Well, I haven't updated this in so long, you must all be thinking I died or something....

I haven't died, in fact things are going a lot better than they have had in a long time. A Long time....

First, the job: I'm in the routine now. And I'm actually enjoying it. There is a lot of crap that goes along with it, like stupid users, but that's actually minor. I've been able to get 99.9% of the people I interact with to leave a call with me happier and more satisfied than when they came on. I actually TRY to fix their problem. Which is the actual point of the Level 1 Helpdesk.

Level 2 is coming up. They want to take some agents from the LVL 1 group, move us to Level 2 and have us work on various problems with the users to get them resolved. Like the Desktop issues, the program issues and so on.

I've been able to express my desire to be a coach to my manager, and he's enthusiastic about it. He wants to help me with the stuff I need to know so I can move up to a coaches position. BUT, the stumbling block here is that I'm still a temp employee.

I'm not so worried about losing my job now as I had been before, mainly because they have stated, pretty much categorically, that unless you just aren't trying at all, they aren't going to fire any of us since they have invested a HELL of a lot of money into getting us to the position we are in now. So that's good news.

The better news is that it's coming time for Dell to start thinking about who to hire permanently now. Hopefully we will be in the first group (and when I we, I mean I).

It's actually nice to have a management team who cares about us. It certainly is different. And we are reacting by doing much better than many call center environments I've seen.

To give you an indication of the change; I'm not scared of the managers. Really. The team leads/coaches and managers aren't intimidating me like they would normally. It's a HUGE relief.

And that's without my meds.

Which brings me to the mental health stuff. Because of the way work is structured, I've not been able to get to any appointments with anyone for about 3 months now. The emphasis has been on showing up every day without fail. So because of that, I've put off many things that I need to do, like go to the various doctor appointments (mental, foot, hormones and so on).

But I'm actually able to afford the meds now. Which is like *whew*. Most of them are under $4 with Kroger, but some I have to get from some of those online pharmacies. I don't like it, but that's how it goes. The Insurance I have only covers $75 every month, that's it. So it sucks, but hopefully when I get hired by Dell, I'll get better benefits.

One thin I'm looking forward to in regards to work is being able to come out. My managers and some of the people from Apex (the temp place) know I'm trans, but as it stands I'm still presenting mostly male at work. When I say "mostly", I mean that a casual contact you wouldn't know I wasn't male. But inspecting would be obvious. I wear a sports bra all the time now. I wear girls jeans when I can, in some instances I even wear girls tops. I put on eye makeup (liner, shadow and mascara) on every day (but I also wear my glasses too). So far, three people know I'm trans there; my manager, a guy I met first day whose fiance is also trans, and one lady in the gym that Dell has where I signed up for a membership. All of them are cool about it.

Yes, I'm going to Dell's gym. It costs me $20 a month (with a towel) and I can not only exercise there, but also shower and so on. I'm doing the cardio thing, just trying to lose weight. My target of 170 is still there, and I've noticed that I'm eating less. So that's good.

My wardrobe is expanding, and my male clothes are starting to disappear. When I replace something it's mostly buying woman's things to replace male things. If anyone has spotted this, they haven't said anything about it to me.

The reason I haven't come out before now is because of the "Interesting" way the hiring is working out. Officially I work for Apex. They are my boss as they give me my paycheck every week. But they have a contract with Dell. Dell is doing the support for Boeing. So as of right now we all have to obey three sets of bosses, Apex, Boeing, and Dell. Eliminating one of them would make it very much easier, and even though all of them are very inclusive of TGs, I don't want to complicate things more than absolutely necessary. So I'm waiting to get hired by Dell before coming out.

But I'm still "priming the pump" a little here.

Astrally, most of my work is being done on the weekends since most of my energies are going toward work. Things are going okay there, still educating, still ruling and still hunting down nasties when I can. So not much of earth shattering importance.

Plus I've got some really good people to run things when I am missing.

I can't think of much else right now. Feel free to ask questions.