Ame’s Hammy Jamming — February, 2023
After time off, I am ready to announce the next phase of my work!
Welcome to the February 2023 edition of “Ame’s Hammy Jamming!”
Those of you following the Hammy Jamming posts (both of you!) may notice I did not publish this update in the first week of the month, as I intended. That’s right — within three iterations of keeping a promise, I’ve broken it! To my critics, I have only one response — a question, really:
How are those New Year’s Resolutions going?
On that note, I am Ame, I am a ham, and I’m composing this update regarding the last month (plus a week) of my life on the fly. Let’s get to jamming!
Why so late?
I tend to be obsessed with time. What time is it? What day is it? What phase of the Moon is it? How many days until my birthday?
So how in the world was I able to miss a deadline by a week?
The answer is simple: I took last week off.
I didn’t write a single thing last week because I was burned out. In four months, I published 50 articles, began a new Medium Publication called The Identity Current, and spoke with as many transgender people as I could fit into my schedule.
To be clear, I loved almost every moment of the past four months. I found my purpose in life — to speak about and to support the transgender community. But I did need to scale it down a bit and focus my purpose. I spent last week doing just that.
My big announcement
Although this may not sound like “scaling down,” I am pleased to announce several new channels for my content:
- A Publication on Substack named “The Dingbat Diaries”
- A channel on YouTube
- A podcast on Substack
- Several social media accounts best discovered at my website About Page
While I intend to continue to publish on Medium, I find I crave a more personal relationship with readers. Substack appears to provide that opportunity. Time will tell in that regard, but I hope those of you who enjoy what I write will take a chance and subscribe on Substack. I have several fun ideas for using these new channels to publish.
To that point, I will publish twice weekly both on Substack and Medium. From those articles, I intend to film videos published to Substack with the audio published to the Substack podcast. Since I get asked occasionally what prompted an article, I also plan to film extemporaneous videos with a “behind the scenes” feel to give that background information, again published to Substack.
I will also film whatever pops into my head for YouTube. I have a few ideas, including product reviews and “transgender woman on the street” interviews. I love to make jokes, and I get the opportunity very rarely on Medium. Maybe you will see a side of Amethysta you didn’t realize existed!
Finally, I will make posts to social media outlets as it makes sense in my head. I’m still thinking about what I should and shouldn’t say in some forums. I consider myself a Transgender Activist, but I certainly do not want to make a nuisance of myself. I even bought business cards so that I feel like a professional.
And that’s it! With these changes to my content, I hope I can provide more timely and interesting information that scratches whatever itch you may have. Er…as long as that itch is for my content and not something you picked up walking through a forest.
NOTE: if you subscribed to Medium through my referral link, I will add you to a Substack paid subscription automatically. Thank you for the support!
Some transition updates
As seems typical for these updates, I have yet another hair color to share. Last month, I decided to get much deeper purple highlights to complement the silver I did at the beginning of January. I found the highlights quite lovely. Within days, however, I found I wanted more, more, MORE! There is a saying with hair dye: once you go purple, you need more purple. I went back to my stylist Amanda and asked for an all-over purple dye job. And…here it is:
With this hair color, as well as my 7 months on gender-affirming hormone therapy, I seem to have begun passing in some environments, a significant milestone for me. For instance, the following have occurred to me recently:
- When trying to get a table at restaurants, my wife is now addressed and I am ignored
- When the bill comes at a restaurant, if I am eating with a man, he gets stuck with it
- When thanking the employees at the makeup store, they respond with “Yes, ma’am.”
As silly as it sounds, I enjoy this gender-specific behavior. I look forward to the day when I can go to the hardware store and be asked if I’ve ever heard of a “wrench.”
In summary, my life is much better today than it was a year ago, and I credit that to your support, my family’s support, and my clinic’s support. Thank you, all of you.
Until next month, keep your day purple and hair purpler!
