Y’ALL!

Hello friends – if any of you are left after I all but abandoned my post – or erm, blog posts. This is me, Butch, and I am happy to be writing my blog again. I have missed this part of being ButchOnTap. Missed sharing things from my brain, heart, and life – though I’ve still been busy over at Instagram and Facebook sharing pictures, witty comments, and the like. I am always ButchOnTap!

If I were to update y’all as to everything that happened since I last wrote a blog post… well, it would be certainly be too long for our format here! Why am I writing now? What brought me back to the blog to write to all of you? Maybe it would be easier to say what took me away from the blog.

I don’t know if I ever mentioned this, but I really wanted to be a judge. For years, I worked towards this goal casually. Round about 2020, I focused in on becoming a judge by way of appointment, and I mean hard. I did what college students do (used to do?) when they are trying to get their first adult job – cleaned up my social media presence. I wanted to make sure that if someone on the governor’s appointment committee decided to check me out, they would not see the Butch who started this blog so many years prior with lots of beer in their hands. I wanted them to see the very professional, intelligent, and passionate lawyer that I had become. Judges are not allowed to share political opinions publicly, so that meant I needed to change the way I addressed some (or all) topics.

As you might imagine, that was hard for an outspoken lesbian who used to write about all things queer. Not that most of my writing has been political; on the contrary, for the most part it is about being a butch lesbian, dressing like a butch lesbian, loving femmes, being a parent, and the hilarity that ensues when these things combine in a world such as ours. There are those, however, who take the position that simply being a lesbian, or gender nonconforming, is inherently political. I don’t know how I feel about that stance. What do y’all think?

Regardless, the process had a very chilling effect on my writing. I didn’t want to cross the line ethically or say something that might bother anyone in the appointments process, and I didn’t want to not cross the line by not being my authentic self. That would lack so much integrity. So instead, I stopped writing.

And then life happened, and more life, and still more life, and finally, I have given up my former dream of being a judge. Now, I really want to be the person who trains judges. Then, my thinking goes, I can affect a lot of judges, but still be my authentic, loud-mouth, outspoken self. Also, judges work hard and very long hours, and I am … less interested and capable of that than I used to be.

All that to say, I am back. And I want to write. I want to share with you. I want to make you laugh. Help you feel seen. Maybe make a few of you feel less alone. I will fill you in on some of that life that I was talking about in the next few posts.

I haven’t said this in so long… It’s Butch to be ButchOnTap and write authentically. Be Butch.