Estradiol Soundsystem

I honestly expected this to be A) sooner, and B) before the politics post, but neither happened so here we are.

To start, the blog has been reskinned and the template swapped. The blog should have proper opengraph media previews now! This has been a small but frustrating issue to work through since adding them on bootstrap 4 didn't make them want to play nice with fediverse platforms in particular, and since that's my most likely posting location these days, I wanted them to at least look pretty. It's also much faster since it's not loading a 4k image as the wallpaper (an admittedly rookie mistake), and I'm still thinking about transferring the blog to gitlab or some kind of VPS. This does somewhat mean I need to figure out a new comment system for it, but I'm looking into the viability of the mastodon comments system plugin for Nikola, or the cactus comments system, but I'm not sure how I like having guest accounts comment freely (that typically leads to spam). Or maybe I'll write my own. Who knows.

The major tie-up with the opengraph tags is that I'm more mad that I spent the time on a template, just for a swap to bootblog4 to end up solving most of my issues. I'd like those hours back, please. But no, time moves ever forward. Also I should've just used bootblog4 as a base in the first place, but I digress.

I feel like I'm still developing myself as a person, and I think my various writings reflect that. I've recovered a lot from my burnout and am ready to approach things in a more sane and healthy manner.

I've started HRT injections in February... Those who know me will know I've been on HRT for a bit but generally not getting much progress in pill form, so we've moved forward a little more. To celebrate this momentous achievement, I accidentally made a fucking awesome album cover and, almost immediately, regretted doing so because of my upcoming foray into music. Regardless, doing so made me think about my existence as a trans woman more, because whilst moving towards injections was a MASSIVE thing for me and was worth celebrating, I've had some issues with engaging with family members, now former friends, etc as a result of transitioning in the first place, mostly stemming from political positioning.

So I'm frustrated, annoyed.

But I elected to write about some other political frustrations and it went through a few iterations. I can't say the writing is particularly amazing, but it's better than the first draft for sure. I'm intending to rely less on anecdotes for the next ones, as well, and making them a little more cohesive. So ultimately that's the gist of it all - writing about my perspective on the political system as my whole self¹.

They're all going to take some time, so don't expect a static schedule, but I'll try to aim for like one a month, probably, assuming life doesn't spit in my face again, amongst other things.

If anyone has any comment system suggestions, constructive feedback, etc, it's certainly welcome!