Wm! and Alx! have finished packing and are currently enjoying that new blog smell over at The Permanent Home of T & E.  The new site took the better part of Alx!’s day to set up, but we’re finally done kicking the tires and are ready to open our doors.

All the content from this blog is over there now, and this message will stay up for one week and then this iteration of the blog will be deleted.  Hope you like our new place as much as we do!

Thanks!

- Your Intrepid Editors, Wm! and Alx!

I’m actually kind of amazed with myself at how well I’ve been staying on top of the 10 Days thing! I mean, the past 3 ‘days’ have taken a week, but still – I haven’t just abandoned it and wandered off to something else, so that’s good.

This Monday morning finds me exhausted and too sleepy to focus, with a healthy dose of anxiety – which leads perfectly into the day’s theme: fears.

Eight fears, below the jump. Boo!

1. FAILURE

Like every insane, perfectionist, type-A law student, my number one biggest fear is failure. I’m not even sure I could tell you what I mean by ‘failure’ – since when you’re at this stage it’s totally relative. Plenty of people tell me that failure isn’t really possible, since it’s a success just that I am where I am… but I don’t think any self-respecting law student would believe that! The fear that keeps me up at night probably echoes a lot of my friends’: that I’ll never get a job, that the fact that I don’t have a job yet means I’m not good at anything, that I’m going to fail all my classes and everyone will laugh at me, that I’m lazy and useless, etc. And the fear of failure somehow doesn’t motivate me to do more class reading, it just is. There is a saying that ‘having failed is not the same thing as being a failure,’ but I’ve never failed anything and anyway I’m not sure I’d be able to tell the difference between the two. It doesn’t really matter whether any of the things I worry about are objectively true, what matters is the constant state of terror they put me in… I have decent grades, and yet every day I don’t read for class I am convinced that it’s that day that will be the last step towards failing out of school. Clearly that hasn’t been true yet, but the fear is still real. So yes, failure.

2. SPIDERS

I hate them. I have been pathologically afraid of spiders for as long as I can remember. Big ones, small ones, even just spider webs – if I see one I freak out. I’ve been known to have paralyzing fear even just seeing a spider web, or worse, walking through one by accident. I’ve never had a bad experience with a spider or anything… no traumatic spider bites… but all it takes is thinking about a spider and I feel the panic creeping in. EEK

3. FLYING

Psychology is so strange. When I was little, I used to love flying – we travelled a lot and I would get so excited every chance I got to get on a plane. And then one day, sometime in high school, I woke up and was terrified to fly. No explanation. No gradual onset. Just suddenly terrified of flying. I still do it, because I refuse to let some silly fear put a stop on my life, but I’m such a nervous air passenger now, and I can barely breathe until I’ve gotten off the plane and back into the airport.

4. BEES

And wasps. And anything that flies and stings or bites. I have a deadly allergic reaction to these things though, so I like to think of this one more as survival instinct than fear.

5. WHATEVER THIS IS

It stares at me while I’m sleeping.

6. MOLD

Most people don’t like mold, that’s normal. I fear it… which I am pretty sure is abnormal. Have you ever seen a grown woman turn and run, screaming, at the sight of a carrot that’s gone off? No? Well then you haven’t known me that long, have you.

7. ZOMBIES

So terrified. I’m not even joking. The first time I saw a zombie movie, I nearly lost my fucking mind. The concept of zombies (or the zombocalypse) is terrifying on such a deep level that it’s hard to even articulate why. I mean, sure, they’re ugly, and yeah, no one wants to get their brain eaten, but it’s so much more than that. I think the zombie mythology is such a powerful allegory for so many human fears, which is why the same zombie movie (basically) keeps getting made over and over again and is still so effective. Don’t worry though – Liz and I, we have a zombocalypse emergency plan, so if you’d like to be included just let us know, and provide a list of useful skills and possible weaknesses. ‘Fear of zombies’ does not count as a weakness.

8. THE POSSIBILITY THAT THE GAME IS FIXED

I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist… I don’t spend a lot of time reading subtext that isn’t there, and I don’t usually have a lot of patience for people who do. There’s virtue in taking things more or less as they are, and not letting your fears drive you crazy. That said, every once in a while I get the discouraging thought that maybe it’s a done deal already – the people who are going to be successful are pre-determined, and I’m not one of them. It’s less of a fear, I guess, than a discouraging thing I tell myself, but it is kind of scary to think there’s no chance of success. That I’m on the outside, destined to be second-rate no matter how hard I try or how much work I do. So it’s a fear, and it ties into fear #1 on this list, but really – this line of thinking is just a waste of time.

