2022 Birthday Post

 Okay, Okay, I know I'm a little late. I wrote this on March 30, 2022, and here it is: 

“You’re one year older, one year wiser. What is one thing that you learned this year?” 

Trust the process, enjoy the process, and surrender to the process. 

Over the past year, a lot has happened. I came out as trans and started hormones. I read Ken Wilbur's integral theory and practiced meditation. I went skiing in Colorado and helped move Brie to Phoenix. I got the COVID vaccine–thrice. I finished the first draft of my book. I lived a Bachelor lifestyle in Prague, enjoying my studio apartment and hanging out on my balcony on the cool summer nights, letting dirty dishes pile up in my sink, watching movies and eating ice cream, taking naps and practicing Czech, working on my writing and reading lots of books. I did an unstructured month and started working on an autobiographical book project. I did yoga daily and connected with my body. Baby Sam was born. I went to Kyrgyzstan for a month, trained jiujitsu, stayed at a hostel, hiked, and worked with the LGBT community. I proposed and got engaged. I got a tattoo in Berlin. I hung out with my sister and Jeff in Vienna. I presented my work at a conference in the UK. I realized that I didn’t want to be an academic anymore and started to reach the integral level. I went to Opio at Red Rocks in Colorado and backpacking in Arizona. I connected with the Schwandt siblings. I fell in love with Bruno, an 80 lb pit bull. I finished the second draft of my book. I went to my sister’s wedding in Spain and spent Christmas and New Year’s in Prague. I got COVID. I said goodbye to the community I had built and started building a new community in Phoenix. 

In Phoenix in 2022, I joined the Like-Minded jiujitsu community. I did a dopamine fast by doing intermittent fasting and giving up sugar, ALL media (including Netflix, YouTube, podcasts and audiobooks), and alcohol for 30 days. I competed four times as a male in jiujitsu. I went skiing in Arizona and Colorado. I connected with my cousin, Bella. I started rock climbing. I wrote in my blog. I started planning our wedding. I lost contact with my mother and one of my best friends, both of whom ghosted me without giving me a reason. I read a lot of books about sex, transness, developmental psychology, spirituality, being true to yourself, and academic writing. I published a few articles about Uyghurs, as well as a few articles about jiujitsu and transness. I quit my job.

It was kind of intense–all the traveling, moving, meeting new people, coming out, transitioning, getting engaged, writing, competing in jiujitsu. It was all very chaotic and dramatic, and yet at the same time, I was more grounded this year than I’d been in most previous years of my life. 

A few of the things that stand out as the biggest milestones/changes/growth points of the last year are: 

-coming out as trans and changing my name and pronouns

-getting engaged and moving to Phoenix

-quitting my job and saying goodbye to academia 

These were the moments where I felt a lot of grief for the loss and passing of an old life and an old self–the moments where I felt like a breakdown was happening in my life and my self, where everything was dissolving and falling apart before my eyes and I knew that it was going to be a lot of hard work to pick up the pieces and start to build anew from the ashes (I guess “Phoenix” is a good place to do that then!). It was saying goodbye to Sarah, saying goodbye to singledom and bachelorhood and Prague, and saying goodbye to academia and the ego trip of power and fame that it was inducing on me. 

There was a lot of grief in saying goodbye to those things. Sometimes it felt like everything was falling apart and breaking down. But they were also the biggest points of growth, the moments where I was fully present and able to be mindful about looking at myself and my life objectively, from a third eye or third person perspective, seeing myself from outside and inside of myself all at the same time, and able to make decisions that felt authentic to my heart, spirit and body. 

Those were the moments when I really felt like I was taking back agency over my life and sovereignty over my own body, the moments when I felt like I was starting to design and create my own life, being the architect of my own life and my own experience, lucid dreaming instead of watching the show, lucid dreaming instead of sleeping, driving the car instead of being in the passenger seat. In this way, it was incredibly empowering but also incredibly scary. It was not only about driving the car, but it was also about driving the car and learning to explore and trust where the road was taking me, rather than constantly looking at Google maps. Instead of constantly worrying about where I was going, or constantly trying to build a new road or drive off the road, I also let the road take me where I was meant to be. 

Slowly, I have been embracing and actively trying to surrender to that which is larger than myself–the Universe, jiujitsu, partnerships, friendships, and even the larger academic and writing community, reminding myself that it’s not all about me, it’s not all about my pleasure and my fulfillment and what I want or need or what I’m doing with my life and if I’m happy and satisfied. It’s more about surrendering to the will of the higher power, whether that be marriage, jiujitsu, academia, Spirit, Universe, God, community, friendship, or even just my Higher Self. 

It’s not about me anymore. It’s about being part of something greater, something that I could never build or do on my own. I think maybe, ultimately, that is what I learned the most this year in terms of trusting the process. Rather than trying to control the process and attaching to the outcome, in the end I learned to surrender to a higher will for me and myself, and only then could I become who I was always meant to be, become who I was born to be, become who the world needs me to be, which is not the next Judith Butler or Michele Foucault, but perhaps just a drop in the ocean, the petal on a flower, a leaf on the tree branch. One more particle, one more atom, one more molecule that fits together with the larger cell to eventually create a living, breathing and functioning organism. It’s still important even if it’s invisible to the naked eye. It all comes together in the end to form beings of value and worth. 

I feel like the traveling back and forth from Prague, the traveling to Kyrgyzstan and Germany and Spain, the drama of the book and my coming out, the drama of my relationship with Brie, it was all very difficult and dramatic. At the time it felt like too much, like my heart was going to overflow with emotions. But in the end, looking back on it, it was really fun. The drama itself was a kind of fun, a kind of play. 

Life is hard, but in the suffering, there is joy to be found in the ups and downs of life. The drama of life itself is a kind of play, a kind of exploration, an ocean to explore and play around in. The waves will knock you over sometimes but otherwise it's the waves that make it kind of fun.