I’ve been thinking recently about the defining questions in my life. I came about this backwards; I was confused and vaguely melancholy for a very long time, pulled every which-way like a glob of sticky taffy. I kept asking myself what I wanted, and harping on myself for not being able to answer the question.
For one thing, I have not yet sorted what I want to be from what I want to have. Everything is all mixed up, and in the meantime I look in the mirror and feel as though my skin is quicksilver and my eyes are changing color.
I want to use power tools and cook scones, and date women, and date men, and date everyone in between. I want to be a woman who wears suits and a boy who wears skirts. I want to start a PR business, and live on a sailboat, and bike across the country, and be a fashion designer, and run conferences the right way ’round. I want to be a country singer, and a travel writer, and a sex god. I want to make the world better, and I want to make the world work. I want high, rounded breasts like doves hung from my collarbones, and I want a girl with long hair to go exploring over. I want shoulders and arms like a man – like my first kinky boyfriend’s shoulders, triangular and etched in the hard flesh of military life – and I want a man to fuck who has those shoulders, and also long hair, and also the thick softness of a good life tucked into the curve of his swelling hips, ass in the air. I want people who love to cry for me, and with me. I want everything. I want to know who I am.
The thing is, the question is wrong. It is too simplistic for subtlety of planning, and to big for specific action. It is the question of a girl nestled in grass looking at stars; I am not that girl, right now.
The questions I should be asking myself are cleaner, crystallised.
Questions like these:
Do I want to integrate my queer identity with my professional career? How would I do that? What would it feel like? How would it hurt me, and how would it help me?
How should I manage my personal brand? How much energy should I invest into it, and is it worth investing in when split into two halves? Right now it is spinning and wobbling like a cloven coconut, and how do I put it back together without spilling all the juice out?
Should I keep up with my art? Should I focus on developing my design skills? Should I take up photography again, and does that mean I should buy a proper camera? Is oil painting worth my time; is any non-digital medium going to satisfy me?
What kind of work do I want to be doing? Is writing enough for me, or should I be looking into how to integrate my writing with activism, education, organization and social media? How do I do that?
How much of my activism is based upon my location and the people around me? Are the things I want still the same when I am by myself, alone?
Which of the hundreds of thousands of projects I conceptualise are worth developing? Should I be drawing comics, drafting book ideas, building websites?
What do I want to say to other people, and what is the best way to say it?
Where am I strongest?
These are better questions. I don’t have the answers, but these are my current thoughts. This is where I am, today.
