Transsexual
Bracbra,
I don't think my musings and/or daydreams are any different than any others one might engage in when excited about something totally new and different. To draw you an analogy, I am simply an eight year old again anticipating his first trip to Disneyland -- the mind's imagination automatically reels about tackling that Mattehorn! 
... Yes, I want to experience that "E" ticket sensation, but it also then begs the question: "Will I want to get off the ride once on ?" 
Did you go Friday, and if you did, who was there ? Same dancers this Past Friday as those of the week before ? I want details!
Piqued
((( For the record, if you get on this carousel and then get off again, you, just possibly, will be the first man in history to accomplish the feat! )))
Bracbra,
As the big 50 approaches in a few years, I actually find myself in
quite a cloudy, yet enviable quandary of sorts. I mean, I never have married so I believe the development, maturation, and well, weathering, for lack of a better term, that seems to accompany marriage and all the responsibility and BS involved in it never really took hold of yours truly; Therefore, I've been kind of trapped in some type of carefree time warp behaving much younger at heart, mind, and spirit than my age cohort would dictate. Most, if not all, of my women friends are 15 to 25 years younger than me. That's the women I go out to lunch, dinner and movies with. I never thought that at my age I'd be doing things with women so much younger than I. At work currently for example, I have an attractive 25(?) GG with her legs, figuratively speaking that is, eagerly open and waiting for yours truly to make the move, along with a 32 year old beautiful single mother daring me to make the move. The latter case lets me know she watches my every move, but I've had work relationships before, and they've ended up in heartbreaking disasters, so I won't cave in just yet into either of those scenarios. I'm not that desperate. Not only that, but there are a few women on the periphery which also have my interest also. There's this beautiful African woman in the picture whose face, body, legs, and accent push the jungle fever buttons in me. I fantasize a lot about her also. There's also the beautiful 25 year old graduate student I see from time to time who seems to have a lot in common with me. I'm also attracted to a couple of women slightly older than me. Go figure that one, huh ? In other words, I'm currently being pulled in many many directions and attracted to many carnival rides currently, the least of all surprisingly, is with those in my own age cohort, or *carousel*, to utilize your term. My interest in TSs came a few years ago right after being let down by a Lucy Lawless look-a-like GG in northern California, and, unbeknownst to yours truly, working alongside a beautiful TS around the same time who I became infactuated for the week I worked with her to the point of leaving her my number for her to call me for a get-together. All of these scenarios because of their unique timing in my life, specific situations, interest, and, well, mystery, are all carousels in their own way, and I believe my current interest in TSs is just another carousel. Where, how it meshes with the others, and if or when it stops, is all part of the fun an excitement for now.
... If none of that makes sense, then it all rooted to a traumatic childhood event when I was three -- A water bug fell into my bathtub while bathing. It scared the shit out of me!
Piqued,
I, too, am grappling (nice choice of words, by the way) with life.
The interesting thing about your last line is that our childhood does shape who we become as adults in ways most of us can't fathom. Our seemingly normal childhood relationships, to our parents mainly, effect us in subtle ways that are extremely hard to ferret out.
That said, I hope you find your way through the confusion to a comfortable place in life. The answers don't come easy.
As Rilke said, "...have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves...don't search for the answers, which could not be given you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer...
Embrace the chaos. There is joy and beauty in there.
And now back to our regularly scheduled programing.
Hmmph! How DARE you interrupt my scheduled programing, Bracbra ?! They don't run these repeats of "Just Shoot Me" often enough ya know ?!
Yes, childhood experiences -- particularly ones with trauma associated with them -- definitely play a role or shape who we as adults are today, be it by the approach and values courtesy of a staunch Catholic upbringing that I experienced, to the experiences of growing up via life in the hood. I think it has also something to do with this thing I have against comformity. It's all part of the broth that makes us the unique beautiful individuals we each have developed into I guess. Great quote by the way. You be college edjukated too, dude ?
I wouldn't term my life as chaotic as much as overwhelming at this point in my life. It's as if I'm attempting to spin seven dishes -- one being a beautiful TS one which I'm totally unfamiliar with -- at the end of seven wooden dowels like some Italian entertainer on the old Ed Sullivan Show. It's a rush in a sense, but it also leaves one feeling tethered to the wind. It's really a day by day operation in other words. Make any sense ?
And as Tears For Fears once said about 12 years ago: "Break it down again ..." In other words, there might be an organic angle or cycle to everything, be it in nature or our respective lifestyles. There's "beauty in decay" of the ho-hum in my case so to speak.
And NOW back to our regularly scheduled programing.Hee-hee!