simon-says-man-up

[simon-says-man-up]

Tracking Vocal Changes

Hey all, I’m back at it with the transition blog posts! Hope you’ve all had a good week and a good start to your weekend. This post is going to be about tracking one of the many changes that people undergo while on testosterone: voice pitch. It’s something that happens at different times and different rates for everyone,and it can be super exciting, and some people may want to track how their voice changes and when. This post offers some tips on using specialised apps and plain old microphone recordings to do so.

A lot of guys look forward to vocal changes, especially trans guys. I know that I do, especially because I’m short and baby-faced and I know that a Barry White voice would get me into the Man ™ Club faster than my bare, supple cheeks will. That said, cis guys have all kinds of voice ranges too and HOW you speak, as opposed to just how deeply, is very important. More on that in another post. 

So how's a guy to know what he sounds like? How does one tell if you’re at peak vocal manhood? That question is surprisingly complex. Personally, I use a vocal range app on my phone to track things on a more scientific scale. It’s available for android, and it’s a small, free download off the play store. It’s just called “Voice Pitch Analyser” and it’s very simple. You just hit record, and say nonsense into your microphone and the app will measure your pitch and provide a dot graph of where you are in the range between female, androgynous, and male. It will plot every recording you make over time on the graph so that you can get a visual along with dates and hertz measurements of where your voice is at any point in time. 

Note, however, that it will NOT save your recordings, nor can it delete them or play them back, so if you want to hear yourself instead of just seeing your progress on a chart, you’ll need another solution. I just use my phone’s plain old voice recorder app to maintain an audio record of how I sound as well as using the app to get readings on my pitch over time. 

This app will give you sample excerpts from “The Picture of Dorian Gray” if you’re like me and can’t think of anything to say when a microphone is presented to you or you only say dumb things like “Hello” and “today’s date is”. When I make the recordings for myself to keep, I make sure to say the date, how far on T I am, what I did that morning, and make note of any other factors that might be affecting my voice (illness, throat soreness, recent voice cracks, if I’m tired, thirsty, hungover, if I spent yesterday screaming at a rock concert, etc).

If you don’t want to use the app, making regular old recordings is helpful too. Yourself and the people around you may not be the best judges of how your voice has changed. For one, you hear yourself every day. Changes are usually fairly gradual, so you’ll notice them but they won’t seem as big until you hear yourself from three months ago and hear the difference minute-to-minute. Also, your friends and family aren’t going to be the ones to tell you that you sound exactly like you did when you were eleven and hadn’t seen a drop of T in your life. They mean well, really, they’re just probably not going to drop your ego like a hot brick just to tell you the truth. Also it’s strangely funny to listen to yourself from a few months ago and hear the difference. Trust me. 

That’s all I have for pitch tracking tips, but if you guys have other things you do or know about, please share them with each other! My blog is open for submissions, too so if you have a post you’d like to share or create for this, go right ahead! As usual, stay cool and have a fun, safe weekend!

[simon-says-man-up]

Normalise men talking about mental health and feelings

They should not feel trapped

[simon-says-man-up]

Shot Advice for Testosterone

This is a little post that I’m making for those who do their HRT shots themselves. I’ve been on T for five weeks as of this post, so I’ve done a few but I may have more tips in the future, so expect a part 2 sometime in the future!

TW/CW: Needles, injections

I do my shots intramuscular (IM) and in my thigh. Some people inject in the buttocks, some people do subcutaneous shots (SC) and some people take oral tablets, or use gels. I haven’t done the subQ shots, so I don’t have specific advice for those folks, but I’ll try to link some other posts from fellow bloggers if I find some for you guys! As far as the shot, I do it in public bathrooms (I know, hang with me) only because I’m too lazy to keep my own sharps container and I’m also without a permanent place to live right now, but this is important! 

CAP ALL OF YOUR NEEDLES. All of them, every single one. And after you cap them, put them in a sharps container. This can be one of the wall-hanging ones in a public bathroom, a secure plastic container, or you can buy ones from amazon. Used needles are not good things to have floating around the house uncapped, so cap them all and keep them all secured and accounted for. 

Now, onto the shot!

First of all, when you pick up your prescription, this stuff should all be included in the order. You’ll get some combination of these items:

-- A bottle of testosterone formula

-- Syringes (may or may not have a filler needle pre-attached)

-- Injection needles (these are different from the filler needle. I’m not using official terms, so I will explain below.

-- Alcohol swabs (You can buy extras of these too if you want)

When you do the shot, lay out what you need beforehand so you’re not bumbling around trying to find where you put the other needles or forgetting to use alcohol swabs because you didn’t take them out of the drawer first. It makes everything easier. Lay out the bottle of T, TWO alcohol swabs, an injection needle, and the filler needle and syringe. 

