2 years on from the great plot twist

Hello all

Firstly, a song.....

Sunday marks the anniversary of a date that will always stick with me. On March 16th it will  be two years since my friendship with Jodi fell apart. Jodi has asked me to not write about her in this blog, so just to prevent her annoyance before it actually starts, if she ever reads this, don't worry Jodi, this blog isn't about you or what happened towards the end our friendship as we have covered that ground far too many times.

For those who knew me back in early 2012, I was a very different person, or rather, scratch that, those who knew me in mid 2011 knew that I was a very different person back then to who I am now. Let's just ignore the fact that back then I was still Nathan and although I wanted to do it, I never actually imagined myself actually going through the gender change I had wanted since before I can remember.

At the time I was generally quite happy. I was 26 years old and had a strong group of friends. I was in a job that I was very good at and things were looking up for my career. I was settled in life but something always seemed missing, something never seemed complete. I have grown restless, I was 26 but had done precisely fuck all in my life that was noteworthy and something needed to change, I needed to do something meaningful, but I didn't at that point know what it was.

In the height of a very hot summer, me and three friends went to Scotland. One is a Leeds supporter and they were playing away at Falkirk, so we went up as a group and explored the various outposts of Scottish football before the game. It was the first time that I had ever visited Scotland and I loved it, I loved going to a new place and in the middle of a flurry with conversations with Jodi, I knew what I was missing, I wanted to see the world.

Throughout the next few months I change as I planned to move over to either America or Canada, I suddenly went from someone who was a generally quite happy person to being really quiet and reserved. I cut a lot of people out of my life, including a Facebook friend list that contained 558 people being dwindled down to just 136 in the space of 3 days. I was planning to leave my previous life behind and start fresh in America or Canada, and everything in my head kept telling me to just go. I remember travelling to Colwyn Bay (North Wales) to watch City play in the trophy and as you're going along, you drive right next to the sea and you can see just seemingly endless ocean. What possibilities lay beyond those waters?

Time goes on and my desire to move abroad grows and grows, whilst my friendship with Jodi falls apart very quickly, and at the time she was one of the few people holding my sanity together. On March 16th our friendship finally ended when I called her a less than favourable word, and looking back on it, it, and a lot of things said with it, weren't necessary and I am not proud of myself for that.

At first it didn't really effect me, but by the end of that day I was a wreck. I didn't know what to do with myself. It's a horrible feeling losing someone who you considered to be a close friend, especially when it was all my fault. I felt dead inside for weeks and the previous few months and the falling apart of the friendship kept playing over and over in my mind, and whilst I have no doubt that Jodi moved on pretty quickly, for me it was different.

I know I am not a nice person to be around or to talk to a lot of the time. I can be moody as fuck and am very opinionated. I am aware that sometimes I can come off as being very self-involved and when things aren't going my way, I tend not to react well. I have no doubt that when one of my friendships ends, the other person is quite relieved to be rid of me, and I have no doubt that is what Jodi thought at the time, and probably still does.

Anyway, I digress. By this time I was 27 and reaching a point in my life where I needed to change something and so I left Lincoln, moving to nearby Newark (to be fair mainly to be closer to work), got a job working in a pub part time, started reconnecting with friends I hadn't been overly close to and to finally started planning to change gender.

Looking back, I think that my life needed a big event like losing someone who I considered to be a good friend to finally move on. Whilst it wasn't ideally on a lot of levels, it allowed me to grow as a person and whilst on some days I still can be a moody fuck, or be nice as fuck to you one day and barely acknowledge your existence the next, I like to think that this experience has allowed me to become a better person.

Certainly since that day I have changed many things about myself, but the thing I am most proud of is that I now feel free to experience things for the first time, or pursue life long ambitions. Since that day I have actively pursued things I would have done before and despite the initial depression about what happened, I now look back on that day favorably due to what happened afterwards.

I do still think about the end of the friendship occasionally and ultimately the conclusion is that maybe we were never supposed to be friends. We were just two completely different people and in reality had very little in common. We had very different values, ambitions and in reality, whilst we got on really well when things were going well, when things went badly, they went very badly. For what it's worth Jodi, if you ever find yourself reading this, I hope you find happiness in whatever you choose to do in life.

A lot can happen in four months

Hello all

I realised that other day that it's been nearly four months since my last blog update and when I started thining about it further, a LOT has happened in that four months.

