turns out, I haven't been able to breathe adequately through either nostril in years. It's a whole thing that only got addressed because I had a weird "allergic" reaction to
If you don't recognize the sentence from my title, you did not grow up in Utah during the 1990s. I did. I have that sentence engrained on my brain. I remember as a kid rotating between being inspired and being horrified by the sentence. Sometimes it would motivate
The world is a dumpster fire. I don't know what else to say about it beyond that. It just is. I've worn out my usage of the phrase "it is what it is" for the year and we're not even through January