It’s a precious gift. I look for the others who care too much and then hold them close 🥹

I make eye contact and walk at a normal pace. In Spain people get mad when cars drive down city streets. They glare daggers at you while they clear the street begrudgingly. We need that energy in the United States. Cars should know that they are second class citizens.

This young trans girl i know was kicked out by her parents and moved to my city. She was hatecrimed a few weeks after she moved, and went to the police. She was convinced that they were on her side. One of the cops gave her his phone number and she got the impression that he was interested in her and was going to hook up with him. My friends and i very emphatically talked her out of it. I wonder if she would’ve survived.

No, they refuse to speak to me to this day. My gf’s family called her to wish her a happy birthday last week, and i cried quietly wishing mine did that too.

I was born into an impoverished extremist right wing family. I enlisted in the military back when DADT was a thing. I was disowned as an LGBT teenager, and medboarded out of the military after being committed to inpatient facilities multiple times. After that, i was homeless for a couple years, living out of a car and then a backpack.

I finally ended up in this little town in Georgia, got a job at a little retail store, and moved into a trailer with one of my coworkers. Her friends kind of adopted me and i felt accepted for the first time in my life. We were all broke kids, but i told them i was going to be a millionaire by age 30. I was still pretty emotionally unstable and eventually moved on from that friend group, but it gave me the hope i needed to rebuild my life.

I slowly built a career for myself after that, working 70-80 hours a week for a couple years, until i had my foot in the door. It got a lot easier after that. I didn’t quite hit my goal by age 30, but I’m close. I founded my first company at age 28, and raised a 10 million series A. My company is now worth 60 million on paper, but of course that’s meaningless until we IPO. But it’s profitable, and in the meantime, I’ve adopted a little family of people like me, and built a comfortable life for us. Life is good, and I’m content.

I’m a software engineer with a decade of experience, and I’m frustrated by the experience so far. Bad UX is bad UX.