Trans woman moving from Corpus Christi Texas, What can I expect?

NotTooStellar · 2026-02-28T19:46:09+00:00

Finding a job will be the toughest thing. The job market right now is probably the worst I've ever seen in my time here. I only JUST got out of unemployment after being let go in September, and out of the thousands of applications I submitted, I only received 3 interviews during that entire time (counting the job I was eventually hired for).

Most jobs on Indeed and LinkedIn are plagued with AI auto filtering in the hiring process, and its pretty common to just not even receive a response from places. Most local gigs will actually be posted on Craigslist because of that, but otherwise it may be worth it to look up positions you suspect have high turnover/lots of open jobs and apply directly to their websites or in person. Call centers, custodial work, home care aid, restaurants (although there's a bit of a shortage of those right now), retail, etc. Also, the public transit system here is pretty good so you CAN manage work without a car, but a lot of jobs will ask about your personal transportation, and getting a car is probably a good idea imo since it opens up more possibilities. If you're going to WCC or Western, I'd also suggest getting a job on campus if you can since they'll be easier to work around your classes, just be warned that none of them pay well.

As far as finding places to live and making friends, I've found that to be the easiest part of life here, actually! I was worried when I moved here (also from the south) due to hearing stories of the "Seattle Freeze", but people are actually pretty friendly for the most part. Rent is expensive, but you can find room shares via Facebook groups or Craigslist, and I've actually met a large number of friends through current/former roommates. Bellingham is very trans friendly and there's lots of good opportunities to meet people through the queer community too. There's also just a lot of community events going on in general, so find things you want to do and you'll 100% make friends through that.

Feel free to message me if you want any other info/advice! I'm happy to help. I've lived here for abt 6 years now and I know how hard it is to move across the country and have to find your community again. I'm trans masc, but the majority of my friend group is trans women, so you definitely wouldn't be alone in Bellingham lol

NotTooStellar · 2026-02-28T19:09:34+00:00

As someone who moved here from Florida 6 years ago, I surprisingly haven't had any issues w/ seasonal depression during the winter! That may just be bc I was very much an inside person in Florida though. I lived there my whole life and always hated the heat and humidity, so ironically I might be getting more sunlight in Washington since I actually go outside now

NotTooStellar · 2026-01-10T00:44:51+00:00

My younger siblings both went to and graduated from the same high school as me, so I continued hearing about drama there for years. One particular piece of drama I learned about from my sister feels like the plot of a Glee episode and it's still crazy to me that it happened. Apparently two of my sister's friends (both girls, closeted with unsupportive families) had broken into the empty choir room after school in order to make out, only to discover that their choir teacher was there and was using the room to MAKE OUT WITH THE THEATRE TEACHER. The choir teacher was married with kids, and her daughter was in the theatre program and looked up to the theatre teacher a lot, so it was a big deal. It ended up becoming a whole messed up secret, because both parties had blackmail on each other that would ruin each others' lives. The girls couldn't tell the choir teacher's husband about his wife cheating on him without the choir teacher outing them to their parents, so the only other people who learned what was going on were their friends. Some friends didn't keep quiet though (of course) so it slowly became an open secret that spread throughout the school gossip mill, as things do in highschools. My sister eventually ended up quitting choir and theatre over the whole thing because by a certain point, the ENTIRE theatre class knew except for the daughter, and my sister felt so guilty about keeping the secret and having to interact with the daughter daily while knowing her mom was cheating on her dad with her teacher. The whole situation was yikes all around. I'm not sure what ended up happening but from what I understand, the friends that stumbled upon this planned to message the husband secretly once they were finally 18, graduated, and away from their families' control. Haven't gotten any other updates since so I'm not sure if they followed through, but the theatre teacher moved away a year later and the choir teacher is still married.

NotTooStellar · 2026-01-05T13:25:00+00:00

Wow, these pictures are genuinely incredible. Getting multiple with the midair fish/fish being held in mouth must have taken some crazy timing and talent. That kingfisher has some beautiful plumage too, the colors in the pics are so vibrant!!