So, this 10 Days business is turning into 10 weeks… sorry! For some reason the work load this quarter has been heavier than it’s ever been, so I’ve been completely swamped, and these things take a long time to write. I’m not about to abandon it after just one post though, so I hope you’ll forgive my tardiness and enjoy today’s edition. The day’s theme is love.

Loves below the jump.

1. LIZ

Obviously I wouldn’t do a list of things I love and not put Liz at #1!

Liz and I met in December of 2006, in DC while we were both at Georgetown. I was a first year grad student, and she was a college senior. When she graduated, I still had a year left in my Master’s program so she stayed on, just to be with me, and took a job she didn’t like to help our family make ends meet. And then after that, when I got into my first choice law school, which happened to be 3,000 miles away in a city she’d never seen, she just helped me pack our things into the car and moved with me across the country. Because that’s just the sort of person she is. She’s kept me sane throughout law school – she is truly a woman of valor. Damn fine, too!

2. GAIUS, PANDA, AND GERTRUDE

These are my babies! Gaius and Panda are my cats (Gaius pictured above, with flowers). Liz and I met right after my beloved childhood cat, who I brought with me to live in DC in all her 30 lb white cat glory, died unexpectedly. I was heartbroken, so I’d been putting off getting new cats, but with the advent of Liz I felt I was ready. We picked our babies out at the DC Humane Society, and now 5 years later we couldn’t be happier. Gaius is a sweet, cuddly, needy boy who needs constant attention and wants nothing more than to sleep ON MY FACE all night. Panda is more nervous and aloof, and the vet thinks he has some brain damage because he’s epileptic. But that’s ok, he’s a wonderful cat! He is a beautiful all-white cat with sky blue eyes, and even though he likes to pretend he doesn’t give a damn, he’s never far away from me and Liz.

Gertrude is our puppy (pictured below). She’s a mix of my two favorite dog breeds: chocolate lab and German shepherd. She joined our family during 1L summer. It was 4th of July weekend, and Liz made the mistake of letting me go to PetCo alone to get cat food. I came back with cat food, and a puppy. Gertrude was sitting at the pet store, with her 10 litter mates, and a sign that said ‘free puppies.’ She was at the bottom of a big pile of puppies, and I picked her up and she licked my face and I knew right then she had to come home with me. She has been the most wonderful addition to our family – and in her first few weeks with us she probably saved my life. One night after work, when Liz was out of town, I came home to find the door open. I didn’t think much of it, and I tucked myself into bed. Soon, I heard Gerty barking, and then I heard footsteps – men’s heavy boots and men’s voices in the hallway. Terrified, I called the police, but by the time they arrived, the invaders were gone. Gertrude – who was tiny and locked in her kennel, had scared them away with her already intimidating bark (they had no idea she was small and kenneled!) She was saying – hey you get in here and let me out, and I’ll give you a piece of my mind! What a good puppy!

3. PHOTOGRAPHY

That’s my camera up there – the Pentax K-7. It was a Hanukkah present from my dad 2 years ago, and I’d been wanting it desperately for a year before that. It’s taken me about a year to really learn how to use it – I was quite good with my point-and-shoot (that I still love), but I might have over-estimated my abilities when I decided to move up to the K-7. Even still, I’ve learned a bit of humility (ha!) and a lot about photography since I got this. For the first few months, I couldn’t take a picture that wasn’t blurry – it was so discouraging! But I slowly learned, and now I love this camera, it is a beautiful piece of machinery. The thing I love about this particular camera (I’m Pentax whore in general), is that every Pentax lens ever made fits every Pentax camera ever made – no adapters needed. So the old lenses my dad has from the Pentax he had in the early 60s fit my camera perfectly. My favorite feature is the built-in HDR mode, which I have had so much fun playing with. I also love all manner of post-production/processing software – my current obsession is Adobe Lightroom.

I use photography as a creative sanctuary in law school. When my analytical mind is feeling too buff and my creative mind feels like it’s whithering, I bust out the camera and spend the afternoon playing around. I love photographing scenery, especially macro photography of flowers and textures, but my all-time favorite photography genre is portraiture. I love taking portraits, any variety of them. I have some great ones of Liz, and some awesome ones of my close friend’s wedding on Orcas Island over the summer. I think if I didn’t have photography and graphic design, I would be depressed beyond words – without the creative outlet (which is what it is, it’s not even about being talented, just doing something creative), I would lose my mind for sure.

