Three years worth of writing

Three years ago today, I made my first post on this blog.  It was this:
low-dose testosterone for the rest of my life.

At that point, I was feeling very unsure of myself.  It was more like, “low-dose testosterone for the rest of my life???”  Being able to do that was of utmost importance; it was something I was strongly identifying with.  But, if too many physical changes were happening and I didn’t like it, I felt like that meant I failed.  I hadn’t heard of anyone else trying to maintain an inbetween-ness through hormones before.  The only resource online I could find at the time was this series, through the Original Plumbing blog:
I Was a Teenage Unicorn

I had also met Micah at the Philly Trans-Health Conference.  His blog was a goldmine of information.

I decided to start my own blog, to add to the conversation.  And I really could not have fathomed how much it would help me connect with others and gain confidence in my choices.  Thanks for connecting with me, everyone!!!  There’s really nothing like it, at least for me, as someone who expresses myself easiest through writing and likes to read what is going on in other people’s heads.

Three years later, I already haven’t been on low-dose testosterone for the rest of my life, but that’s no big deal in the larger picture, I can now see.  I had been off of it for about 6 months.  Actually, as of 5 days ago, I am back on it, on a day-by-day basis, just because I feel like it.

So, to celebrate 3 years, I thought I’d pick out a few posts, and then also talk about some future writing goals.

According to my stats, my top 5 most visited posts are these:
28 risks of chest binding – I wrote this recently.  And then I posted links to it on a couple of facebook groups (first time I’ve really done that), and it kinda took off.  This is probably the closest I’ve gotten to “going viral,”  haha.  It has 3 times as many views as my next popular post, which is:
Can hormones change my sexual orientation? – I wrote this early on, and I’m glad it continues to get a lot of traffic on a steady basis.  A lot of people are curious about if and how hormones could maybe shift sexual orientation.
Bathroom anxieties:  a genderqueer janitor’s perspective – I also wrote this early on, and I think that if I were to write it over again, there would be lots of edits.  But I’m leaving it as is, for now.  It’s a document of a time, I guess.
One year on testosterone without physical changes – This got a lot of traffic because it got a boost from Micah.  I asked him if he’d share it on his social media outlets.  Thanks, Micah!
A story about what it feels like to be bigender – I’m also really glad this gets a lot of traffic because I worked pretty hard on it, and I think it’s really illuminating and informative.  I don’t identify as bigender, but a lot of people are curious about what it means to be bigender.

Two posts that I’m considering deleting, because they pop up in people’s searches too much and are probably off-topic:
Ruling with elf wisdom – People want to know what it means to “rule with elf wisdom,” and this post isn’t going to tell them anything about that.  It’s actually about a name I was considering going by, which means “ruling with elf wisdom.”  But then I nixed that name.  So it’s not even relevant any longer…
Office work and trans-YA fiction – People search for “office work” pretty frequently, but I’m not sure why!  And this is barely about that – it’s about how I volunteered in the office at my local gay alliance for a while, but it’s more about some YA books I was reading while sitting there, bored, in the office.

Other than that, most of my search results have seemed relevant, which is good!  A lot of questions about taking testosterone while on other psychotropic drugs, about being trans and using the bathroom, about different terms under the “genderqueer” umbrella…  It seems that just as many searches are about janitors as they are about being trans.  I guess I feel kind of weird about that because even though being a janitor is a big part of my identity and a  semi-big part of this blog, I don’t feel like I’m representational of janitors in general, for when people are searching for info about janitors…  Oh well.

Here are some of the more bizarre search terms that have led people to my blog:
“commercial work schedule disorder” – I once wrote about shift-work disorder, so that’s probably where they landed.
“literotica drag king” – I like that word!  I’m going to start using it!
“MTF tree house transgender” – Once my spouse and I stayed in a tree house while on vacation.  And I mentioned that.  Haha.
“images of scrap books to be made for bf” –  Not sure.  I’ve never mentioned a scrap book or a boyfriend.
“are janitors off on snow days at school” –  YES THEY ARE!  PAID DAY OFF!
“why would another male janitor pee all over your bathroom” – Damn, I do not know dude.
“queer mullet” – I am queer and I do have a mullet.  More information about this can be found here:  Queer/Trans- visiblity:  (flannel + mullet).

For the future, I would like to continue to take academic papers and studies, and distill them into something that is relate-able.  That’s probably my favorite thing to work on.  If anyone knows of any, let me know!  I’ll continue to document my life too, of course.

Stay tuned…