Maybe Entertainment isn't frivolous.

My mother and I are listening to a very good novel by J.A. Jance, about a detective named Beaumont who opens up a cold case for find even more murder than he thought he'd find.

While we are doing that I am colouring, and my mother is playing iPad games.

Just like when I coloured while listening to Raffi, I'm finding this very relaxing.  Maybe, relaxing isn't really the appropriate word for listening to a murder mystery, but in a way it is.

My problems, sadness, and hurts fade away into a fictional world created by J.A. Jance.  It's like watching a good movie or TV show, but it lasts longer.  It lasted for a few hours last night, and almost all day today.  As soon as I got up, Mom asked if I wanted to listen, and I immediately said "yes".  We were so caught up in the storey we wanted to know what happened to the 2 little boys that found the body in a barrel, and to Beaumont, the detective who had knee replacement surgery.

Her descriptions of surgery, anesthetic and Rehab in hospital (the physio kind, not the drug kind), were exactly write.  I could envision the hospital and his pain killer induced dreams perfectly.  My mother spent 3 months in a hospital after having neurosurgery (see my "about me" page for more information).  We got to know the rehab ward intimately, and it is not at all like the rehab wards they show on TV or in the movies.

Having surgery many times myself I know she perfectly described the anesthetic, except for one instance: counting backwards from 10.  Every time I have surgery, I know the anesthesiologist is going to ask me to count backwards from 10, and every time I am determined to get to 1 (or at least past 7), but I never do.  I always count ten, nine, eight, seven, and then that's it.  I'm waking up in the recovery room, wondering why I can't complete such a simple task.  I was a math major in university, you'd think I'd be able to count backwards before surgery.  I can't.  I never can.

I've wanted to be a writer for a long time.  I've written short stories, essays, and descriptions of real live in diary since I was 12, when a teacher introduced me to creative writing.  It was after my grandfather died (the same one I mentioned in yesterday's post), and she suggested it would help me deal with my great grief and hurt.  It was therapeutic.

It was also fun.

The next year in school, when the short storey was introduced in the school curriculum, I was ready.  I drove into it with excitement and enthusiasm.  In university I started writing novels.

It was never intended to be my career.  I thought that entertainment, was frivolous.  I wanted to improve the world, and I chose a degree that helped me do that.  (no it wasn't math, but I needed a major and that was available).

Things didn't quite work out as I expected, but that's a different storey not for this post.

I never gave up writing, but even my own entertainment was frivolous (it came after I did everything important), so how could I think that providing the entertainment of others was important?  I thought feelings were frivolous too.  I felt them, I wanted to understand them, but my happiness, wasn't important.  Other's were important.

But I'm starting to change my mind.  I am important.  My happiness is important.  And so is the happiness of other people.

Happiness can be attained in many ways, and I'm finding some of them.  I enjoy giving to others.  But it's also important to give to myself (and that is not something I understood before).

It's also important to do things that I enjoy doing (also something I didn't understand before).

And if it's important for me to do things I enjoy doing, it's important for others to do things they enjoy doing, and that's where entertainment comes in.  People enjoy entertainment.  A good book like the one Mom and I are listening to know, entertains, removes me from my own sadness and hurt, and takes me into a land somebody else created.

And maybe by writing good novels, and actually trying to publish one of them, maybe I'll be helping people too?  Maybe entertaining people through my writing, is important, because maybe I'll be providing them with an escape, just as J.A. Jance is doing for Mom and I.

Can non-transgendered people live an authentic life?

Ever since I found out about transgender people, I have been very interested in them.  I thought of using the word obsessed, but it's not obsession, it's interest.  It's the same kind of interest I had when I read one of Elizabeth Kubler Ross's books.  I became very interested in everything she wrote, and read all of her books in less than a month.  Was it obsession?  I don't think so.  I just like to learn.

Anyways moving on.

I wondered why?  Why was I so interested in transgender people?  I watched countless youtube videos, I bought the show "I am Jazz" on iTunes, and I sought out information.

Was I transgendered?  No.

Was I gay?  No.

I kept asking myself these questions, but the answers to all of them remain the same.  I am a heterosexual female who very much loves being a women.  When I first heard about "penis envy", in a first year psychology class, I thought "ew.  Who would ever want a penis?"  I just couldn't understand, and decided then and there that Freud was an idiot.  I still think Freud was an idiot, for that and other reasons....  Moving on again...

So if I wasn't transgendered, wasn't gay, and didn't fit on the LGBT community in anyway, why was I so facinated with the transgender idea?

And I think I've found an answer.  Tonight I was watching yet another set of videos done by yet another transgender person about transitioning and being transitioned, and I figured it out.

It's the authentic lifestyle that attracts me.

I spend much of my day being afraid.  I'm afraid of doing the wrong thing, of making the wrong decision, of saying the wrong thing, and of countless other things.

Last week Mom took hamburger out of the deep freeze and said "I defrosted hamburger, make anything you want" (I do 90% of the cooking).  I couldn't decide.  Spaghetti, tacos, and hamburgers raced through my mind.  I had no idea.  The hamburger sat in the fridge for two days while I agonized over what to make.  I couldn't do it, and in the end, I put it back in the freezer, and went out a bought hamburgers.  It's still in the freezer, and it should be defrosted again.  But....

Yesterday I started to do something I've wanted to do for a long time.  I am a comic book fan, and I wanted to sort my comic book stories by writer.  The week before I bought multiple comic books of the same kind, cut them up, and put all pages of the same stories together.  And then....  What?  What's the right way to make a scrapbook of comic book stories, categorized by writer?  What kind of scrapbook should I use?  Should I make comments about which writer I like better, or just leave it?  What order should I put the stories in?  Should I use tape or glue?

I was almost in tears, before I just got up and announced "I'll finish this tomorrow".  And then today, when I did start it again, I did decide, but even as I did it, I continually questioned if I even should be doing it?  It's not helping anybody?  It's not in any way serving anybody else and making anybody else's live better?  Maybe I should be cleaning instead?  Maybe I should be doing this or that, or there were several other things I could have been doing.  I felt so anxious about doing the wrong thing.  I didn't enjoy it at all, and yet it was something I wanted to do for months.

And maybe that's it.  Maybe I'm not living my own authentic life?  Maybe transgender people who so bravely, announce that they are going to be who they want to be and do what they want to do, even when others don't want them to, are giving me hope.  They announce who they really are, and then just be are who they really are.

And if I did that, I wouldn't be saying "hey I'm a boy", because really I am a girl, have always known I was a girl, and always wanted to be a girl.

But I would be saying "I like comics", and "I'm going to be a writer", and "I'm not your servant", and "I'm doing what I want to do, and I know you don't want me to do it, but I'm doing it anyway", and "my live is going to be about making me happy (just a little bit), and although I still love you, I can't dedicate my life to making you happy anymore".

And maybe those transgender stories, that I watch again and again, are telling me I can do it.  Those stories never end in "I wish I'd never done it.  Others was right.  I am a boy/girl."  They always end "I'm so happy I decided to live an authentic live".

Would I be that happy?