My Story Part 56 – I Hate To Write!

Or use to. I still have problems with grammar and using the right word, but I have improved since my undergraduate days. I think one of the greatest inventions was the invention of the word processor. I remember back in the old days… we used a typewriter and it was horrible for a person who was a lousy speller and needs to do a lot of rewriting to correct my grammar. Now with a word processor you can cut and paste to move paragraphs around instead of rewriting the whole page and there are spell checkers and grammar editors to help a struggling would be writer.

Back in 2000, I started a Geocities web-site and writing a crude blog. I read a number of other web sites on-line and they help me come out, so I thought that maybe I could do it also. My target audience was the trans-community; I wrote about what I did and where I went. I wanted to show that we can go out in public and have a good time. Geocities had a comment page where readers could leave comments about what I wrote. After a couple of years writing the blog, Peterson Toscano, who would later become a friend, would leave comments on the site and one time he asked why didn’t I try out blogspot it is much better than Geocities.

That was back in 2006 and that is how this blog came about. Since I have transitioned, the focus has changed over the years, I don’t write as much about going out in public any more, it is more about the trans-community. I also got hooked on memes and there are a number of favorite memes that I play each week.

In 2007, I went back to school, back to writing term papers and my first term paper in 35 years was a disaster! I was marked down a whole letter grade because of grammar. When I talked to the professor afterward, he asked why I didn’t have the paper proofread. I didn’t know that you could have someone proofread them, they had all these warnings about plagiarism, I was afraid to have anyone else even look at the paper. Now, I have a friend Stana who proofreads my papers for me. She has read just about every paper that I have written and she probably learned just as much as I learned over the years. Thanks Stana.

I still remember when my father bought my typewriter for me; he bought one with smaller font. When I asked him why he got smaller type, he said because I could get more words on the page. I freaked out! I screamed at him that the professors assign the number of pages you have to write and with the smaller type; I will have to write more!

I have come a long way since then. I just wish he could see me graduate this spring.