Step 1: Open the first alcohol swab. Rub it on the top of the T bottle, and around the whole neck of the bottle. This keeps the bottle clean. Your bottle will have a self-sealing top, so don’t worry about getting alcohol in the T, just keep it clean.

Step 2: Open the filler syringe and needle. My prescription includes syringes with a needle already on top. This syringe and needle is what I call the “filler needle” because it’s the one you use to fill the syringe up with T. It will have a cap on it. TWIST the colored needle cap to take off the needle WITH the cap on, and PULL the colored needle cap straight out to take the cap off the needle while leaving the needle on the syringe. The way I remember this is “twist to trash, pull to poke”

*DO NOT INJECT with this needle. It’s big as hell and will hurt and it’s also going to be dirty if you’ve just stuck it into a bottle of T. 

Step 3: Now that your filler syringe is open and the needle cap off, pull the plunger on the needle back past the amount you are going to inject to fill the syringe with air. If you are injecting 0.1mL, pull the plunger back to 0.13mL, for example. Turn the bottle of T upside down (you cleaned the bottle, right?) and push the needle into the bottle. Inject the air from the syringe and then sloooowly pull the plunger back to start filling the syringe with T. Fill past your injection amount, once again.

*T is oily and a little thick. It will take a minute to fill up and feel like forever sometimes. Just have a little patience :)

Step 4: Now that your syringe is full of T (and a little bit more than your dose amount) pull the needle back out and cap it again with the cap that came on it. The cap on your bottle may be self-sealing. All that means is that once you pull the needle out, the rubbery stuff in the cap will close up the hole from the needle. This stops any medication from leaking back out the needle holes that you make, so don’t worry about drips or anything. Oh, the wonders of plastic! Set aside this capped needle for the sharps container.

Step 5: Retrieve your sterile-wrapped injection needle. For me, this needle is smaller and shorter than the filler needle. If you are doing SC injections or buttocks injections, you may have two different sets of injection needles. The longer of the two needles is for the butt, and the shorter of the two is for the thigh. Pick your poison and with the colored cap still on the needle, twist the new needle onto your T-filled syringe. Set the syringe aside for a moment.

Step 6: Clean the injection site. Take alcohol swab #2 and use it to clean your injection site. For those of you using the thigh, this will be in the outer third of your thigh. You find this space by sitting down and putting one hand flat on the top of your leg, wrist towards your hip and fingers pointing towards your crotch, like you’re putting your hands on your hips except on the front of your legs. Now, take your other hand and put it just above your knee, perpendicular to your leg. The area between your hands is the middle third, and the thickest part of your leg. Now, to find the outside, follow an imaginary line down the front of your legs. You are injecting the outside half of your leg, in the thicker area of your thigh. When you’ve got the spot, swab the whole thing down with the alcohol wipe. I dig into the muscle a little bit at this point to relax it. 

Step 7: Take your capped injection syringe and needle and uncap the needle. Pull the colored cap straight off. Remember that extra T I had you put in? Push it out now, until you’re at the amount you should be injecting. This will push all of the air out of the syringe and a little drop of T so that the needle is lubricated. You do not want to inject air into your body, so try to get it all out of there. 

Step 8: Now, you stick the needle into your skin. When you do, commit and push it straight down at a 90 degree angle in a smooth, quick motion. You can hold the base of the needle with your free hand if it helps to steady the syringe. Push the plunger down to a count of ten. Some T may leak back out around the syringe base. This is okay. Once the syringe is empty, pull the needle straight back out and cap it again with the colored cap. Remove the capped needle from the syringe and put a bandage on the spot if it’s bleeding. I don’t bleed much and I’m hairy and hate bandaids so I don’t put bandages on. I just press a small piece of toilet paper against it if it bleeds a drop or two and then continue my day.

You’re done! Congrats on your shot, and on putting another dose under your belt. I will try to link tutorials for other T administration methods for those of you not doing IM shots, so stay on the lookout. I will also be making a post shortly about general tips on shots, the less fun parts of doing T shots, and on troubleshooting some of the struggles people have with shots. Stay cool,friends!

[simon-says-man-up]

Two Weeks on T - Brain Games

I’ve been delaying this post for awhile, for a couple of reasons. One, I wasn’t sure whether these changes were a placebo or because of the T. And two, I wasn’t sure how to express what changes I did notice. They’re very unexpected for me, very left-field. I didn’t see or hear hardly anything about these kinds of changes for other people, but I also wasn’t really looking for them. Needless to say, I’ll update you all as time goes on with what changes and what sticks. 

