The History of My New, Not So New Blog

I began exploring this platform one month ago today but apparently I made my first attempt at blogging on September 9, 2014. It was a short post, quite rightly claiming I was not a blogger. When time permits I will dig deeper to see if I can find an earlier attempt and update here. The first site was a hangout. A fun site built on a message board which included a blogging feature. I hoped our members would create blogs so I started one myself in the hope of encouraging them. My blog was more of a place were I could ramble on endlessly and make an ass of myself than a serious blog. After my discovery that I was transgender as mentioned on this page in From our Department of Lines You Will Never Hear, I made a serious attempt to create Being Jamie Lee and I later started a new site, beingjamielee.proboards which would be a worksite for blogging only and appropriate posts would be copied for posting on the original site. A lot of experimental work was trialed here and some long term drafts which would later be copied to beingjamielee.com. When the original beinjaielee.com went offline, I used the proboards site for ideas, reminders and some blog posts I hoped to post when I was able to regain my web name.  I am now sorting through this archive to update the posts and ideas when appropriate for adding to this journal as time permits. You will not see links taking you to the original posts as they are being deleted as they get moved here. Why? Because I do not need two sites, I am able to create drafts here. Many of the old posts are ideas or reminders and many are no longer relevant, it is better to delete the site after anything of value has been moved here.

So it has been almost ten years since I first tried my hand at blogging. What has changed since then that I am willing to make a serious attempt at keeping a journal? I finally understood that I am transgender and female. Prior to this I could write occasional, often humourous articles but nothing to keep me writing frequent entries. Discovering I was transgender shook my world. Suddenly I had so much to do. I had to realign who I was trying to be with who I really am. Fortunately this was also who I wanted to be. I had to build a whole new wardrobe along with a whole new life. For the first time ever I felt like I had a life. I had caught glimpses of my true life before but now I was living it, my old life crumbled and fell away immediately as it must when my truth was revealed. Each day I had to review my old life in light of my new understanding. So many things which had baffled me my entire life, I now understood. My life was at last, beginning to make sense. The inept management of the host for the first home of Being Jamie Lee cost me the ability to share so many of those things with others who may be going through this while the entries I did post were lost when the site was taken offline. This is now my fourth attempt at a blog or journal, hopefully it now will have better writing and a more mature approach as a result of me having had time to settle into my new me. It has been a disjointed and frustrating journey but I feel confident I am in the right place this time, both in my skin and online. There are still things I need to learn to layout this site the way I envision it but I believe it will get there.

¹ Find the answer here.