What do I want to do with my life once I finish GRS? Read on and you will find out my professional and personal goals.

Professionally, I want to be recognized as the top expert in Canada on Japanese business. This is not that unrealistic, since it's not a large field in Canada, and I already have a fair bit of recognition (the Senate of Canada's Standing Committee on Foreign Relations invited me to appear before them last year as one of only two academics to speak on Canada-Japan trade). Hopefully I would also achieve some international recognition. I also want to upgrade my Japanese to full fluency. This is quite a challenge, but I now have more time to work on it. Eventually I would like to pass Level One of the Japanese Language Proficiency Exam, the highest level (I now have Level Two). I also want to learn Spanish, which I just started in April during a business trip to Mexico.

I want to retire by the time I'm 60. That will be quite hard, as I am running up huge debts to complete my gender reassignment, and salaries at my institution are very low for the type of work I do (still more than most people make, though, so I'm lucky on that count). Getting my debts and mortgage paid off is really my only financial goal, as I have a nice house and a serviceable car. Apart from money for some clothes and eating out. what more does a person need?

My main personal goal is to find a companion and either get married or at least establish some kind of a long-term, stable, monogamous relationship. This is the only one of my goals that I think it will be really challenging to achieve. The others just require work; I know I have what it takes to accomplish them. Finding a companion is not easy under the best of circumstances, however, and being an over-40 transgendered woman who's well over six feet tall is far from ideal circumstances!

The number one thing I am hoping for in a companion is that he love me, love me as a person, not just because he's fascinated with TSs and I fit his fantasy (if I do, that's fine, but there has to be more to it). I don't want a relationship based just on sex, though I do long for physical closeness (cuddling). In rough descending order of priority, my ideal companion would also be responsible, kind, intelligent, funny and confident. Physically I'm not that picky. Preferably he would be 40-50 years old, tall, not fat (slim may be too much to hope for in that age range), and well groomed. It would also help if he were clean-shaven, not bald, and didn't have too much body hair. Financially all that would be necessary would be that he didn't have to sponge off me and could occasionally take me out to dinner (though a millionaire would be nice!).

I do sometimes wonder whether I could actually live with a man, though. I feel so much more comfortable in the company of women and they make such good housemates! (I currently share my home with two Japanese women, both about 30).

Only time will tell whether I can make these dreams come true, but laying them out clearly is at least the first step!

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Last updated: September 12, 1999; March 17, 2002.