Life never stops throwing curve balls. It's all a question of how much effort one wants to spend in trying to catch them.

Money right now is really tight. I'm making more than I was on unemployment, but our bills have gone up by a larger factor than my income has, and the recent spate of expenses related to hosting the Bash this year have all taken their toll on the available money. Plus, I've been cutting some friends short-term loans. None of these are really a problem, but I keep forgetting I only get paid twice a month now, instead of every two weeks, meaning the money I make on each paycheck has to go just a wee bit further than it did before, and that stretching is hurting.

Right now, I'm in the precarious position of needing to wait until my paycheck clears to be able to pay rent. This should happen tonight, but then again I thought it would happen this morning and it didn't, so I'm staring at a bank account balance that may well dip briefly into the negative before everything catches up with where it's supposed to be. I hate it when that happens, I really do. I've got overdraft protection, but that's going to cost me if it triggers, and I can't really afford any more fees right now.

At least I know I'm getting a good chunk of change on Friday.

The budget woes are not directly responsible for my next big mindgame, but they do play a significant factor. I've become increasingly aware in recent weeks just how unsatisfied I am with the results of my transition. It isn't that I wish I hadn't started; nothing could be further than the truth. It's that I got seventy percent of what I wanted up top, eighty-five to ninety percent of what I wanted below, ninety percent of what I wanted on my voice, fifty percent from the laser, et cetera, and when you start multiplying all these percentages, the actual success rate seems very small.

I pass fine, but I'm still not really happy with what I see, and there just isn't the money right now to pay for any more changes, and what changes remain are all the costly ones like more electro to clear the last of my facial hair, surgery to increase my bust size, and the like. Maybe even a depth increase since I didn't take care of myself after my surgery the way I should have. 

That last is way down on the priority list, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't want it.

I considered for a while experimenting with falsies, but every time I think about it, I feel really icky and for the longest time I could never figure out why it bothered me as much as it did. I think I understand why, now. When
I started my transition, every time I undressed after spending a weekend or a day or an hour or whatever in what I considered proper dress, I would start crying uncontrollably. The illusion disappeared when I took away the trappings, and that distressed me greatly. Now, I'm afraid of going through that disappointment again. I know they're fake, and so trying them on will only make me upset when I have to stop.

Sadly, that seems to be my best option right now. At least, it's my most affordable one.

My credit card is still over ten thousand dollars in debt, which is a source of great frustration. I'm slowly paying the backlog of bills, but the number is intimidating. I owe more money right now than I'm worth in terms of hard assets, and that's a difficult thing to face. I hope by next year some time I'll be in an actual house and paying towards equity, but that's just a pipe dream for now.

So many things come down to money. I wish they didn't.