A quick history of the journal:

• June 20, 2006: Started journaling at Live Journal. I was a guy named Kyle.
• August 27, 2006: I had turned into a girl named Sonia. Began journaling at UR Not Alone, a wonderful social networking site specifically for transgendered people.
• December 27, 2007: Began journaling at WordPress.com. Imported all entries from both LJ and URNA.
• January 18: Started adding friends to the blogroll. I warmed up to the idea of having one and picked a few of my friends kind of at random to start with. My current plan is to use this mostly for personal blogs, as opposed to political or group blogs, and to try to keep it fresh with blogs of friends who are actively posting about their transgender life.
• February 12, 2008: Finally done going back over the year and a half of imported entries and tagging, categorizing, and reorganizing here and there.
• April 19, 2008:  Moved discrimination story here for now.

I am using the WP category feature for abstract concepts that are recurrent in my writing, and which I think might be interesting to explore.

In contrast, I am using the WP tag feature for references to people, places, and perhaps a few odd abstract concepts that don’t seem general enough or frequent enough to warrant category status.

My top criterion for the choice of this current three column theme was the links to next and previous posts when viewing a specific post. I wanted this feature and not all WP.com themes have it! I looked at a few that did and picked this one because I liked the aesthetics.

I didn’t think I wanted a three column theme at first but found a logical separation in my widgets. I put the free-form conceptual stuff in the right column, and the indexed, listed stuff in the left column.

I write about my social life and generally about life outside of work. I write about pretty private stuff and don’t keep many secrets. I name names, but usually only first names. I started (at LJ) with the more paranoid and secretive technique of using pseudonyms, but really, if you learn much about me at all, you can figure out by context just whom I’m talking about. I’m shying away from the opposite extreme—naming last names as well—because it doesn’t seem necessary for readability and because I’d rather not have search engines generating hits on my journal from searches on full proper names. This means that clicking on the WP tag for common first names such as “Lisa” or “Danielle” will bring up entries on multiple people, but, I think you can figure it out.