In the past week, I blogged for two sites with completely different audiences. First, I offered advice to parents, to the parents of GLBTQ kids (specifically) in a totally out-of-character move. I mean, I wrote long paragraphs in the second-person; I strung together sentences full of “you” statements. I also discovered that I had the confidence, not to tell people what to do, but to believe I had something to offer. My reward was connecting with a new community of people who seemed to share my values, if not my lifestyle. I may not know much about them, but I’m pretty sure they are not the same people who read my weekly blog for Original Plumbing, the trans-male quarterly that regularly showcases sex workers, porn bloggers, and more tattoo ink than a heavy metal band.
So, I was a bit nervous about alienating, scaring away, and disappointing my new friends by publicly linking to my OP blog a few days later. In my post, I basically pull down my pants to address one of the most important, relevant, and difficult trans issues, fielding the invasive, constant question of what’s between our legs. A full-frontal blog post is pretty scary (especially on a triggering topic within the trans community), but when a few comments rolled in, I felt that same rewarding sense of connection.
On Monday night my yoga teacher focused our class on balance. We did a lot of poses that required standing on one foot, and in the ones that did not, we still focused on our core, our center line, our balance point. I wasn’t thinking about any of my blogging at the time because I was too busy falling out of every pose, and occasionally, intermittently, for a millisecond here and there, tapping into a sense of balance. But later it occurred to me how uncertain and off-kilter I felt reaching out in different directions, one arm to parent-y types, one leg to tattooed queers. I guess it just reminded me to maintain integrity in my core, and not to worry too much about falling over.