Playing The Game

I have no idea if any if you have ever played a realtime strategy game on a PC. You know something like Company of Heroes or Age of Empires or the granddaddy of them all, Starcraft. Yeah I know I am exposing my geekyness to you right now. Those of you who have met me and have my card know it says "Geek Girl and Late Bloomer" on it. So I confess, Geek Chick.

I am the sort that will buy a motherboard and start chopping up the heatsinks on the board or sawing open the case so I can get some Frankenstein-like plumbing with green glowing fluids and UV lights into it. Think of Monster Garage, I am the "Jesse James" of computers. Ok I am not nearly as cool as Jesse, and there is a guy who has no qualms with his gender. I met him once in person, told him we thought him the god of hard work and common sense in my house. His response, I am a just a lucky SOB, said Mr. Sandra Bullock. But I digress.

Back to those games. I usually have played them in a group, with a bunch of other fellow geeks and/or my kids. And these games, if you are not familiar with them, kind of have a rhythm. You collect stuff, you build stuff, you use stuff you built to knock the crap out of your opponent and then hopefully have enough stuff to hold him at bay when he does the same to you. All the time trying to get your military industrial complex to be a finely tooled machine.

But one thing I have found when playing is that the early game is well defined, everybody has a "build order". Make one of these, two of those, then another on of these, then three of that other thing, etc etc. If you vary much from that then you get your ass handed to you pronto, timing is key. On the flip side the end game is usually one where whoever massed the best economic force comes and crushes you like an empty can at the bottom of the ocean. Think the U.S. at the end of WWII, you do not have a chance, we got the bomb.

But the middle game is muddy. I often find myself getting to a place where I am not quite sure what the next thing to do is. Sometimes it is almost a wash of panic, oh shit, what did I forget to do, or wow, I cannot believe that guy has those things already, etc. etc. Now sometimes I get out of that funk and get a strategy going. Other times I do not, I know I am slipping behind my opponents, and then bam, a ga-jillion, hydras show up and pound me. The difference between the funk and winning is really close. And often very hard to differentiate.

Right now in my transition I am feeling that same sort of anxious funk. The idea that I am missing something, or forgetting to do the next step or am I just feeling like I need to be doing something because I have relentlessly been busy with "me" in some way. Doctors, conferences, clothes, group, therapists, that is a lot of crap. I know unless you too have had this feeling it is really hard to describe. Maybe it comes down to this phrase. "Well, that was nice, so now what's next?"

And there you have it. What is next? I am not saying I have no idea what some of the next steps in my life are about. Those seem kind of straight ahead, mind you not easy, just that the "what" of them is pretty well defined. Come out to kids, come out to parents, come out to business concerns. Finish separation, start living more as me. Keep going with chemistry, and other various body mods, hair, weight etc. That all seems pretty plain vanilla to me. Management tasks. Yes they are all big steps. But I guess my problem is, unlike my other recent events, I cannot pick a day on the calendar that says, tell your kids this exact day, or here is the day you will move, or this is the day you are actually separated. Because there are too many other things in motion to do that. Or so it seems to me.

I have answered most of my big introspection questions. What do I want, what order does it happen in. Being an engineer, I have my "build order" down. I kind of know the end game, it is one where I win, and likely others lose (this is the nature of things). I will win "me", my kids will lose "Dad". Or at least what settles for Dad. The person they have known for their whole lives will go away replaced by "who", me I guess. Mind you, I expect I will always be Dad. But what they think of me, or call me will probably be something else. But that is the end game and I am blathering about the middle game here.

A lot of it seems like, wait and see. And then when you do see, you say "Ah, ok" I am happy with that, what is next? And there is that funk again. Case in point. Laser. I have been going since September. The darkies are mostly gone, yay. Last Friday they said, well we are done. And yet there is a fuzz still. Mind you it took me 5 days to get enough up (grown) so that somebody might actually be able to work on it. So I went to see electro person yesterday.

And she says, "If you want it all gone, we can do that". I am thinking why is she saying "if". I feel like a half shorn sheep. She asks about brows, says mine look good, I said, waxed, she cringes. Apparently waxing is evil. She explains her position, I say ok. And we chat about what she would do instead, naturally. And she follows that with "if that is what you want". I look at her and say, look at me, I point at my iPhone where we have just reviewed some recent photos of me in my true state. I shrug, I say "Where do you think I am headed?", she nods, and says "of course". Ok so I just resolved a funk point. The needle is next for me.

Oh and in case you are keeping score, I tried it, without any numbing gel, no shots, or anything, she cleared a small area as a test. And I have to say, it was no worse than the laser. Maybe better even. So I will be able to "take it" just fine I think. From what I can tell this makes me one of the very lucky ones. And so a little incremental step forward. A bit more of the "unknown" chipped away at. I now know how to build a few more of those whatchamacallits. The ones that spit fire and fly. Cool, I will keep them aside for the big push.

And that is the rub of the middle game. It is not going to be big events. It is going to be a chain of a bunch of little ones for a while. Eventually they add up to a big thing. And I am thinking that patience becomes the most useful tool at this point. And is probably a feminine virtue. The ability to wait your turn, calmly. Quietly. Without panic, or angst, or fear, or trepidation. This is an interesting place, I need to learn to embrace the middle game the same way I did the early game. And I already know how I feel about the end game.