4. MY DIAMOND EARRINGS

I know you probably think it’s really shallow, but I’m going to explain. As a high school graduation present, my parents got be a pair of 2 karat diamond earrings. They came with a beautiful note, that said how proud they were of me, and what a wonderful young woman I grew up to be. I went to boarding school, so the earrings were presented as part of a ceremony my parents weren’t at, and I didn’t see all that much of my parents anyway, so the earrings and letter meant more to me than I could ever say. I’ve worn the earrings every day since – I’m 26, and I haven’t taken them off since I got them at 18. I’ve moved so many times since then that I’ve long since lost the letter, but I’m not ever going to let go of the earrings. I didn’t realize it when I was 18 obviously, but it turned out that the earrings are also the last gift I have from my parents as a unit – soon afterward they were separated, then divorced.  As far as I can find, the only reminders I have of when my family was whole are these earrings, and one picture of the three of us smiling and looking happy at my high school graduation.

5. COOKING

This should really be “cooking and food” – because I love both oh so much. Growing up, I always hung out with my dad in the kitchen, and he’d let me stir things or mix things when I was really young. He’s a great cook – mostly Hungarian food but all sorts of things, and I was always really impressed by that. I didn’t know how to cook though until I went to London for my Junior year abroad – I’d lived in the dorms since 9th grade so I never really needed to know. The dorms for my university in London, though, were actually like little pods of 6 single rooms with a shared kitchen. There was no dining hall. So I was really hungry at first! Finally I called my dad, and started getting some recipes, and it turned out I was a natural. Within a few weeks, the other students living in my dorm pod nominated me pod cook, and would wait patiently every day for dinner. I stayed in London for an internship over the summer, and I lived with two of my friends from University – two British kids who were 19 and had never had to cook for themselves. I became the apartment cook too, and when they took me to the airport in August, both were crying that they’d never eat real food again. It didn’t take me long to realize that cooking was incredibly relaxing for me – even the most intricate meal made me feel calm and serene while I was making it. I really like the feeling of working on something with my hands, and then having something to show for it. These days I love serving big meals at dinner parties, discovering new recipes, and tinkering around in the kitchen until I create something perfect.

6. CHINA MIEVILLE

Though you might not have heard of him, China Mieville is my absolute, all-time favorite author. He’s a British Marxist activist, holds a PhD in human rights law, and writes some of the best steampunk science fiction you’ll ever read. I read a ton of sci-fi, since I grew up on the classics my dad had in his library – Asimov, Phillip K. Dick, and the like. When I read my first China Mieville book, Perdido Street Station, I was mesmerized by his ability to take a genre that had become lazy and dogmatic and shatter its boundaries, turn it into something new, living, and relevant. He’s my perfect author, because he blends his politics background into his writing in such a perfect, seamless, non-preachy way that the entire universe he creates lives and breathes on its own. His work is dark, the characters he creates are tremendously flawed, and yet he is gentle towards their humanity in a way I haven’t encountered in another author. After the Perdido Street Station trilogy, he switched genres, and embarked on a new take on the noir detective novel in The City & The City. At once bracing and introspective, that novel blew my mind. His other works are just as diverse – Un Lun Dun is a brilliant Young Adult novel that is whimsical, beautiful, and mysterious – and he manages to do this without compromising his talent just to sell books. This guy is brilliant, he is truly a genius, and I highly recommend any of the books I’ve linked – I hope you’ll read them!

7. THE PACIFIC OCEAN

Ever since we moved to Washington when I was 11, I’ve been completely in love with the Pacific Ocean. I can’t entirely explain why, but I’ve always had a connection to it that feels very profound. It was the thing I missed the most when I went to the East Coast for college, and every time I was home for a visit I would drive to either the Washington or Oregon Coast and just stand on the shore, looking out to sea. No matter how stressed or unhappy I was, when I got to the ocean, I’d suddenly feel lighter, like the water had taken away my troubles and drowned them. When I was really homesick my first year of college, I got a pretty little glass bottle and filled it with Pacific Ocean water – now wherever I go, the ocean comes with me. When I die, I want my ashes scattered into Puget Sound, off the pier in Seattle.

8. HORROR MOVIES

It’s totally twisted, I know – especially nowadays since it seems like the genre of horror movies is being maligned in a more or less wholesale fashion. Which I think is totally unfair, because there’s a lot in horror movies that warrants discussion, if intellectual value is your only measure of the value of a thing. You should read Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film by Carol Clover – it’ll blow your mind and it puts to shame all the highbrow scholars saying there’s nothing worth noting about horror movies. Even beyond that though, I just find something genuinely entertaining, satisfying, and just fun in horror movies. Whether it’s old classics like Romero’s 1968 Night of the Living Dead, or trashy, campy, ultra-violent modern B-movies like I Spit on Your Grave or Evil Dead – I don’t care, I love it all. I love foreign horror – I watched the Japanese versions of The Grudge (Ju-On) and The Ring (Ringu) well before American directors had even heard of them. I love space horror – Event Horizon blew my 13 year old mind. Even the ones that people find truly scary, like Paranormal Activity, I enjoy with glee. I am a total film-buff movie nerd when it comes to horror, I can win any trivia game, give you a history of all of the subgenres, I can trace a lineage of remakes back to the original, and off the top of my head I can compare the foreign original to an American remake. I can name directors, tell you the behind the scenes history just about any horror movie, modern or classic, popular or obscure. I just love it all!!