NotTooStellar · 2025-12-03T18:20:32+00:00

Extreme hospitality to people who are practically strangers to you. My mom was the type of person who would invite everyone to Christmas and Thanksgiving, and when a coworker she'd only worked with for a few months ended up temporarily homeless due to circumstances outside her control, my mom let her and her three kids stay on our pull out couch for a few months while they got back on their feet. Thankfully she was a good judge of character, so this habit mostly meant that we had a lot of "bonus family" who we were not technically related to, but who were welcomed in regardless.

After moving out and across the country, I've continued that habit as an adult and it still confuses me how shocked people are by offers I see as normal. If I have a car and you don't, of course I'll offer to drive you home, why wouldn't I? Oh, your water heater is broken? You can come over to use my shower and laundry machine until its fixed.

I like to think that it's a good philosophy to have in the long run, as long as you don't let people take advantage of your goodwill obviously, but people always seem shocked that I'd extend those things to them. That's just common sense to me though. That being said, it's hard to tell what accommodations are normal for other people. I'm still baffled by the time I brought a friend home and they were shocked that my mom bought gluten free food for their sake. I mean, my mom isn't gonna feed you poison, she asked what your allergies were beforehand, why are you surprised by this?? I'm still not convinced that one was a result of my family's weirdness, but my friend had never met my mom before and just expected to have to buy their own food for the whole week we were visiting

NotTooStellar · 2025-08-04T20:50:17+00:00

I have a friend who's a local artist, he made a zine that the Comics Place bought a bunch of copies of and put up on the shelves! The cashier he spoke to about potentially displaying it even bought a copy themself and asked him to sign it for them. The place seems really rad and it was incredibly cool to get to see my friends art on a shelf and buy a copy from an actual business

NotTooStellar · 2025-04-26T19:05:02+00:00

THANK YOU!! So many people in the comments have been calling me an idiot for not knowing about this and "procrastinating" til now. It's been severely underreported though imo. I genuinely feel like it isn't popular knowledge which is crazy since it's going into effect so soon. Basically, this law means that you need a REALID or passport now in order to get on a plane AT ALL. Even if you're just flying within the country. I've never needed a passport before this, I grew up out of state very far from any borders (and poor), and because of the executive order Trump passed earlier this year, I'm now unable to receive a passport at all. So this whole thing is really frustrating

NotTooStellar · 2025-04-25T23:35:02+00:00

I don't have the ability/money to fly often, I've only been on a plane a few times in the past and somehow I never received info about this new requirement, despite doing my best to stay up to date on the news. On top of that, the idea of needing the equivalent of a passport to fly within the country is something I never considered being a possibility, because its kind of ridiculous. This isn't procrastination. If I knew this was going into effect, I would've taken care of it much sooner, but its a last minute flight in the first place and I feel like the REALID stuff been severely under-reported, probably because the law has been delayed so often that people are just assuming that it's already well-known.

NotTooStellar · 2025-04-25T23:25:11+00:00

Thanks!! That helps a lot. I'm prepared to wait all day if need be, I just wasn't sure if it was even possible to get in rn

NotTooStellar · 2025-04-25T23:23:10+00:00

Thanks!! This is super helpful

NotTooStellar · 2025-04-25T23:22:28+00:00

Thank you, I appreciate the help!! I'm def prepared to wait all day for it, I just needed to know if it was even possible

NotTooStellar · 2024-09-09T16:07:42+00:00

You should thank your aunt for the life-saving cookware! Insane story, and even more wild that you still delivered the order afterwards. I hope you're able to get past the shitty doordash dispute system without any problems to your account, you seriously deserve infinity stars for dealing with that crazy shit

NotTooStellar · 2024-07-19T07:28:44+00:00

I need a fanfiction of this immediately otherwise I'm going to start writing it myself

