About

This site is kind of about me, and sort of about my transition, and meant to share some of my experiences in that transition, in the hope that it might help someone else going through something similar. It’s therapeutic for me, make no mistake. It’s also a place for me to write about other things that are important to me. It’s a blog, basically, as 90’s as that is.

I’m a nonbinary transgender person who came out to myself at 49 and the world at 50. I’ve given myself the grace to be a bit of a mess, which is good because I’ve upended everything in my life and I’m still not sure where some of it is going to land. I’m a social worker, a parent, and a sibling.

The name of the site is fifty-one seventeen. I was looking for a place online to be me, something that wasn’t my name, or an alias, or a project. I’ve been undertaking a lot of change lately (that might be under-selling it). In that process, my online identities—websites, emails, handles—have all faded in or out of relevance as I’ve been figuring out who I am, so I wanted something that wasn’t tied to any of that.

Why 517? These are my favorite numbers, 51 and 17, and three times 17 is 51, which has always been weird to me, since 51 feels like it should be a prime number. Three isn’t one of my favorite numbers, but it’s fine (it’s kind of the yellow of numbers), and I think it’s fun to honor 3 x 17 = 51 by using just three numbers to make 51 and 17. Thus, 517 (not 5117). Also, it’s quirky! I like quirky.

Oh, and the parentheses… 51 and 17, or (51) and (17), or (5(1)7)… also, that last one looks a little like a woman’s hips and vulva. Also, I had a site for a while called Parenthetical Remarks, because I digress a lot in my writing. It’s all coming together!

If you want the latest on who I am, I have an identity FAQ I try to keep up to date.

I’m in a couple of other places, too. I’ll list those when I get them changed over to the “new branding.”

I think those are the basics.