flori ava star: year in review (mental health (mh)+ and -, friends and relationships ++ and -, personal growth, hrt and injections++, joblessness and finding a comfy workplace)
2025 felt like the first year of my life.I started the year freshly out of the psychiatric clinic I was in for ~2 months, immediately doing my first injection when arriving home, with the DIY HRT I ordered during my stay.
The clinic had empowered me to finally drop out of university; something I should have done a couple years earlier. My plan was to find a stable source of income and gather practical professional experience instead of chasing a degree that was always out of reach for me for mental health reasons. But my current employer didn't want me anymore. My boss really liked me, but HR makes the decisions, and as my division was supposed to be laid off to another country where workers are apparently cheaper, I was apparently not wanted there (Thank you, Deutsche Telekom MMS GmbH, I wish you a very [redacted]!).
The prospect of a job in a field that actually interested me seemed extremely unlikely, given my lack of academic credentials. However, through a combination of luck, an employer that cares more about what's on your GitHub than which University you did or didn't attend, and the 2 years I had already invested into Polyphony and polyproto, I managed to get hired for a position where I could do what I am already good at, and learn about a myriad of things that I wasn't good at yet.
This marks my first full-time job, a predicament which I entered while literally everything was changing and shifting, with second puberty beginning to hit hard, changing how I look and how I feel. As you might imagine, this time was extremely chaotic and stressful, but also very positive in many ways!
I also came back to my old Fedi account, which I had abandoned for the past 2 years. To my surprise, people welcomed me back very warmly. Amongst them: @fugi, whom I have also not talked to in those same 2 years. It must have been at about the same time (or a little earlier, perhaps?) that I met @amy_psycho_bitch for the first time, a truly lovely individual who also introduced me to @alina, another incredibly kind, sweet and caring person. I have since spent so much time with these critters and now consider them my best friends, and I'd like to thank them in particular for being there for me and for existing
The clinic had also relieved me of much of my social anxiety, a development which opened up a whole new, exciting and rewarding world of interaction, intimacy and happiness to me, and all these lovely critters I have met and befriended in the meantime have helped me with further overcoming these fears. A little more than a year ago, I could never have imagined going to congress, or any larger social gathering for that matter. What a difference a year can make.
There's so much more I could write about, but I wanted to keep this post mostly positive and also not write a whole book
2026 looks exciting! I'm happy to have all of you around to find out what it will bring
