Slice of October 2017

Photo of my Dallas GFAF Expo 2017 blogger badge reading 'Jane Lawson'

Month in entertainment

Month in photos

These are mostly photos from the GFAF Expo because I didn’t take much more than that?? But they’re mostly of my baby cousin Solara, Charlise’s daughter (six months), who was mostly carried on her back. She was super distracting. I was supposed to be covering the Expo, and yet my Instagram feed is 90 percent her, basically. 😅

Photo of Charlise and I @ SunButter photobooth, her holding a giant cardboard Natural SunButter and I a giant cardboard spoon containing SunButter
I always feel so awkward @ the photobooths, because I know onlookers are looking and judging and it’s just generally uncomfortable.
Photo of Aleia's booth, ft. vanilla bean cookies
Aleia’s, hey! It’s not usually this clean. Aleia’s is one of the popular-AF booths. Numerous times, we were gonna visit throughout the Expo, but they had a ~huge~ line. I love their vanilla bean sugar cookies. I have some—and no, I’m not sharing.~
Photo of Solara outside Enjoy Life Foods booth
She was looking at me. We never got that “Look into the DSLR lens, I-know-it’s-different-because-it’s-not-a-phone” thing down.
Photo of Solara sleeping
PASSED OUT. We didn’t even get that far. 😂
Photo of Solara with thumb in her mouth
So cute! I tried my hardest to crop out the trash can as best I could…
Photo of Solara with a bow in her hair
Charlise dressed her in a bow for Day 2 because people kept mistaking her for a boy—she has five boys, people mistake them all for girls; she finally has a girl, and people mistake her for a boy. 🙄🤔

Month in milestones

  • I read four books this month.
  • I vacuumed my room all up.~
  • I managed to get sick/catch a cold. SO MISERABLE.
  • I did my laundry during the day—AND on a Tuesday. Tuesdays used to be my laundry days, but I began doing my laundry at night when I had enough for a load. Being sick, my laundry piled up and I used what little energy I had for being up and about on washing and folding—and putting away—all my clothes. 😀
  • I put 40 pieces of my clothing into our garage sale. I made $11.50. I spent it on shit I needed, and now it’s almost all gone.

Month in waiting.

I say “waiting”, because I feel like that’s what I did much of it—waiting for the Expo, waiting for my nasty cold to go away, waiting to finish reading several books because I fell super behind

Something that made me happy this month…

…was going by Jane at the Expo itself. Last year, and even before when I had domains with “Jane” in them, people got confused a lot. It was awkward to explain, “Oh, yeah, well, I’m legally changing my first name because it’s not who I am, and it’s not like my actual parents named me, but more like a consolation prize, like, ‘I don’t like the names your dad chose, your mother didn’t show care, so I’m gonna name you this because I want to,’ from another relative, so I think I deserve to change to the name I most/best identify with…and then there’s the whole PTSD/DID stuff…” (Well, not in so many words, but just by way of “I’m legally changing my name to Jane”.)

I really felt more like myself, like people there saw me this time, and it wasn’t awkward or weird—people called me Jane, and it just clicked—there was no “Oh, wait, that’s me” going on, because it felt innate, like yes, this is me, this has been who I am all along.

I’d made a poll on Twitter, despite it being a personal decision regardless, because a small part of me felt like it did need some sort of validation, because that small part of me feels guilty that I can’t just “deal with” not identifying with my legal first name like other people who dislike theirs do “just because that’s how it is”. I felt disheartened when I noticed some people had voted against it, and it is for this reason I am glad Twitter polls are anonymous.

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Comments on this post

[…] took photos this month, so I’m not including the “Month in photos” portion like last month’s. It’s also a bit difficult for me to do photos right now, because PicMonkey requires payment […]

It’s great when shows you like are on again. 😀

The photos are great. 🙂

Oh poo. That sucks you got a cold. I hope you are feeling a lot better now.

Also very cool that you used Jane and it felt like the right thing for you! 🙂

Good luck with NaNoWriMo! 😀

Yeah! 💖 I think going by Jane @ the Expo was a bit of a test run, too—it reassures me that, no, this isn’t a phase…and I’m not forcing myself to go by it like I’ve had to do with some other nicknames I’ve had (or my legal first name, for instance).

Thanks! 🤓🤗

I’m definitely feeling a lot better now. <3 The cold went away the Monday before the Expo (not that that would have necessarily deterred me…).