Hey guys! It’s been awhile hasn’t it? I’ve had some people wonder what’s up, where I’ve been, what have you, so I’m here with a nice little life update!
As you may or may not know, I ended up moving out to Orlando again at the beginning of the year. It’s been a hell of a time but it’s been a far, far cry from the last time I lived out here, where I had issues financially and with my roommates, leading to endless anxiety.
Since then I’ve been growing my MTG career a lot. You might’ve seen me hint at this before talking about my streaming and such, but I’ve been getting myself out there quite a bit more! As of now, my Twitch stream over at https://www.twitch.tv/themaverickgirl now has 1,120 followers and my Twitter page at https://twitter.com/TheMaverickGal has even more at a bit over 1,400. Building that up has been an absolute joy to be involved so deeply with the MTG community again and being more socially active than ever.
In February, my stream even got sponsored by Cardhoarder, a major Magic Online vendor, and became a part of their stream team, the Cardhoarder Network!
Things really heated up at the beginning of April. I started writing with the website Hipsters of the Coast talking about MTG. In addition, a lot of the friends I’d been making over Twitter started bugging me to go out to Grand Prix Seattle, play, and visit. At first I thought I wasn’t able to, but after looking things over, I determined I’d be able to with ease, so off I went!
While I was there I had the absolute time of my life.
In case you’re unfamiliar with what’s going on here, the first picture is me meeting up with my friend Jacky (aka @labyrinthfox) who I’d known for roughly a decade and had yet to meet. It was unbelievable and I already can’t wait to see her again. Just after that I got treated to dinner by the Professor from Tolarian Community College along with the majority of the cosplay scene in attendance at GP Seattle! You might recognize a bunch of them such as TappyToeClaws, Ashlen Rose, ScrapperFerret, and Olivia Gobert-Hicks. Why? Cuz I was one of the 8-0 undefeated players on day one of the event out of over 1400 players!
Day two was a bust, with lots of issues and misplays, but it was still great cuz I got to continue to visit all the amazing people I’d been getting to know. The friends I made were endless and got me a lot of attention. Eventually, though, I had to go home and get back to the old grind. I was tremendously depressed for a few days, knowing I was getting back to work at a shitty pizza place being yelled at constantly when I just left a world where I was being cheered on left and right by damn near everyone I knew and doing the same for them in turn.
Soon after I ended up applying for a job with CoolStuffInc.com because, guess what? I just happened to move about two miles away from their main location! And in the beginning of June, I ended up landing a job with them! Before that, however, I’d lined up a trip to SCG Con for the first major MTGO legality Pauper format event! I’d been getting known for playing that format specifically and wanted to be there to support it and try bettering myself as a player. What I didn’t expect was to make top 8 and take it down completely!
After that I started at CoolStuff, finally getting out of the hellhole that was my previous job, and I’ve been killing it ever since. GP Orlando came and went with a lot of issues but like the events before it, I got to meet a large number of good friends! Not only did I hang with locals I hadn’t seen in a long time, but I also got to meet others, such as a bunch of the Australian grinders who were in the country for the Pro Tour that happened the week prior.
Then in September two amazing things happened. The first was I traveled out once more to GP Richmond. I missed registration for the main event but thankfully there was another major Pauper event happening. So I played in that and once more found myself at the finals going at it against fellow Magic Online grinder and friend JherjamesB. We split the prizes and played for the title. I lost, but it was in some of the most exciting games I’d played in a long time. It was hard to be mad in the slightest.
As I left for that trip, however, I’d begun talking with my employer about writing with them. And so soon after finishing at GP Richmond, I began writing for CoolStuffInc.com! If you go and look on Wednesdays at/after 11am EST, you’ll find an article by me! EVERY WEEK!
Most recently I’ve been taking a small break from streaming, hoping to get back to it very soon. Between my article writing and some other things, I’ve been doing a lot more behind the scenes work and building myself up slowly as a player. This culminated in me being able to put a Modern deck together and go to GP Atlanta last week. I was beyond excited to see a number of friends once more, especially the ones from out of the country in for the Pro Tour. When I went in for day one, though, freaking out about not being able to find parking, I was told that the coverage team was looking to give me a feature match on camera! I ended up with a round 2 feature match through their main Magic stream.
It was unbelievably nerve-wracking and Twitch chat was as awful as you might expect, but it was an experience I’ll never forget. I hope it’s the first of many. If you want to check out the replay, you can find it here! I went on to finish day one with a 6-2 record and ended up taking it to a 9-6 finish on day two. That might not seem too crazy, but for someone who had literally no byes or anything to go off of, it was still one heck of an achievement! Now with so much going for me, I’m beyond stoked to finally play in the SCG Invitational event next month at SCG Con and hopefully end up crushing that one as hard as I can!
So what about the trans aspect? I’ve talked a lot about what’s happening and how things are going so damn great lately in my professional life, successfully turning my all-time favorite hobby into a career, but not about what’s happening with all that. Since that’s largely what this was supposed to be about, I figure it’s only fair to give you guys a small update in regards to all that.
Really there isn’t much to talk about. With all the craziness in my life as of late, I haven’t been keeping up quite so much with my post-op dilations and as such have lost some of my depth. I’ve been trying to get back onto it but it’s tough to be honest. On the bright side of things, though, I finally saw a new doctor regarding HRT with my new and improved health coverage and guess what? After five years on hormones, they FINALLY upped my dosage. No longer am I running on 4mg of estradiol a day. They doubled that! As such, despite being tired, I’m way more energetic than ever before and I’m even seeing some breast growth for the first time in forever.
Given that I’m, as I said, five years in, there isn’t really much else to talk about besides that. Thanks everyone who’s continued to check in with me. I’m not as active as I used to be here, but I’m always hanging out on Twitter if you wanna keep in touch there. This last year has been the absolute wildest ride and I’m so happy to have been able to spend it with so many amazing people. I seriously can’t wait to see what next year brings with it!
