Things Are Pretty Good

(Please, God, don't let me jinx it by talking about it...)

It's taken a while for this to sink in, but now that I've had time to process the events of GRPC, I've concluded that my life is pretty good right now.

I was invited to speak at THE gun rights event of the year.  
While this is a big deal professionally speaking, it's also amazingly validating on a personal level. I still worry that Operation Blazing Sword isn't accomplishing things quickly enough, but the fact that I was invited to speak at GRPC only year after creating OBS means that I must be doing something right. And hopefully my appearance at GRPC will open new avenues for OBS!

People accept me as a woman.
This may not sound like a big deal to you, but it's a huge freaking deal to me! I could go into the whys and wherefores of this, but you've probably heard it all before. I just want to point out three important factors in all of this:

1. There's a difference between "treat as" and "accept as". It's a very fine point, and perhaps it's all in my head, but to me it's the difference between thinking people are just humoring me out of a sense of decorum and actually defaulting to "Erin is legitimately female." This was driven home by the other two factors
2. Women are paying me legitimate compliments. We all know I'm insecure about how I look and that may never change, but when a freaking beauty pageant winner tells me I look cute, then I start to believe that maybe I actually DO look cute. I received similar compliments about my clothing, my makeup, my hair, and (amusingly enough) my boobs. It gives me hope that I might actually figure out this "how to be a girl" thing!
3. Men are treating me like a lady. Again, this isn't just "OK, we will call Erin 'she' in order to maintain civility"; they are actually defaulting to gentlemanly behavior around me by holding doors for me, calling me "miss" and "young lady", and generally just making me feel like a million bucks by treating me with kindness and deference. I freaking LOVE this.

My life feels like it's on the right track for the first time since high school.  
The best way I can describe this is "Pal's in her heaven, all's right with the world."  I feel like I am who I'm supposed to be, doing what I'm supposed to be doing. Not only is this reaffirming, it's an incredible relief because for too damn long I've felt like I've been pushing a bowling ball uphill with my nose and now things are lining up and becoming easier. It's magnificent, and I hope I haven't just ruined things by acknowledging it.


There are a few more things I need to achieve before I feel like I have succeeded, but even so, it feel really good to be where I am right now. I can't recall the last time I felt this good, both about myself and about where my life was headed. Maybe "who I am" and "what I am meant to do" have finally aligned and I'm working with the flow of destiny/the universe/whatever you want to call it instead or working against it or being tossed around by it.