Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness

Since I was applying for a job at the RNIB, and I've been volunteering to some extent or another with the RNIB since my only name was Holly and my only pronouns were she/her, I had to either carry that on here -- which I didn't want to do -- or tell the various people I interact with as a volunteer to change the name and pronouns they use for me. Which I also didn't want to do, but it seemed the less bad option.

So I started that today, in a call planned just to be full of catch-up things with the person who among other things is managing me as a volunteer. She's really lovely and we had a bunch to talk about anyway but when she asked me "so how are you otherwise?" (other than the job I'd applied for, this meant, because that was the first thing I wanted to tell her, and she was really excited for me which is sweet because if I get this job I'll be working with her).

So I told her what name and pronouns I'm going by and she was like "oh right!" and she said (not quite in so many words) that there's an LGBT network for staff (and probably volunteers too), and then she started telling me this shaggy-dog story that at the beginning sounded like it was going to be about another trans volunteer, but then kind of ended up being about what their volunteering was? I think? the line was breaking up a bit but I was happy to coast on the tone of voice and she said she was happy to look into getting my firstname.lastname e-mail address changed, so that's all cool!

Gotta tell at least a couple more people by e-mail tomorrow ideally, before I have a meeting with them on Wednesday!

But I'm feeling really buoyed up by how painless this was; I didn't really think it'd be terrible but if it was it'd have been a logistic pain in the ass as well as a huge bummer, so I'm glad it wasn't. It just makes me all the more excited about the possibility of this job. It makes me feel so good. I'm doing a terrible job of not getting my hopes up here.