9. MUSIC

This one is tough – because music is so subjective. We might both agree that music is awesome, but then I could say “Famous Blue Raincoat is the best song ever written,” and you might think I’m deaf or an idiot. They say that smell is the strongest sense for associations, that people associate memories with smell more than anything else. I don’t really know if that’s true, because for me, music has a very nostalgic quality. Ani Difranco’s Imperfectly always brings me back to freshman year of high school, because I had the album on repeat in my dorm room for months. Melissa Ferrick’s +1 puts me right back in junior year of high school, reminds me of my first broken heart, and my first lost friend. My favorite music is Bright Eyes (also the stuff labeled as ‘Conor Oberst’ since it’s the same thing) – I know it’s not a popular choice, but something in the lyrics and the sound of the music interweaves with my life in a way no other songs have. Really, music to me is the perfect art: it goes with you, becomes a part of you, where visual media falls short. Whenever I think about this, I’m reminded of a line in a song I was obsessed with for almost all of high school:

Life is something set to music

I can hear it when I’m sad

There’s a chord in every muscle

Every kiss you’ve ever had

{Heather Nova – Not Only Human}

Let’s see what we’ve got… Secrets below the jump

1) I am hideously shy and most of the time I have to force myself to make conversation with people even when I really want to talk to them. It’s part of why I don’t have tons of party engagements in law school… when I do work up the courage to chat with someone, I have such a crushing fear that I am painfully awkward that I beg out of the conversation as soon as possible. I still want to be a trial lawyer, and it’s strange – I think it’s a big part of why I love it – when I step into the courtroom I feel like I’m a different person. In regular life I’m a shy, awkward girl who wishes she could be more social; in court I’m confident, calm, smart, quick-thinking, and impressive. The transformation is amazing!

2) Sometimes when I’m bored or nervous I imagine the world in comic book form. I just think about what things would be like in that specific situation if we were in a comic strip or graphic novel. Would someone throw a desk? Would someone run away and leave behind a puff of smoke? Would there be a fight that looks like a growing snowball, arms and legs popping out every once in a while and drawing in passersby?

3) Like, from what I can tell, most trial lawyers, I am powered almost 90% by sheer anger and spite. I am either angry, or tired. Anger is good – I can work with anger, but exhaustion is fatal because once I stop moving I won’t start again. I think it’s the product of a somewhat painful/difficult past – anger and spite are things I had a lot of practice molding into productive, positive forces. It’s a big part of why I read political blogs every day. Some people drink coffee (well, I do that too), I get really mad. Whatever works!

4) I am pretty judgy. I have probably judged you. It’s not that I think I’m better than other people, because believe me, I really don’t – but I think I just spent long enough as a total introvert that it became second nature. Also, making quick assumptions about certain aspects of peoples’ personalities is a survival mechanism for me, one I got really, really good at at a very young age – and that pretty much leads into the judgy thing. Sorry!

5) I fall in love with every city I visit and immediately make plans to move there. I grew up kind of disconnected and all over geographically, which is probably the key here – but it could be anywhere and I will suddenly decide it’s the place for me and I must live there. Until I go somewhere else. Or, in the case of Vegas, for three days. Either way. Related to this, I had the (failed) goal for years of being on every continent before I turned 21. I missed it by one – Antarctica, which I am extra pissed about because my dad was offered a spot on a scientific cruise thing there and I COULD HAVE GONE but he was like “oh no who would want to go there” and he turned it down. Aside from that, I traveled abroad at least once a year for a month or more – every year until I graduated college. There were some scary times (I have been pulled out of a car at gunpoint at a roadblock) – but I am thankful for every experience because I could not see the world the way I do without it.