Firstly though, a song. It's probably my favourite song off of Canterbury's new album but annoyingly Youtube doesn't link into Blogspot properly and I have to use a live version rather than the version where you can hear what's going on....oh well.

So yeah, it's been nearly four months since I last wrote a blog entry and a lot has changed, where to even start?

Well, let's start with work. I am still at BT and although it took me a while, I am starting to like the role. When I went on a week long holiday in November I was determined to leave and spent most of my week off searching for a new job and to be honest, it was like that up until mid-January, but then something changed....I started liking my job.

I can pin down why I like it or why I am now very likely to stay. It's probably more financial than anything else. I started on the bonus structure in January and in the two months combined I have earned nearly £850 worth of bonus, that on top of my normal wages. I'm not going to lie, I left Vodafone for many reasons, with the main one being that the pay was a bit crap for the work that I was actually doing (I saw pretty much the exact same role at other companies for almost double what I was getting paid there), however, I couldn't have dreamt about the financial boost that the job at BT has given and if I average out that bonus over a year, on top of my wage, I will be earning almost £9,000 more a year than I was at Vodafone, which is massive.

Changing sex isn't cheap and the extra finances have given me a bit more freedom to get things done a bit quicker. For example, the electrolysis hasn't really given decent results, infact, fairly minimal in the 14 months since I started on hormones, but I recently had a consultation for IPL hair removal and although slightly more costly (and not by much), it is far quicker at getting results and the place I am going to have it done is about a 15 minute walk from my house as opposed to the near 4 hour journey on trains to London.

In terms of changing sex, well, it's a bit strange, some times it really feels like the changes are coming thick and fast, whereas other days I don't feel any different to what I did before all of this started. I do however look different facially to before all of this started. The two below pictures were taken about a month or before I started even being Kate full time (June 2012) and the one on the right was taken about two months  ago. My face seems a longer than it was and the hair growth is considerably fast than back before I started all of this.

Other than that, things are progressing ok, I am still considering various surgeries (other than the obvious) but one thing at a time, unless of course I get considerably more bonus. One thing at a time, I am still only 29 so I have a lot of time left to do things....hopefully.

The reason I say hopefully is that my granddad died a few days ago and has kind of bummed me out. I won't claim to know him at all well and we never really had a proper conversation, but it's still gutting. He was 93 at the time of his passing (two days before his 94th birthday) so I suppose it was to be expected. The funeral is a week on Monday, hopefully I will be able to go, it depends on what work say but hopefully they will be cool with it. The only trouble really is going to be that it comes just a few days before I am actually on annual leave for a week two days after that and as the funeral is over the other side of the country (Norfolk to be precise) it would mean missing at least one, possibly two days of work, so I don't know. Hopefully they will be ok with it.

Anyway, onto slightly happier things. My love affair with Lincoln City finally ended. I mentioned in my last blog that I had missed my first game in nine years in October, one became two, two became three and let's put it this way, it's now mid-February and I haven't been to a game since December 28th, nor do I intend to go to a Lincoln game anytime soon. Infact, I have only been to two football matches this calendar year, Chorley vs Fylde and Stoke vs Manchester United.

As people on Facebook will have probably realised, football has now been replaced by hockey as my main passion. As I mentioned in my last blog, I had gone to my first ever game of hockey when Blackburn lost to Solway. My attendance was sporadic at first but I soon started attending regularly and I have seen 12 games so far with the Hawks winning ten of those (the only two defeats both coming to Solway). I am certainly spoilt for goals and all the results of the games I have been to have been 1-2, 4-2, 8-1, 9-1, 10-6, 6-1, 3-1, 6-2, 0-1, 4-2, 7-4 and 7-2.

I have become involved in the Blackburn Hawks and now do the match videos and highlights on an official basis. I don't get paid for it but you know what, it's actually good fun, and I have gained some good friends since I started doing that, and it's the first time in a long time I have been socialising with people on a regular basis that has nothing to do with football. Infact, I see more of them than I do anyone that I don't live with.

The channel that I do videos for can be found here - http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiT2YOywZsYc3_J41H6mmKA

Anyway, I'm going to leave this blog entry here, I know I said a lot had changed and several things other than that have altered in recent months, but it's 12:15am and I am going to go to bed, so until next time, peace out.