Something has shifted deeply for me over the last 5ish years, which I think merits calling out for folks who have known me for a long time. I’m eager to hear how this has landed with folks, especially as part of a birthday missive. However, so many things have changed in the last 5ish years that it’s hard to pinpoint a single origin. In this post, I explore some of those things and the impact I expect they’ve contributed to. Here they are in chronological order for when they started.

Relationship with Reed

Reed is a difficult person. He is also, hands down, the best partner I could think of for myself. He is extremely predictable, self aware, and invests heavily in a few choice things. Our lives together are one of those choice things, which means I can offload a lot of cognitive overhead about home, bicycle, self, etc care to him and it gets done better than I’d bother doing it myself. Reed can also be incredibly selfish (again, in a self-aware way). He has the most attuned sense of what “enough” is of anyone I’ve met. He sets goals for what he would like his life to look like, and when those goals are met, he enjoys the fruits of his labor.

Being around this as the main touchpoint of human interaction in my life (we are romantic partners, co-parents, and dear friends) means some of this has rubbed off on me. I have always had high standards, but now I am more comfortable doing something myself or with others than dragging along someone who is struggling in a non-self-aware way. For most of my youth, I had a strong savior complex, which I have worked on overcoming for years. Both my work with GWOB and my relationship with Reed have helped me truly wrap that up. Perhaps too far in the other direction, but all things are oscillations.

Working at Apple

While most of the individuals I worked with at Apple were truly lovely, the company itself has a culture of extreme arrogance. Success has gone to the proverbial head, and it seeps into everything. Even the hiring process is terrible because the recruiters know having Apple on your resúmé is life changing (or was, before this market, phew), and that people want to work there regardless of other factors. Every chance I had to be more collaborative, I tried to take, and I was (mostly politely) redirected to try to find other paths.

I remember trying to explain that an executive coming up with a problem statement that then a bunch of brilliant people came up with in-depth responses to individually, which then the exec picked “the best of”, and then program managers dolled out the work was not actually “collaborative” but a process diagram instead, and it fell on deaf ears. 5 years of that, and not being able to talk to other people about it, sure did a number on me.

Becoming a Parent

I gave birth alone via emergency c-section after a very scary night. Covid meant no guests unless you were in labor, and because I was two months early, they were trying to stop the labor and so wouldn’t admit me as such. After a month in the NICU, we brought Locke home only to discover that Reed had severe misophonia related to infant screaming, and so then I was on the hook for taking care of two creatures who couldn’t fend for themselves and were actually often at odds with each other’s needs. Our agreement that Reed was going to be the stay-at-home parent exacerbated this because it made asking for outside help at odds with our goals and plans. It was the worst 18 months of my life. And in part because Reed is already a difficult person, my care network saw this as a personal failing on his part rather than a disability, which led to even more long-term issues.

This also led to some extreme division of labor — Reed still wanted to help out, but it needed to be in discrete, scheduled chunks that he could prepare for. Which was good in some ways because it meant I got clear time off, instead of always being “on.” However, that shifted us away from the collaborative, flowing parenting style we now actively and intentionally implement.

While I’ve done deep therapy around all this and mostly moved past it, I still have a trauma response to some things, and repairing other relationships is still taking significant effort. Going through this also deepened my relationship with Reed. Now, when something is difficult, we know it’s not as difficult as this thing we did that one time.

Being on Testosterone

I love being on testosterone for many reasons, and have also already highlighted the ways it has shifted my experience of the world in ways I’m less of a fan of. I have a shorter fuse, less empathy on the surface, and less patience. I take up space more now than I used to, and focus less on making space for others. The first I don’t think is a bad thing — I deserve just as much space as anyone else, it’s that now I’m expecting to get it. And I haven’t figured out yet how to balance taking space for myself with my old habits of taking space for others as well. Whether that’s because of an actual biological reaction or “just” the validation, who knows.

Where I am now

Who knows how much any of these, or collection of these, led to my brain issues worked on last year. But I am now less warm and collaborative than I used to be. I miss it, it was aligned with how I’d like the world to be and for people to treat each other. I’ll keep working to be warmer again.

Again, I’d love your insights into how I’ve changed, and how that has impacted our relationship, for my birthday this year. And I have yet to talk about all this with my therapist, so who knows what will change about it as I continue to explore.

Oh yeah, I guess we also went through the collective trauma of Covid in that time, too. That matters as well.