6) I can pick (almost) any lock. No I’m not a criminal mastermind, I’ve really never broken the law actually (well aside from driving too fast and smoking/drinking before I was 18), it just started as a curiosity and then grew into kind of a weird hobby. I think one day when I was 8 I was like, hey I wonder if I could do this (this is the danger of having an only child and 2 working parents, people)… and then it just kind of became a thing. I suppose it’ll be a useful skill one day? I don’t know. It’s second nature now, and no one really knows it about me because it’s not like it comes up in conversation, and it seems so natural now… I was astounded recently when my partner was totally blown away when I picked the lock to our apartment in like .3 seconds. *Shrug* Introverts and weird hobbies!

7) There is a picture of John McCain that always makes me happy. Seriously, I could be on the verge of suicide, and if I look up this picture I will laugh for long enough to feel better. It’s below – this great image that is totally unexplainable… McCain is doing this weird zombie walk and sticking out his tongue and grabbing for Obama’s ass. NO IDEA what was going so horribly wrong there, but if I was in charge of the contest for the best picture in the entire world, ever, it would be this one. See for yourself:

See?

My favorite word, ever, is ‘pamplemousse’ – the French word for grapefruit. Always has been. That is all.

9) I am pretty certain I do not want children. This is a secret because I feel oddly affected by social pressures to want children, and I know my dad really wants grandkids (and he’d be a totally rockin’ grandpa), but I just don’t feel it. People tell me I’ll get it when I get ‘older’ but I’ve been waiting and that maternal baby drive thing still hasn’t kicked in. I pretend pretty well, when it comes to gurgling at other peoples’ babies and looking at baby clothes and baby things and pretending I want to buy them. Blah. Watch me change my mind and then one day my kid will find this and have a nervous breakdown. Hmm.

10) I absolutely and totally hate birds. In general I am the staunchest animal lover you’ll meet – I never met a furry, fuzzy, four legged, clawed, cleft-footed, etc creature I didn’t LOVE. From giraffes to chinchillas, I love them all. Except birds. I have a longstanding grudge against birds in general after one stole my sandwich when I was like 6 at Disney World and in the middle of a blood sugar crisis. I was about to need medical help, when I got my sandwich, put my stuff on it, was about to take a bite… and this big, ugly, stupid heron came up and grabbed it out of my hands, just like that. I have never been so mad in my life. Birds are assholes, I hate them.

Since I don’t have a video of my own (for technical reasons, see previous post), I wanted to aggregate a few of my favorites.  I haven’t seen even close to all of them, but the ones I’ve collected stood out to me as particularly moving, or powerful, or just beautiful.

Enjoy!

First, my good friend Kristel made a really awesome video, and I was blown away when I watched it, because parts of her experience echo my own.  I am so impressed by the folks who are brave enough to share their own struggles with complete strangers.

This video of the Los Angeles Gay Men’s Chorus singing True Colors made me cry like a 5 year old girl.

In this one, the students of Gallaudet University share their experience of oppression, and message of hope even in times of struggle.

I really enjoy this video from the folks at Google.

Most Adorable Video award, in my opinion, goes to Law and Order: SVU star (and one of my most favoritest gay men ever), BD Wong.

And finally, the kids in the NYC Pride Chorus put it way better than I ever could

Feel free to share your favorites in comments

I expect this post will be difficult for me to write, because there are a lot of things I don’t really spend a lot of time talking about; I’ve gotten through them, and I have the privilege now of not having to hash them out to everyone.  But the kids who took their own lives in the past few weeks – the young people who, because of the cruelty of others, felt there was nothing to live for anymore – they will never get to this place.  They’re never going to get to put the pain behind them; they’re never going to get to share their voice with the world.  It breaks my heart.

—–

My name is Alex.  I’m 26, I’m a third year law student in Seattle, Washington, and I wanted to share my story with you because I want you to know – that it gets better.

Some of my friends in high school waited until after graduation to come out.  I didn’t have that option, I came out when I was 12.  I’ve known I was queer since  I was able to know anything at all, I’ve probably known since before kindergarten.  At 12, I just didn’t see the utility of keeping it to myself anymore.  So I told my parents.  And to my great shock, because it hadn’t occurred to me that they would be anything other than supportive, their response was “well, don’t go around advertising it.” That’s it.  That was the entire discussion.  For about 10 years, that was everything my parents said to me about who I was.  What they meant was easy even for a 12 year old to comprehend: Shut up.  Don’t be yourself.  Fit in.

For a bunch of different reasons, I left my small, rural town and went off to an all girls’ boarding school  for high school.  Which you might think sounds pretty damn ideal for a young lesbian, but if you did think that, you would be wrong.  I guess in a sense it was great – my friends were wonderful, they will be my friends my whole life, and I’m so thankful for them.

For me, the bullies weren’t my peers; the bullies were the people who were supposed to be protecting me, supposed to be nurturing me and making me safe and healthy.  They were teachers, administrators, school staff.   They were adults, who had so much power over me, and they used that power to try and try and try to break us.

