2009: my favorite year (so far)

Year-end reviews appear everywhere this time of year*, so I thought I would jump on the bandwagon and present my own year-end review.

This was a banner year for me and my blog.

Femulate readership more than doubled during 2009. A year ago, Femulate averaged just under 1500 hits per day; today, the blog averages over 3000 hits per day.

A year ago, 600 first-time visitors showed up per day; today, that average is 1300 per day.

Most telling is the repeat visitor statistic. A year ago, repeat visitors averaged 150 per day. Today, that statistic has more than tripled with an average of 475 repeat visitors per day! So, thank you to all my loyal readers.

There were two significant spikes in hits during the past year.

The first occurred during my trip to New York City. The hit count jumped as I began penning my trip diary and the count remained steady until the end of that diary. Then there was a hit count drop-off as the summer Internet doldrums kicked in.

The second significant spike occurred a few days before Halloween. It was as if everyone's femulation alarm clocks sounded off at the same time. But unlike the June jump in hits, a drop-off did not follow and the hit count has been impressive ever since with an all-time high hit count of 3628 occurring on December 1.

Enough with the statistics. On a personal front, this has been a fantastic year for me.

I have absolutely no fear about going out anywhere en femme. That was pretty much fait accompli in 2008, but this year, I was able to overcome the one big fear I still had when I went out: encounters with males.

I had no trouble mixing it up with females, but I avoided males whenever possible. In general, I think females (except those who may be "family") are more accepting of transwoman than males.

When I encounter females when I am out en femme, some may not figure me out and as a result, they just treat me like another female. Those who do figure me out seem to respect my desire to be a member of their club and they also treat me like another female. I can count on one hand the negative encounters I have had with females when I am en femme.

Males are something else altogether. I worried how males would react if they figured me out when I was out en femme. I did not want to find out the hard way, so that is why I avoided males. On the other hand, it is impossible to avoid all encounters with males and I can truly say that I cannot recall any negative encounters with the males I could not avoid, but I still continued to avoid them whenever I could.

Visiting New York City for four days en femme, I realized that it would be difficult to avoid the millions of males that populate Manhattan. I overcame the problem the very first evening I was in the Big Apple.

I had checked into my hotel and had changed into female mode for a night out with some local trans friends. While I was waiting to go out, I was adjusting the thermostat in my hotel room and managed to knock out the air conditioning. It was warm and I did not want to be without AC, so I called the front desk, and they said they would send up a repairmen.

In the past, I would have gotten back into boy mode as quickly as I could so I would not have to face the repairman en femme, but that evening, I decided that the repairman would not be the last male I would encounter during my NYC visit, so I remained en femme.

The repairman arrived, reset the AC, and was out the door in less than two minutes. He was pleasant and interacted with me as if nothing was amiss (other than the AC).

That interaction with the repairman set the tone for the rest of my stay in NYC as well as the rest of my stay on the planet Earth. I no longer fear encounters with males and I stopped avoiding them.

During my stay in NYC, I had no negative encounters with males. In fact, I had some positive encounters. Two males addressed me as "hon" (as in short for "honey"). And another male blew me a kiss while I was shopping in Sephora.

Those positive encounters convinced me that I was successfully passing as a female some of the time (and if you can make it as a female in New York City, you can make it as a female anywhere). My confidence was at an all-time high and has remained at that level ever since.

On another personal note, I came to the realization this year that I am a woman.

As I wrote in November, "I am not a woman trapped in a man's body, I am really a woman. I think as a woman, I emote as a woman, I act as a woman, I speak as a woman, and whenever the opportunity arises, I present as a woman. To most of my acquaintances I am the most womanly male they know and that's because I really am a woman.

"True, my container is male (more or less), but its contents are 100% female.

"I am very adverse to fooling around with my container. Many things can go wrong and so far, my container has held up pretty well, so why mess with it. As a result, I have no interest in taking hormones or having surgery to modify my container so that it matches its contents.

"I am very happy being a woman and very glad that I am not a 'man.' I might be happier if I could present as a woman all of the time, but I have made choices in my life that make that impossible. So I live part-time as a male and part-time as a female, but no matter how I live, I am a woman all the time.

So that summarizes my year.

I accomplished a lot (I even managed to lose 10 pounds) and I am very happy with myself these days.

What will next year bring?

I am very excited about the prospects and wonder what I will be writing about one year from now.

* When else would you expect a year-end review, Bozo?