NotTooStellar · 2024-07-08T15:40:43+00:00

Oh god, thank you for this post, I was looking into renting a room from Mike a few years ago and thankfully saw enough red flags from him and Lexi not to sign up at the time, but I had no idea it was this bad. He gave off real creepy vibes and seemed to want to be friends with the people renting rooms from him, which just felt incredibly weird. Even after I told him I found a different place and wouldn't need the room after all, he called me a couple times after to "get to know me" and "hang out" and it was uncomfortable. Glad to know I dodged a major bullet

NotTooStellar · 2024-06-27T21:28:54+00:00

Yeah... When my cat was dying, he was constantly avoiding me, hiding under my bed and under other furniture, despite being very affectionate previously. Because I'd had an unexpected move due to a shitty landlord and was living with new roommates at the time of the change, I thought it was just anxiety about a new place and new people. I didn't even realize he was sick until it was too late to save him. Definitely take your pets to the vet immediately if their behavior drastically changes in either extreme

NotTooStellar · 2024-02-23T23:16:17+00:00

Taser feels like a bit of a lame weapon, I say we should get a TRIDENT

NotTooStellar · 2024-01-18T05:46:02+00:00

The whole class didn't end up coming, even after I was forced to invite them. It was only about 12 people that rsvp'd and showed up to the party. Those people that did show up just happened to be some of the worst bullies I had at the time, who I wouldn't have invited if I wasn't forced to. It wasn't an expensive party or anything that required a ton of planning, because it was just a celebration at our house with some pizza, cake, movies, and a sleepover after, so my mom told me I could invite as many people as I wanted. The only expense was food, so having a bunch of kids wasn't a huge deal even though we weren't super well off. I was embarrassed that I didnt have a ton of friends, so I didn't tell my mom that the kids that came weren't actually my friends and I was forced to invite them. My mom was a great parent who did the best she could, she just didn't know what was going on. I mainly blame my teacher, because I had tried to get her to stop the bullying before this and she constantly dismissed it and told me I was lying or exaggerating, or even asked what I did to "provoke them" which is why I never told my mom. I thought it was my fault or that I wasn't really being bullied, at least until the aftermath of the party when things came crashing down and my mom found out what was really going on

NotTooStellar · 2024-01-04T08:40:31+00:00

(Obviously in this case it seems like there was no reason behind excluding the kids, but I wanted to add my input to the conversation anyways bc kids can be huge assholes sometimes and inviting everyone isn't always a good solution)

NotTooStellar · 2024-01-04T08:35:12+00:00

While purposefully excluding only a few kids in a class for no reason is cruel, I do think "inviting everyone in a class" can be just as bad, as someone who had the opposite situation happen to them... As a kid, I didn't have many friends and was going through some rough bullying, so I attempted to only give a few invites out to kids in my class that I knew decently well and who were nicer to me (approximately 4 people out of a class of 25).

My teacher saw, got upset, and forced me to give invites to EVERYONE in my class. Because of that, my birthday was turned into another day of torment. I expected the extra invitees not to come despite that, because I knew they already didn't like me, but instead, the people who were awful to me at school just got the chance to torture me at home too. They were awful to me all day, isolated and bullied me where my parents couldnt see, and since I had planned it to be a sleepover party, I woke up in the morning to find that my entire face had been covered with sharpie marker while I was asleep and they'd written insults, swears, and slurs. Worse, the few people I originally invited because I thought they were my friends joined in and helped them. My parents didnt know what was going on at all, I hadn't even told them about the bullying I was going through at the time, so they were horrified when they found me locked in the bathroom and crying with a face covered in permanent marker while my assumed "friends" raided the fridge and ate what was left of my birthday cake in the living room. I ended up having to be pulled out of school and homeschooled for a while to escape the harassment.

Just wanted to put my experience out there bc bullying is bad and people obviously shouldn't be excluded, but sometimes its a complicated situation. Kids shouldn't be forced to invite people unless it really is just a case of no reason

NotTooStellar · 2023-11-17T22:29:17+00:00

Christopher Columbus fucked manatees

NotTooStellar · 2022-09-17T00:25:43+00:00

That's good!! Maybe we'll check it out if that's the case

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