My freshman year of high school I fell in love for the first time, with a junior who was also new to the school.  It was everything young, first love ever is – intense, ridiculous, joyous, powerful, important, persistent.

It took us about three weeks to get caught.  I remember being called out of class one day into the principal’s office, in December of my freshman year.  I had no idea what was going on – it hadn’t even occurred to me that being in love was something I could get in trouble for.   My friends with boyfriends weren’t getting called into the principal’s office.  When I got there, my girlfriend was already in the office, crying.  She tried to apologize to me, I learned she had been so scared that she had denied everything: no, she wasn’t gay, no, we weren’t gay together, no – nothing was going on.  When we didn’t persuade the principal, we were forbidden from seeing each other.  We were forbidden from being in each others’ rooms, even with the doors open, forbidden from sitting together at meals, forbidden from passing notes in the hallway, from speaking.   For our own good.  And yet my friends with boyfriends had them in the dorm all the time.  We were threatened and terrified.  The message was loud and clear: there is no place safe to go.

Instead of breaking, though, we pushed through – we spent the next two years fighting a daily battle against people infinitely more powerful than us.  At times it was so bad I thought there was nowhere I could go to be safe, nowhere where it was ok to be who I am.  Neither of us could go to our parents, neither of us were safe at school.  It was crushing, the weight of it.  They did everything they could to break us.  They treated us like discipline problems, like they could punish the gayness out of us.  We lived in constant fear, we were sneaking around, we were always tired.  They told us we were sick, that we were unhealthy and wrong.  That there was no way to have a healthy relationship if you were gay.  They held our future over us – they threatened to expel us, they threatened to put discipline on our records, telling us we’d never get into college.

At one point the principal thought it would be a great plan to out us to our parents without even warning us.  Again, out of the blue, we were called into the principal’s office during the school day.  It was a courtesy, she told us, that she was even talking to us at all – she’d already spoken to our parents.  It was a disaster.  It was bad for me, it was catastrophic for my girlfriend.  Her parents showed up that day and pulled her out of school for a while – what happened with her is her story to share but it was weeks before she would even speak to me again.  After this happened, I thought things couldn’t get any worse.  I thought I had no voice, I thought I didn’t stand a chance – the people who were hurting me were so much more powerful than me, I was just a kid.  I was 15.  I thought life wasn’t worth living anymore, I even thought of taking my own life.

I’m so glad I didn’t.   When I look back now, I don’t know how I made it through – my friends, the ones I still count as family today, they gave me a reason to make it through every day.

After my girlfriend graduated, the administration of my school changed, and things got a little bit better.  I found a couple of teachers who helped me stay strong, who helped me learn to be tough, to fight on when things were hard.  And high school only lasted four years.

I got out of there as fast as I could – for me, that meant going to college.  When I got to college I was so amazed – I was so shocked to be meeting people who were queer, who were gay, lesbian, transgendered – and who were happy.   Suddenly, I was surrounded by people who cherished me, for exactly who I was.  I found a world where I could hold hands with the woman I love, without fear.  Where I didn’t have to lie, to deny who I am.   Today I live with my partner of 4 years, she is the love of my life and I assure you, our family of the two of us, one silly lab puppy, and two grumpy cats is quite healthy.  I’m studying to be a criminal prosecutor – I’m going to make this world better by doing my best to keep people from hurting others, and hopefully giving people who the world has tried to silence a voice.  A perk?  All the fight I learned, the refusal to give up, the strength I gained by pushing through – it’s made me one badass radical queer woman.

And the best part is, now I get to add my voice to this project – I get to pass on a message to people who stand where I stood 10 years ago – and tell you, I promise you, no matter how dark it feels right now – it gets better.  It gets so much better.  There’s a world out there, full of people who love you – there’s a world waiting for you where all the things that make you different are the things people cherish most about you.  There’s a world of love, and joy, and freedom from fear.  Yeah – there are still going to be people who try to make it hard, I wish I could tell you otherwise, but if you make it through this time right now, it also gets easier.

Please, if you think you have nowhere to go, if you’re thinking of hurting yourself – call the Trevor Project at 1-866-4-U-TREVOR  Or email me, at alexis dot rado at gmail dot com.

The world needs you.  This world needs your joy, your love, your hope, your voice – this world needs you because you can help make it better.

But I’m torn.  The price tag can be as high as $800 – that’s a hell of a lot of cash for something I’m not entirely sure what I’d do with.  I mean, I was just browsing the Apple store website, and it looks to me like the new iPod touch actually does more than the iPad.