First of all, my mental state seems to have shifted from multi-track and speedy to very sluggish and too linear for comfort, if that makes sense. I’m used to thinking two or three different things at once, and having a more tangential train of thought. I have anxiety, so I don’t know if that played into it at all, but my whole life I’ve thought in little bits and pieces that aren’t fully related to each other. I used to think in a mixture of words, images, and concepts. 

Now, after two weeks on T, my brain feels blunted. I can’t focus on more than one thing at once. My focus and ability to stick with a though has definitely improved, to the point that I’m writing this all in one sitting which would never have happened before. But I can’t do anything else either. I’m in an open cafe-type room and there are people all around me and I can’t type and focus on what they’re doing, where they’re sitting, if they’re moving, etc like I could before. I feel like I’m stuck doing only one thing and like my brain is moving through mud. I hate it. I don’t know if this is a placebo, or if it’s because I’m tired AF this week, or getting over my cold, or what but I’ve never felt it before and it’s bothering me a LOT.

[simon-says-man-up]

T Day v 2.0

TW/CW: anatomy terms, talk of nether regions

So today marks my second shot of testosterone. I’m going to list the most noticeable physical effects below. I’ll talk about the mental effects in a separate post since I feel like they deserve a little more explanation (and also because I wasn’t expecting them and want to explore them further). 

Physical: (pt. 1)

As far as physical effects, I get sore after having my shots. Not just in the shot region, but all over. My whole body gets a slight ache, as if I’d been working out the day before. I do my shots in the thigh, once per week. The shot itself isn’t bad. If any of you would like me to make a post about the shot, or giving tips on how to do it, let me know! 

Voice-

I haven’t noticed any vocal changes, since I have a cold and I just sound raspy af. It’s making my voice deeper than usual, so I’m going to upload a voice file tomorrow of a little talk that I did this week so I have something to compare later on. I hope to upload clips of myself speaking every few weeks to get an idea of how my voice is changing. I’m adopted so I don’t know how deep my dad/brother’s voices were, so I may end up sounding like Alvin and the Chipmunks or I could be the next Barry Manilow. We’ll just have to wait and see!

Physical: (pt. 2)

TW/CW below. NSFW

...

...

...

The biggest physical effect that I’ve noticed since starting T is bottom growth. It is definitely a thing, and it started VERY quickly for me. Before starting T, I was in the female range in terms of size for my clit. I have had two shots of testosterone over two weeks and I have definitely seen a size increase, mostly in terms of girth. Sensitivity is also increased, but it isn’t uncomfortable or anything. It seems anecdotally as if this will change in the next months since most guys report having a period of time where the T-dick gets very sensitive and uncomfortable. Right now, it feels fine to me, just different and “noticeable” if that makes sense. I am also much hornier than I’ve been before, so that’s new and unexpected. I didn’t think I would see much change with only two shots, so I’m not sure where the line between testosterone and placebo effect may be, but times are a-changing nonetheless.

[simon-says-man-up]

As We Enter the Trenches...

May 30, 2018: First ever shot of testosterone

I took my first shot of testosterone today. This moment has been a long time coming for me. I first found out about transitioning, what it was, how some people chose to do it, etc when I was a sophomore in high school. It’s been a  long (and hard) road since then, through my high school years, the start of university, and everything in between to where I am now. I didn’t think I would ever get to this point if I’m being perfectly honest. I thought I would live and die in a body that I hated. I assumed that I would never have the stability, the resources, the people around me that I wanted to started my transition. I’d be lying if I said I had those things now, but I finally made it to a point where I was able to get a prescription and start HRT. I’m finally becoming me.

The shot itself wasn’t bad, was easier than I thought. I spend a good ten minutes in the bathroom just staring at my leg and trying to inject and then chickening out at the last minute. It didn’t hurt, not at all. It was just very nerve-wracking. I felt like a king walking out of that bathroom though. I went in nervous, scared, ashamed, and I walked out one step closer to the real me. Anybody there probably thought I dropped the world’s most satisfying deuce by my smile looking back.

Since this is a transition blog, I will be putting up posts occasionally to mark changes that I notice. I will put trigger/content warnings at the top of any posts that might trigger people, but if I miss one, please let me know! This goes for NSFW posts as well. I’ll be posting a few voice recordings too of my voice pre-T, and at different points along the way.

[simon-says-man-up]

What are YOU doin here?

*cue Californians sfx*

Come one, come all, to the sideshow that will be my newest Tumblr. This is a blog for me to document my transition for you plebians to scrutinise like a Kardashian at the MET Gala. So that you can all get to know the man with the plan, I'll introduce myself below.

The Deets:

Name: Simon

A/S/L: 20,M,cash me outside

Reason for this Tumblr: See above