Cha-ch Changes

 

Vote BLUE!

After many years of keeping the blog title the same, I have decided to modernize it to reflect the name I adopted as my legal moniker approximately seven years ago. 

How I came by my final name change requires a little explanation. As many of you know, my daughter was and has been one of my biggest supporters. In a very short period of time she brought up the idea of where did I come up with my name of Cyrsti. Even though it is spelled different than the usual Kristi because of the way a light reflects when it goes through a prism. My daughter did not like it. Regardless of any of that, my daughter and I had a quick meeting of the minds and decided I needed to come up with a different name. Mainly a name which would be easy for my three grandkids to deal with and remember.

For a name, I decided to go back into my family history and select from the people I respected. For a first name I decided to go with a femininized version of my paternal grandfather's name. Then for my middle name, I decided to go a little rogue and honor my Mom by selecting her first name as my middle name. I say rogue because my Mom roundly rejected me when I came out to her years ago when I was home from the Army. As the years passed by and I became mellower with age, I began to have a better understanding of where she was coming from. 

She was firmly planted in the WWII/Great Depression mentality. Which left little room for understanding so called radical ideas such as gender issues. After her rejection, I was left to deal with my gender dysphoria on my own and we never discussed it again before she passed. I came to look at it this way, she put in the effort to birth me and raise me, so I could honor her as the daughter she never had. 

Happily, the name change has worked well. The kids seem to like it and outside of a very few instances. I have had no problems remembering  not to sign my old dead name. 

To preclude any added confusion, Cyrsti and JJ are the same person in the blogging world although Cyrsti does not exist anymore in the real world.

On another topic, even though I was saddened to see Joe Biden step down for reelection, I am extremely excited to see the quick progress Kamala Harris will have to get up to to speed and beat the former president who I have ranted against so often. If any knowledge you may have gained about Project 2025 has not swayed you against him by now, I can't say anymore except you are done living in a country we all used to know. 

What's in a Name?

 Often as we go through the stages of a transgender transition, our names go down a similar path.

It's very interesting how we choose our feminine names. My example is my first name I used was Karen. She sat next to me in study hall in junior (middle) school. When I transferred to a much bigger school, I developed crushes on many more girls. Too many to "borrow" their names. 

It's likely the biggest mistake with feminine names I made was when I first started to seriously come out of my closet. I made a habit of naming myself after a persona I created. For example, Roxy was much more flamboyant than Darcy. I learned the hard way all I was doing was confusing the people I met along the way. They were trying to call me by one name when I was attempting to use another. Fortunately I learned to dress to blend and settled in on one name. For awhile. Actually for a long while. 

Shortly before I began to write the blog (ten years ago) I changed my name to Cyrsti. It's pronounced Cristy. I changed the spelling to reflect how a light is redirected when it goes through a crystal. I used the name for years and years until I came out as transgender to my daughter. She accepted me totally except for my name. She was concerned what the three grandkids would call me.

At that point in time, I went back to the name drawing board and came up with a solution. I would rename myself after family figures I looked up to and make it my legal name. I chose Jessie as my first name after my maternal grandfather and Jeanne as my middle name, from my Mom. The kids could just call me JJ.

Then I ran into problems with what I should do with the blog. By that time I already had millions of hits thanks to you all. So I decided to leave it alone and use Cyrsti as sort of a pen name. 

It would be easy if the story ended there but it didn't. 

I write on several different platforms. Blogger, WordPress and Medium. I wish I could tell you all my posts are original to each platform but they are not. I just can't generate that much content. So, Blogger and WordPress are under my Cyrsti pen name and Medium is under my legal name of JJ. 

So if you see me on other platforms, that's the reason for the name confusion!