Here’s how my story started: Over the summer, while working at my limited license to practice internship, I went to court frequently, often carrying enormous stacks of disorganized files and paperwork.  Inevitably, I would spend 20 minutes looking for one file while papers flew everywhere and the judge and opposing attorney looked on – either amused or impatient.  About halfway through the summer, one of the attorneys I worked with frequently came to court with an iPad instead of the box of files.  I noticed that he had transferred all the PDF files onto the iPad, and while I lost papers and cussed and shuffled files, he accessed each client file, in complete form, right there with one touch.  This was the first practical application of the iPad I saw and, being more or less a practical-minded human being, it was what really got me thinking about the possibilities of the device.

Coincidentally, around the same time, I came home and found, to my horror, that my beloved Kindle (1st gen) had been destroyed somehow – the screen had gone kaput and was cracked and irreparable.  I got the bad news that the warranty I had gotten would not replace the now thrice-outdated (but much loved by me!) device.  It felt like my entire library had burned to the ground – the Kindle was my most beloved of all my gadgets – which is saying something because I am somewhat gadget-obsessed.

At Best Buy post Kindle-death, I started playing around with the display iPad.  I like the look and feel – and I can see the potential in terms of reading and PDF storage.  I started thinking about what, exactly, I would use the device for.

Here’s what I am fairly certain the iPad would be for me:

1) A shinier e-reader.  I miss my Kindle – I’m an obsessive reader, I have precious little leisure reading time but I like to fill every minute of it reading interesting literature.  Part of that is fed by being married to a writer – I have a steady stream of literature recommendations and I’d like to follow up on them.  Books aren’t ideal for me for several reasons – I have an accessibility issue that makes being able to increase text size and contrast very important, and also I have the attention span of a hyperactive gnat and like to switch between 15-20 books at  a time.  I can’t carry 15-20 books at a time.  Luckily with the Kindle, I could.  The Kindle app for the iPad looks, I have to admit, gorgeous – and in combination with the native iBooks app for the iPad, it seems to be a device that could fill the painful void left by the Kindle.

2) A portable video library.  One of the reasons I would probably spring for the 3G version if I do choose to go iPad is that I am really attracted to the idea of being able to stream Netflix or even purchase/rent iTunes content anywhere I am.  I can imagine it would be nice to have video content available for travel, and easier to see/longer battery life for Netflix watching while in bed.

3) Subject to me learning how to transfer PDF files to it, a possible workhorse and major courtroom ally.  I can only imagine the usefulness of the device at trial – having an entire trial notebook stored in one small, neat, instantly accessible device is an extremely attractive prospect.  That accessibility issue I mentioned earlier in the leisure reading context – profound visual-spatial dyspraxia/dyslexia – makes it impossible for me to scan a page quickly and determine if it is the document I need.  This means I spend an embarrassing amount of time shuffling through papers in court.

I’m not sure the courtroom benefits would happen right away, and I might be disappointed, but I can see tremendous potential in the trial context.  I can imagine the time I would save shuffling through papers if I could just have it all right there at my fingertips.  Granted at this point you can’t hook the device up to a projector (no USB connection), you can’t print from it, and you can’t really type notes or anything in the files you have; also, without Bluetooth it would be difficult to, say, beam a document from my iPad to the judge’s computer – can you imagine, “if I could just hand this up Your Honor?” – except in the time you took to say that the document had already been beamed to the judge’s screen?  Tremendous potential.  My concern is that this payoff might be far enough down the road to make getting an iPad now not very wise.

Also – reading PDF files on the iPad would make reading any school handouts a lot more accessible and easy for me – and especially this quarter I seem to have an inordinate amount of printout/handout material.  I’d love to be able to read those on an iPad screen.

What it isn’t going to be/can’t be for me:

1) A laptop replacement.  I’ve heard quite a few bloggers claiming they are ditching the old Macbooks and Macbook Pros (and even some Mac Pros, which, I mean, come on!) in favor of their new iPad.  I think this is foolishness in the extreme.  An iPad could never, ever replace my computers (yeah, that’s plural… I’ll admit to having a work PC, a play PC – both ASUS – and a bitchin’ iMac).  I can’t play my games on the iPad (uh, yeah there are app games but I’m talking something a bit more taxing that requires real video card muscle).  I can’t take class notes on an iPad without hooking it up with weird appendages.  I can’t use Dreamweaver or Photoshop or any Creative Suite software on it.  Without Flash, I can’t visit some of my favorite websites.

