treatment

hi

i'm going to send a duplicate over facebook, as i hope to get a referral out by monday if i need to do it that way. however, i suspect it may be easier to simply book an appointment.

the purpose of contacting you is to get my hormone prescription renewed. i've already been through all of the mtf transgender diagnosis - and a very long time ago at that. i've been on hormones absolutely steadily since 2010.

i was previously dealing with a doctor in ottawa. about a year ago, i moved to windsor. last month, i had my prescription renewal denied due to the doctor no longer practicing. i've had *general* difficulties with the doctors in windsor - they won't take my odsp seriously, and they won't write me hormone prescriptions. i'm really at a loss of understanding.

i couldn't even contemplate how i'd react if i were to stop taking them. i've been on them five years! my entire life exists in a female identity. i simply don't understand why the doctor in windsor is refusing to prescribe, but it's forcing me to look outside the city.

i was able to get an emergency prescription to the end of december from the hospital ER room. that's an extreme step, but i had nowhere else to go to get the extension. what that means is i'm hoping to see somebody before the new year.

i'll have to take the bus down, which shouldn't be a problem so long as i have enough time to plan. again: my records are with the doctor in ottawa. would you be willing to see me?

jessica

so, drum parts and erratic sleeping schedules don't go well together....

i decided in the end that i can't use the parts i recorded yesterday, but i was working through the day. today, i lost due to sleepiness which i think is a combination of nicotine withdrawal and the frightful temperature outside. i'm convinced my ancestors hibernated, because the cold just slows me right down....

i can't record much tonight (maybe some simple kick parts), but i should hopefully be able to compose the drum parts for quick completion in the morning. i don't think i'm adding anything else to the track, besides a howl near the end. but we'll see...

the next track up is 'time', which i'm entirely rethinking and don't want to jump ahead into.

well, the curve got beat in the end (again), but this is actually kind of disappointing because i was on track to top 4000 until about the 15th. hits actually crashed really badly in the second half of the month. if they don't recover soon, november is going to be ugly...

...but, again, it's sort of meaningless. i watched my current front track (inertia) jump from 210 to 276 in one jump, then from 276 to 301 in ten minutes. under 300, it's real time. it was 100 hits in about a half hour. yet it took three days to catch up in the official tally, indicating i'm getting hundreds and hundreds more hits than are being recorded. i think this is happening because people, in general, aren't blocking the autoplay.

i've been through this before, and i'm not convinced the policy has remained static. it seems to swap back and forth more or less randomly. that's not really the substantial concern. the substantial concern, for me, is simply that the hit counts aren't accurate in measuring REACH, which is what youtube exists for. until youtube changes the way that it understands itself from a content provider to an advertising platform, that accuracy will never exist.

here's an example of the disconnect: while traffic was crashing at youtube (at least officially), it was soaring at bandcamp - which is where the hits actually matter. i hit 500 hits this month, which is the highest total in five years. i also got several sales, for the first time ever. given that 95% of my bandcamp traffic comes from youtube, it doesn't make any sense to think that bandcamp peaked the same time youtube crashed - but it's what the numbers suggest. again, it's not really that the youtube numbers crashed, it's that the metrics aren't even close to being accurate because of the site's policy in how they're being measured.

in the end, i have to conclude that what i'm doing is working. i'm driving traffic to where i want it to be. i'm selling discs - hopefully more soon. it's just that youtube isn't measuring it...

the psychological attachment i previously had into this is dissipated. sure, i'd like to see it keep growing. but i know it doesn't really mean anything...

this curve is far more important, and you can see that nice spike.

i guess i'm hoping i can continue to beat the curve for the year. we'll see what happens after that.

i mean, i'll also point out that i don't get to really promoting my first official recordings for another year. these are just introductory demos, where i was teaching myself how to do things. they're not really salable or presentable as anything more than that. so that's lots of time to go through those sorts of growing pains and figure it out.

my first really serious recordings won't enter the promo cycle until 2017.

late 2017...

it's slow, but i knew that was going to be the reality when i picked this and i'm sticking with it.

i'm not expecting it to bell on me. that would be horrific. i'm expecting it to hit a max point and stay flat. i guess there's some evidence that 3000 might be that max point, but there's also some evidence it's still growing.

i've wondered if it might even have something to do with the school schedule. it seemed to peak before midterms and crash during them.

if so, i might notice a yearly pattern work in that is fluctuating upwards. who knows, though, we'll just have to watch and see.

if you're curious for cost purposes...

the main heat is about to finally kick in - meaning it's about to hit 21 in here. meaning it's been above 21 in here without the heat on all fall so far. it's 21.3, so it'll fall within the next few hours. it's a little earlier than last year, but the temperature hasn't been very high. considering this is a basement, and it's been cold for weeks, that's actually sort of remarkable. had we not got these intense drops.....

the small heater in the bathroom has been on since the first week of october.