About Kaia (or Kai)

What’s there to say about me, really? I know on a website like this, you normally start by saying what you do for work. However, in real life, I hardly ever say what I do for work unless someone asks. That doesn’t always take a long time, but it’s not information that I generally volunteer.

“Work shouldn’t be the most important thing about me”. But then what is? Maybe I’ll try breaking it down by how I spend my time.

I work five days out of the week. That’s a pretty substantial time commitment. More than any specific other activity besides sleeping. It’s hard to avoid dwelling on it or identifying with it to some exent. In 2016, I quit law school to learn how to code. By early 2017 I had my first job in the field, and I’ve been working since then.

Since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve been working remotely. My current company is based in Zurich, where I’ve visited a couple of times. In general though, I keep to my own home, and I work out of The Academy a few days of the week, mainly to stretch my legs and change my point of view.

Since I’m married, a lot of my home life is shared doing things with my spouse. Cooking, cleaning, watching shows on https://dropout.tv, playing games together. I enjoy their company, and enjoy bantering with them about the news, politics, and sending them too many TikToks. We have a few hobbies in common, such as TTRPG’s, video games, 3d printing, and karaoke. Most of the time we spend is just parallel play, enjoying each other’s company as we entertain ourselves in the same space.

Two days a week, I swim with the SF Tsunamis, an LGBT swim club in San Francisco. Swimming was a huge part of my life growing up, and it’s something I’m glad to be involved in. I’ve finally gotten back into competition shape, and I’m racing with the US Master’s league.

3 hours a week is all I generally manage though. That’s already such a small amount of time! Partly because the other practices are at further away pools, but otherwise it’s because I’m “too busy” That’s wild to acknowledge, but it’s true. I joined the team because I wanted more consistency in my schedule, and it’s been working. I only make it two days a week, and it’s still the most consistent thing I’ve invested into outside of work and simply “being at home”.

Is it worth breaking it down even further? Every two weeks I play Pathfinder with a group of five friends, including my spouse. That amounts to a couple hours a week, on average.

Is “going out” actually a measurable activity? I do enjoy going to events, and I’m involved in a few queer scenes in SF, but that’s not a particularly solid way to identify, when you think about the pattern of your life. On a good week, I’ll go on a date or attend a show. Some weeks are busier, some are less.

Who I’ve been

In 2008, I left my Catholic all-boy’s[1] school for an Evangelical Christian private school because I felt extremely uncomfortable there. I assumed it was because I was just such a strong believer that I needed to be around other Christians all the time.

At that new school, I:

I was accustomed to being many things.

In college, I swam for 1 year, and joined the advanced choir. I dropped swimming, but sang through my whole experience.

I interned for a Christian “Non Profit Legal Defense Organization” that’s classified as an anti-LGBT hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.[3]

I got in trouble with my home church for asking too many questions. Eventually I was kicked out.

Without even knowing the word drag, I wore a french maid costume out to a halloween swing dance party. Such a funny joke

I met my partner while studying abroad in Oxford.

I finally found the other queers at Wheaton College. I’ll never know if they saw who I was then

My psychiatrist diagnosed me with major depression and ADHD

I signed a pledge to never donate to the college if they fired Dr. Larycia Hawkins for expressing solidarity with Muslim people. They fired her in 2015.

Who I want to be

It took me another 5 years to come out as queer. It took another 2 to leave the church.

Today I’m a trans, nonbinary polyamorous queerdo. I’m a US and German citizen. I have a lot of religious trauma - enough that it feels like my spark for art is gone.

It took a great deal of self-reflection and healing to get where I am today. I owe a lot to the people who have loved me and supported me through the journey to where I am now. It’s hard to exist in this world as someone who cares deeply. I want to be someone who takes action and makes a difference, but many days I’m simply too tired to do much besides scroll on my phone outside my other commitments.

There’s a lot to still be excited about and enjoy, but I’m focusing on the smaller things these days. I may not fix the world, but I can participate in my local community and culture, eat tasty food, walk to the grocery store, and ride the bus.



  1. A scandalous reveal of my assigned gender at birth 😮 ↩

  2. Tbh I started a whole league. At age 16, I met with the founders of the fledgeling logos forensics league and was the first “coach” to join ↩

  3. For real this place was a nightmare. At one point they literally asked me to research “the gay agenda” and the research I did was ironically the actual first glimpse I had into queer theory and political identities. See splcenter.org ↩

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