I also don’t need it to check my email or keep track of my calendar – my phone does that.  I don’t need it to give me directions, my phone does that.  I can tweet from my phone.  I can find local businesses from my phone.  My Android phone and I are inseparable already.

2) An iPod replacement.  I’m not one of those people who needs one gadget to do it all.  Even when I had an iPhone, I continued to use a separate iPod.  I like my Android phone to be a phone, my iPod to play music, my computers to be computers, and maybe my iPad to do something interesting and different.

Anyway – the verdict isn’t in yet.  So, gentle readers, I ask you – given the uses and non-uses I’ve come up with – is it worth it to buy an iPad?  That $800… is it going to be everything I hope for?

I can’t believe Wm! and I are 3Ls now – the past 2 years flew by so fast it feels like yesterday I was ditching law school orientation for cigarette breaks and coffee.

The time went by so fast, in fact, that I can barely wrap my mind around it except to mark the time in milestones, to convince myself that time has passed at all… luckily for me, a lot of important things have happened since I started my 1L year.  Let’s see if I can come up with a complete list:

Since the first day of 1L year, I have:

• Gotten engaged to my beautiful & amazing partner
• Taken on de facto guardianship of my younger brother (he’s 20)
• Shaken off the chains of an evil, vindictive landlord and moved out of Seattle and into the northern suburbs
• Worked 2 summers in prosecutor’s offices
• Worked 2 quarters at a public defender office
• Turned 25, and then 26
• Gotten a puppy who is now over a year old

And I know there’s more.

So whether you’re starting 1L all fresh and new, or heading into 3L year kicking and screaming – welcome back all!  And to all of you the best of luck!

• Normal working hours. Believe it or not, you get dressed down for staying late.
• There’s a form for everything.
• You will be supervised.
• THEY WILL CHARGE OFF YOUR STUDENT LOAN DEBTS AFTER TEN YEARS OMG
• You have access to a lot of sensitive information. Don’t even think about using it for non-work-related purposes.
• You get to do the right thing.
• The money ain’t bad, especially considering the fact that THEY WILL CHARGE OFF YOUR STUDENT LOAN DEBTS AFTER TEN YEARS OMG
• Litigation is litigation. There are quirks in every field, but there will be discovery, motions, and court appearances, and if you like any or all of those, you will be happy.

We’ve both started work at government agencies – I’ll be working this summer at a county prosecutor’s office here in Washington.  Today was my first day and I am both totally excited and completely exhausted.

I am exhausted because this job is a significant distance away from where I currently live, so the alarm goes off at 5:50am in order for me to be there when the office opens at 8:30am… yeah this is summer break in law school kiddies.

I am totally excited though because this is my Rule 9 summer — the summer where I get provisionally admitted to practice law in Washington under the supervision of a practicing attorney… meaning… I can try my own cases in district court this summer!  I got my Rule 9 card and everything.   The prospect of my very first jury trial (and not second chair either, I’ll be running the show) looming on the horizon is an incredible rush, but it won’t be for a while.

I was thankful to find out today that I’ll be starting slow and working my way up to the more advanced stuff.  I’m starting out on traffic infractions – basically people contesting their traffic tickets, and then I’ll go on step by step till I get to criminal court/misdemeanor district court stuff.

A few things really struck me today.  This job is totally different and strange in three major ways… first, the last two internships I’ve had were working in Felony, so now I’ve gone from felony to infractions, which is like an entirely different world.  Second, my last externship was in the federal criminal justice system – so I’m switching back again from federal to state.  And finally, the last internship I had was in defense, and so I’m back over at prosecution now.  Today was more than a little disorienting!

What really got me though was how even the tiniest and not even criminal matters – the infraction calendar – seemed so intense once I had that Rule 9 card burning against my palm… suddenly even asking people what had happened regarding their speeding ticket felt imbued with this overwhelming sense of responsibility.  This afternoon was the first time I didn’t feel like a law student intern – I felt like a lawyer.

Being suddenly and even only provisionally granted that authority to decide peoples’ legal fates seems to have changed everything.  What was once boring is now enthralling, what was once trivial is now crucial – my focus on the details of each infraction file was intense and fueled by something I hadn’t even noticed growing inside me – a sense of my profession.  Up until today, law school has felt sort of accidental, I just followed the currents and shrugged off the unpleasant parts.  Whatever step I took today, whatever activated inside my mind when I opened the envelope with that Rule 9 card stamped with the seal of the Washington Supreme Court… everything looks different.

It may not sound glamorous (at least not to those who don’t love criminal law like I do) – but I felt a sense of purpose and profound respect for what I was doing, even on the speeding ticket docket.

As I drove home the whole way all I was thinking was, I wonder where it will go from here…