Admittedly, I’m writing this quite late (mid Feb), but reading through my private list of the things I’ve made progress on already sometimes feels cute, which I’m taking as a great sign that those parts are very cemented and integrated.
Transition
The goal is to make progress in my transition, to try new things and find out what I like and want to get out of the transition. How I want to present to the world and myself.
- To better facilitate and make Phase II of the Name Trials more official, I added descriptions in Signal and WA
- Organized an ice skating group w other queer and trans people
- Wearing my hair down in public, as well as wearing fem sweaters in public is now the default
- Wearing nail polish also has become normal
- Was out to so many people…
- …at a Congress decompression party
- …in preparations to and when being at burnhalla
- everyone there just new me by [January’s] name!
- several people just used she/her without even having asked (which in my case felt great!)
Social Goals
The goal is to make new connections, to be more social, to discover what kinds of people I enjoy being around, to work on social anxiety and related issues.
- reached out to someone who just arrived in the city and was looking for someone to hang out w
- whilst not amazing, it was cool to meet a new person and just chat; also, I was implicitly out to him to
- met several cool new people through the ice skating activity I organized
- went to the Congress decompression party/hangout w some friends
- went to a queer comedy show, talked to new ppl and said some things when the host asked things to the audience (got prompted directly)
- met many new people both in preparations1 of and during burnhalla
- I approached many new people
- made new proto-friends
- exchanged some numbers
- tried and dared many new things, incl playfighting in front of around 30 ppl and dancing
- finished audiobooks
- Daring Greatly
- Supercommunicators
- Nonviolent Communication
- Polysecure
Career & Impact
The goal is to gain further experience in operations (Ops) work, to find out whether this really is one of the best fields I can work in, to finally find out after many years whether I can actually, reasonably contribute to AI Safety or not.
- Applied to (and got accepted) for ENAIS’ AIS Collab 2026
- Applied to several roles
- AIS Hungary / Scaling Altruism Lead Ops
- Shrimp Welfare (expression of interest for Ops related positions)
- had a call w LWCW organizer and started a Crowdsourced Packing List for them
- contacted EA Summer Camp (no help needed rn though)
- Got more Ops/EventOrg experience from contributing my bit to organizing burnhalla
Health, Self, and Wellbeing
The goal is to work on myself, to actualize more of who I am, to find out who I want to be, but also to life a live I enjoy and to avoid burning out again, and to maintain or increase METs as those are crucial for this and all the other goals.
- massively improved this site (see Building a new home (snvr)) in ways that makes me enjoy it quite heavily
- I would previously not have allowed myself to do this bc it’s not the right kind of productive
- I would have shied away from making it just the way I like it bc of self-expression issues
- finally got back into rapier fencing after their winter break
- when returning my equipment a woman having someone in a choke-hold smiled and greeted me, which was quite a moment
- had a coaching call with James from Upgradeable, which brought more insights and motivation
- found out how to get unemployment benefits post graduation to decrease intense stress from not having a job from day 1
- bought a ticket to Organysmo not quite knowing what it’s gonna be other than something that looked cool and involves music and light shows
- focused more on my neck issues and could manage them much better
- learned to enjoy my body for the first time maybe?
- just about a year ago I hated embodiment, didn’t like my body and to have one
- touch generally feels better now
- pets and strokes now can have such a large effect and feel incredibly good and relaxing
- whilst I have to apply some effort to it, being able to enjoy things seems to be a skill that one can cultivate
- specifically, the sensations now take up much more space in my mind, I can let myself fall into it if I gently focus on them and return focus to it each time it gets caught in an unrelated thought
- went to burnhalla and tried a lot of new things that were outside of my usual comfort zone: Things that were meaningful and made me grow
January has been a great month! I both immensely enjoyed it, as well as having done a lot for Exploration & Discovery which brought me closer to who I want to become
Footnotes
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when checking out the site, during organizer meetup, and during build ↩