I don’t know if I’ve ever scheduled a post before. I’ve never had something in my life I couldn’t really talk about publicly that I’ve wanted to kind of explore and work out and needed some space to write and thing about that I couldn’t just do it. When I was ‘laid off’ from Xebec, it was public knowledge that they were moving the company to the US – they announced it to us, the team that worked on the products in the UK at the same time as they made it public.
But this time I’ve known something since last week and…not been able to speak about it. And won’t be able to speak about it publicly until Tuesday next week. The day I’ve set this to go live. Which y’know, I could talk about it, there’s nothing legally stopping me, but I know Nikki wants to announce it then and I gave her that option, so, here we are.
I exist at the intersection of a bunch of identities. Like colonizer and colonized. White and South Asian. I’m trans, I’m a woman, I’m an immigrant, I’m a survivor of domestic violence. And I’ve never really felt like my identity was my job. I hopped from career to career. And from “oh, I’m a biochemist.” to “oh, I’m a sys-admin”, to “oh, I’m a technical writer.”
And I kind of got that nurse had become part of my identity – partly because it’s something I’ve been doing for more than twenty years in some form or another – it’s hard to do that without it becoming a part of you. But also because it has so much impact on the way other people see you. When they ask you want you do, and you say “Oh, I’m a nurse” or even moreso “I’m an emergency nurse,” like they really do look at you differently.
But I’d never really realized journalist was part of my identity. I’ve been a journalist – climate/automotive – for a decade. Yes, it’s been in the form of scripts rather than written articles (although I used to contribute the odd written article to Transport Evolved when it was a text based site – but they were consistently opinion pieces). But yes – although I always presented it with some minimizing statement: “Oh, it’s just on YouTube.” “Oh, it’s for my friend’s company.” – I have been a journalist. I have a little card and everything that says “Member of the Northwest Automotive Press Association”. I have an ID card that says “Journalist.”
But as of – really today – I’m not anymore.
I offered a long time ago that if it made more sense for Transport Evolved to ‘let me go’ it was fine. Because I’m well aware that YouTube videos don’t pull in that much money anymore – most of that money goes to Google. And I’m also aware that I’m an acquired taste. People either loved my videos or hated them. And that the vast majority of our Patreons subscribe for Nikki’s incredible depth of knowledge, not for my occasional forays into upcoming tech.
And last year I warned Nikki that – with me setting up my own business I’d probably have to stop doing it this year. And then a couple of weeks back, when I was talking about my vacation and time off needs for some surgery later in the year I reiterated that I could do them unpaid or, if it made more sense I could step away now. And after chatting with her wife, they opted for “well, it makes sense for you to step away now.”
And so this year there’s this huge shift in the things that make up my identity – and I’m kinda grieving them and feeling at a bit of a loss in processing them and I’ll talk to my therapist about them in a couple of days and y’know… I’ve spent quite a bit of time crying about it which I have been rather stunned by.
It’s interesting because I’m super excited and massively terrified about the press. And I knew that as the press ate more time I’d have to stop doing first the journalism (because it pays less) and eventually the nursing. But… yeah. Despite knowing that I don’t think I’d internalized or really understood how much it would hit me.
And I don’t really know what this post is other than chucking this out in the void. Trying to process, at least a bit, something that I don’t know how to process. Grieving for the loss of part of my identity. Or the change in it?
But it’s been a rough day – with a lot of crying and feeling very weird about my place in the world and how I don’t really know what it is at the moment. And yeah. I might come back and add to this before it goes live, but right now that’s all there is.