a whole new (gayer) woooooooorld

Friends! I finally have news, both personal and podcast-related:

As you have heard, I've now officially left my day job, and am now learning to juggle the podcast (plus merch, patreon, etc.), consulting work with Sylveon, and all of the contract work that I'm still doing with Travel Portland. (Oh, hey, did you know that I edited the entire Portland visitors guide this year? You can get your own free copy here if you're into it!) 

Above is my last-day-of-work picture. And here's my last ever SFW selfie in the """"women's""""" bathroom at my former office! Hooray! 

What have I been up to since then? Well, first, I played a gig with my roommate! We're half of an all-trans band and we are cool and fun and gay and I can't wait for you to listen to us play someday. Here are photos because I am deeply excited about this. 

(Photo by Molly Harbarger, I believe. Anyway, here we are! Yes, Taegan is wearing a Support Trans Media shirt by Beth Easton, which you can buy in our merch store.) 

Our band is called Leisure Trash and you can find us on Twitter and Instagram if you're into that sort of thing, no presh. Anyway...

A more relevant thing that I've been doing is trying to relaunch the gosh darn podcast, which will HOPEFULLY happen by the end of January! No pressure to me but also maybe some pressure, you know????? It's good for me. 

So far, I've scheduled three interviews for the next week or so, and while I'm not revealing who they are quite yet (in case I jinx it, ya know?), Ill hopefully have much more concrete news to share by this time next week. I'm doing my best! Thank you for your patience! I love you so much! Sorry for the exclamation points!!!

OK, I will tell you one thing, which is that our first guest of Season 5 is Cyrus Dunham, author of A Year Without a Name (and sibling to exactly who you think). I absolutely loved our conversation and I can't wait to share it with you.

No, this is not Cyrus Dunham. We have now reached the dog section of the newsletter. This is Gus. His moms are gay and he weighs four pounds and we are good friends. 

This is my dog-sister, Maddy. She is resting after being attacked yesterday by another, much bigger dog, and then having to wait many hours for a vet to help her. Please send her good vibes for a speedy recovery! (And while you're at it, please send the same vibes to my human roommate, who is also very injured and having trouble accessing medical care. It's almost like we live in hell.)

OK, that's it for now, I think! Really really hoping to have Cyrus's episode edited and ready to go by this time next week.... but I haven't started yet, tbh, so if you have This Week in Gender topic ideas, please send them my way! 

Before I go, thank you so so so so much to all of you for supporting me over the hiatus. It means more than I can express to have your trust and support even when I'm not actively tossing that good trans content at you every week. You're truly, truly the best. (And to all of our new friends: Thank you so much for being here!!! I'm honored and delighted!!)

Here's your weekly Rhubarb. She plays drums in our band.

xo,
Yr resident gender detective 

PS: If you want a very bleak and extremely gay playlist, here's one I made last week. The last two songs are an inside joke and you can ignore them! Or not, if you want to be transported back to 2008.