Seems like I, uh... haven't written one of these in about a year. I should probably be better about that.

The Main Thing:
Anyway, I'm headed to Anthrocon again! Been mostly packed for almost a week already, although in my defense I thought I was going to be out of town this weekend (there's a whole story to it). Got my costume antlers painted in a more accurate shade of blue, as well as a whole new outfit that may or may not make a debut. Still not 100% sure about it...

As before, if we know each other and have had conversations in the comments or on other sites, I'd love to meet you in person! Plan is to drive in on Friday morning and drive out Sunday evening, so catch me sometime between then? Feel free to DM me in advance and let me know you're there and to look out for you.

If we've never really interacted before now... please don't be weird about this.

And it doesn't really seem like there will be much going on on Thursday evening, but in the future I was thinking that it could be nice to get into town early and catch up with friends over dinner without missing convention programming, if people would be into that...? Just floating that idea for the future.

Also thinking about maybe adding another con to my routine, although not sure which one. One that I can drive to without needing dedicated travel days would be nice, and where I have a chance of running into some people I know.

Other Stuff:
Uh... I'm not sure how much I have to say about anything else that's going on. Just crossed the one-year mark at the new job I talked about in last year's journal, and it's... fine. I'm not in love with it, but it's less crushing than the last one while paying better. It's not exactly the best run place though (oh deer gods are some things a mess) and there's been murmurings of cutting back due to a drop in sales, so that's fun...

Gender stuff that I mentioned last journal there was an illusion of progress for a while, but it really gone anywhere. After getting onto the new company's insurance I made an appointment with a clinic that does gender affirming care, had an appointment, they gave me a referral for a therapist at their facility... then when I came back they screwed up the booking and it was a primary care appointment, who seconded the referral from last time... which they said there was a waitlist for and that they would call me when a slot opened, and then so far have not called me. And I'm sure they meant well, but I somehow left that second appointment feeling more dysphoric than when I walked in.

Really need to work through some stuff with someone professional, but it seems like the way this particular clinic works is that if you walk in and say you want a script for HRT, they'll give you a script, but if you say you're not sure you want them to just give you a script and kick you out the door and actually want some more holistic help... they don't actually do that. *sigh* (Maybe this is some red state bullshit?)

Oh! And I seem to have de-acclimatized to having tinnitus over the last week after months of living with it mostly uneventfully, so that's fun. Crossing my hooves and/or trunk that it's a symptom of a physical ailment, and thus actually treatable in some way? American healthcare has basically offered me the privilege of paying the cost of a decent commission for a guy in a lab coat to say "Learn to live with it?" and shrug.

In less depressing news, I've got a rough draft of a story done and overdue to be edited! Been putting it off a bit because I feel like it's not my finest and I'm not exactly sure how to clean up some parts of the back half, but I did get 2.5k words onto a page.