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I didn't write yesterday as I had an eye appointment, and my eyes were still dilated. Makes it hard to see. I was in AFLAC meetings all morning and into the afternoon prior to my doctor's appointment. I didn't even have a chance to grab lunch which is a rarity for me. I'm not much of a snacker, but I do like my three meals a day. I would say that the meetings were fairly typical for sales meetings. Goals were laid out; top producers were recognized; contests announced; plans set for the week ahead. It was a little bewildering the first time. Every industry has it's own jargon and acronyms, and it takes a little time to even know what everyone is talking about. After the meeting, I met with my sales manager to lay out my schedule for the week. It was supposed be a week doing lessons so that I could be credentialed to use the policy writing platform--it's all cloud-based now. While not best practice, you can even write a policy over the phone and have a signature texted. Paper is so 20th century. LOL. Well, that was not to be. I was finally able to log onto the AFLAC website, but then it asked me to change my password, and all I could get was an OOPS! message. So, I spent almost two hours with tech support--when I finally was able to get ahold of someone--and my issue is still not resolved. Maybe paper was better? Anyway, I had previously told the folks where I used to work that I would stop by to say hello. I haven't been back since I lost my job at the end of June, although some of the staff did come to my wife's memorial gathering. I felt it was time to check in. I got a warm welcome from staff and the students who were still there. I feel that they were genuinely happy to see me and I liked seeing them too. I even got invited to their Thanksgiving dinner. I don't know if I had mentioned, but I worked at PACE Center for Girls for almost 14 years as an English teacher and guidance counselor as well as special needs support. It's a program for girls who need extra acacemic and emotional support. I was often the only male figure there out of 40 staff and 80 girls. I seemed to fit in. Before I left, we did hire a facilities guy, Mr. Jose. He was really sad to see me go. So, we plenty of time on my hands, I figured I might as well get to work. I had read through and practiced how to approach businesses at the one-day sales school, and I had seen how my manager worked. All that was lacking now was for me to get out there and give it a go. The worst that could happen would be that people would say no. I picked areas that didn't look overly promising because I needed the practice. Mostly the business owners weren't there, so I would have to go back. Most of the ones I talked to weren't interested and I couldn't even convince them to see me for 10 minutes, but that happens. In the end, I did make one appointment for next week and even had to call and reschedule. At least I got

Hi everyone, I'm pretty excited about an upcoming event that I'm involved with - it's part of a feminist Meetup group that I belong to. Each month we have a moderated discussion on some issue within the feminist movement (last month was about racism in feminism). This month I'm moderating the discussion on transgender issues - the title is "Are trans women real women?" (the title is meant to be a little provocative, and to have a very obvious answer - the organizer was worried about using it, but since I was ok with being identified as transgender in the blurb about it she was ok with the title). We're going to show a couple of short videos - one by a TERF explaining why she doesn't accept transgender people as women, and then one by Janet Mock, explaining how she realized that she was a woman (well, a girl, she was 5 when it happened). Then we'll have a discussion about it! The topic is really "what is a woman?" which should be pretty interesting - I expect some discussion about nature vs. nurture ("Female brain" vs social construct). This is another example of where I've gone over time, since it was only within the last year that I was trying to pretend I'm not transgender - now I'm openly leading discussions about the topic. That of course is another huge thing - I told a friend about this, she's known me for 8 or 9 years, and she was thrilled, but also recognized how far I had come, back when we met there's no way I would have been willingly doing a public speaking event. More later! xoxo Chrissy

At least I got a start. As the manual says, this is a marathon, not a sprint. And, the top 10% were once the bottom 10%. It wil come.