Candy vs. Homework
Replacing candy with something boring isn't going to work + paid subscriptions are now only $5
Before my essay I wanted to share some news that I hope makes you leap with joy: I have made my paid subscription $5/month which is 50% of what it used to be. Thank you so much for those that supported me at the higher rate, and for your patience as I figure out what it is I am offering as part of the paid subscriptions - other than the free labor of writing these essays should you find them of value.
What I am offering paid subscribers now that I have put plein air painting events on hold, is free access to any live online, and in-person talks that I do as part of my podcast. I will share the link to the event and/or the free Eventbrite ticket below the paywall, so make sure you scroll down if I have something come up which I plan to do about once a month. Tickets for my talks with be $5 for early bird, and $10 for day-of.
Right now I have a Substack Live chat with artist and Substack philosopher
in February and in March, a talk with real life sexpert Rena Martine who wrote the memoir-cum-self-help-book The Sex You Want .You can follow along when I announce new talks on my Eventbrite page. They email you like magic. That’s all for now, thank you again to all my supporters and readers. I wouldn’t be here without you.
This weekend I was talking to my friend about the predicament of knowing you should do better, wanting to do better, but somehow not being able to do better. I am struggling with this in many ways in and outside of 12-step meetings. Coming out has been the biggest reversal of my bad habits, although there are still plenty more.
The validation hit of being a femme-presenting, cis-woman in a hetero dating pool is reinforced by pretty much every facet of society. As a teacher’s pet, I strove to win at being straight, and then when I was exhausted with that, I put all my energy into being an independent woman who was rewarded in other ways with labels like the “girl boss” or “solo female traveler,” or “bad bitch.” Not that anyone was calling me a bad bitch or a girl boss for that matter, but the reinforcement was in the ether.
It has been hard to shift my thinking from trying to align myself with powerful, pussy hat-wearing ladies (metaphorically speaking, I never had one myself). As it turns out I am attracted to these powerful women, not of their ilk. Instead of embodying the strong female archetype, I am trying to learn how to put down that torch and become an ally instead.
This means getting comfortable with my masculinity, whatever that’s going to look and feel like. My fear and probably a reality is that I will be giving up some of the types of female fellowship I have come to enjoy as a cis-presenting woman. Also, the clothes.
Can I tell you, it feels as complicated as it sounds. I am, often unwittingly, performing gender math in my head and have found I have to retrain myself to not just act in a way that will maximize me getting ‘love’ and attention in any given situation. When I catch myself acting out in ways that abandon my authentic self, I get frustrated. How can I continue to move away from what I really value?
What I was reminded of in my call with my friend is what I have heard from the wisest of my 12-stepping network, including former The Side Woo podcast guest Amir Hamaoui, that addictive habits must be replaced by something rather than just cut out. The universe hates a vacuum so something has to fill the void, but are you going to choose or is it going to be more subsconscious coping mechanisms?
The analogy that came up for me was that going cold turkey on validation was like trying to replace eating candy with homework. If given the option, only the most spartan among us will choose homework and then not indulge just a little bit in the candy drawer that is so readily available and filled to the brim with delicious sugary treats at all times. Who is strong enough to resist that if the only other option is something that feels like work? If we don’t give ourselves some fun to replace the doomscrolling or validation-seeking, our inner child will freak out and find a new bad habit you didn’t know you enjoyed.
Today I dropped off almost all of what I will call my Sarah Clothes to the Trans Wellness Center. It consisted of a large suitcase and three other bags of carefully folded and rolled clothing. There was a vintage jumpsuit, a Batsheva smock dress, a weird gold lame top-ish that I was going to sew into something wearable and a floral jumpsuit that I got tons of compliments on. It’s not that I can’t wear these as a masc-presenting person. I absolutely love seeing men dress in gender fuckery, but as I looked at these clothes taking up space in my life, I knew they were no longer for me.
I have held off doing this purge for months, in part because I worried that the value of my clothes would not be honored and I would be losing everything I had taken with me throughout the years, items I have purchased while traveling and living in different cities. But ultimately it felt right- especially after seeing so many people lose everything in the LA fires. Not only would I feel in solidarity with those who were also going through a reset, I would be using my transition to help support someone else’s.
When I arrived at the TWC, located in an aging office building in Koreatown, I was greeted by friendly, masked faces who thanked me for donating as they shuffled me into the appropriate room to drop off all my stuff. Had I not had a suitcase of my own that I wanted to keep they would have let me drop it all off right there without even saying goodbye. The lack of fanfare dissolved what was left of my ego around this charitable act. There would be no music or ball drop to mark the end of this part of my life. The only validation I would get was for my parking and the new lightness in my shoulders.
I haven’t yet come up with anything to replace the candy of my femme clothes, except maybe sharing this story with close friends and you my readers. Plus, I love my relatively new bro-dacious self-care regimen in the morning which is exactly zero effort.
Also, there wasn’t enough space to go into this but I am off of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp (yikes that’s a lot). In the spirit of today’s purge I am going to delete all my Meta accounts officially either tonight or tomorrow as my small act protest and as a way to create more privacy for my journey going forward. If you want to reach me going forward email and text will be the best way. For my foreign friends, I am now on Signal on the same #.
👏👏👏 thank you for sharing and so poignantly well expressed. Loved the way you wrote about the hopes of your transition/reset may benefit someone else in theirs, and the bit about the parking validation 🥲.