Matt Kailey

There’s something about a “new year” that, from a psychological standpoint, seems to invite change — or at least hints at the possibility of change. There is some notion that it is possible to start over, to do things differently, to focus on a new, better, more positive track — and a new, better, more positive you.

For my entire adult life, both before and after transition, my “New Year’s resolutions” have revolved around the same two themes — weight and money, and how to manage both and have less of the former and more of the latter.

Anyone reading my personal journals would basically see the same thing, year after year, guaranteeing that my journals will never be published after my death. Who wants to read about someone’s annual attempts at dieting and budgeting? At least I gave up the “quit smoking” resolution — like that’s ever going to happen.

But what I find really absurd is my seeming inability to make small changes that would benefit me greatly when I have made one of the biggest changes that anyone could ever make in his or her life. Transsexual people are the epitome of change — we are change incarnate. We are walking, talking, living, breathing examples of the fact that change can happen when there is a driving force behind it that makes it necessary.

Change is scary. Change is uncomfortable. Change takes a lot of effort and hard work and risk, and the results are not always as we had envisioned. But, as Anais Nin said in one of her most quotable quotes, “There came a time when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

There’s no reason that I can’t alter my dietary habits and my financial circumstances — or anything else, for that matter. I might not be able to change them as dramatically as I changed myself, but if I invested a tenth — or even a hundredth — of the time and energy and commitment and resolve that I invested in the biggest change of my life, I could probably see some dramatic improvements in many areas (except maybe my lungs).

And so could any of us. If we can do this — if we can transition, or deal with being trans in whatever way we have that has worked for us — then we can do pretty much anything.

What changes do you want to make in 2010? Can you make them? Look at what you’ve already done.

(Photo: image from a Hallmark card that I received)