Blog #96: Anniversary Day!
And It Hardly Even Feels Like Ten Years

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Exactly, and I do mean exactly,ten years ago, on a Tuesday afternoon, at 2:33PM, I posted my very first story here in the BigCloset (or what I've taken to calling "BCTS"): I posted the first part of a little story I called "Danny." And it is exactly ten years from that time.

Yes, indeed - it's my tenth-year anniversary here in BCTS.

Yayyyy!

Truth be told, I became a member a few days before I posted my first story, but that didn't didn't really count because I'd been reading BCTS long before I registered as a member, and I could have kept reading stuff without being a member: I registered specifically to be able to post my story, and post comments in other people's stories.

And, do you know, I made a special effort today to wake up before 2:30AM local time just so that when I post this, it'll be up by 2:33PM Eastern? (local time here is 12 hours ahead of the time back home) lol

I didn't post Danny on BCTS first, though. I actually first posted it on Crystal's now-inactive Storysite, and, then after a discussion with some people there, I then posted it on Fictionmania as well. And then, following yet another long discussion about the underwhelming posting experience on both these sites, where one had to wait interminably for one's submission to be reviewed and then "rendered" (that means it was reformatted by reviewers from the sites) and then uploaded, it was suggested that I try this site called "BigCloset Topshelf" because, there, the writer posted her own story, and it would be posted immediately after she clicked the "save" button.

(BTW, one won't be able to find my stories on Storysite anymore - I was one of the unfortunate few whose stories disappeared when Storysite lost some of its servers when it became inactive, and though I tried to look for it, this was all I was able to find by way of proof: http://www.storysite.org/cgi-bin/uploads/storyqueue.cgi )

Anyway, with the magic of copy-and-paste, I got the first "part" of my story (which contained the first six chapters) saved in BCTS, and it was up almost immediately.

And that was the beginning of a ten-year "residency program" lol - ten years and still going, actually.

I had some technical teething problems in the beginning, of course, but I learned.

The first thing I learned was that it's best to not just paste an MS-Word document across - that it's best to paste plain-text files.

The second thing I learned was that one can get super-fancy in BCTS - well, not that super, of course, but definitely fancier than you can get than in Storysite and Fictionmania, and in most other similar sites. Good thing I knew HTML, and I got to use it in BCTS.

From the many questions of a member called Fleurie, as well as other members, asking how to do things, that experience led me to post a "book" here in BCTS - one that provides some tips and tricks on how to post "fancy" stories.

I called it, "Topshelf for Dumdums, A Reference for the Rest of Us Topshelf Noobs!." or "Everything you wanted to know about posting in TopShelf and were NOT afraid to ask (but didn't anyway)." lol (It's still up, actually.)

The third thing I learned was that I could ask for help when posting if one needed it. That was a bit of a novelty because you didn't get that from the other sites, though you do get a bit of... patronizing (no offense) "help" from the Fictionmania peeps via questions sent to their admin folk via their message-based help system. No offense to the Fictionmania admin folk, of course - I'm sure having to review each and every posting there can make anyone a bit of a grouch , and they're very strict on following instructions when posting - something us amateur writers aren't very big on. And they'll cut you off, too, if you don't follow instructions. (One feels like a supplicant at the Altar of Delphi there, or maybe asking for a favor from the godfather lol)

One of the friends I made here is someone who uses the name Sephrena. She helped me through some of my problems when I was just starting out here, and, actually, the reformatting for the first few parts of Danny was courtesy of her, and she was one of the steady presences for me here in BCTS who helped steady me during my tentative first months as an acively-posting member (I heard from Erin that Sephy's currently away from the site, but I'm sure she'll find her way back home eventually).

The first one who ever commented on my posted stories here (she actually made a very positive comment less than an hour after I had my first post up) also became one of my closest friends here, whom I've since called Aunt Andrea (since she had been like an aunt to me ever since).

There are a lot of other friends, too - many of them I developed online relationships with in BCTS' old, long-defunct chatroom. There are lots of others here who have grown to become friends, and I hope they won't mind if I don't mention them by name now, since there are too many of them, and I am too afraid of missing even one.

Ten years is a lot of time, and I don't know if it's a sad inevitability, or if it's kind of a privilege of sorts, that I was lucky enough to have become friends with some good folks before they passed away. They say that one's life is so much better if one gets a chance to know someone before it's too late, and I've been so privileged.

One specific friend that I felt some resonances with her life experiences used the name Annette MacGregor, and the last dozen or so PM exchanges we had dealt with transitioning - she was making her first tentative steps and was asking my advice. I think she didn't like it much because I kept stressing that she should get some professional help, and I think she never did.

She did say, however, that she couldn't have HRT because of some kind of ongoing condition. She did say, though, that she had some FFS done as a result of our talks, and even shared some of her pictures with me. I have to say that she was fairly passable as a female, but whatever surgery she had done was quite subtle as I couldn't see much difference between her before and after pics.

She was one classy person that told things "as they were" and always had a lot of good advice. I do miss Annette.

Another faithful friend which I considered one of my confidants was Holly "Happy" Hart - a lady who never failed to cheer you on even though she had her own problems. She was very positive and encouraging to the end, and never once mentioned that she had stage 4 cancer. I only found out about it from a mutual acquaintance, and, if one didn't know about it, one wouldn't have found out from Holly. She was one person of great personal integrity and never tried to saddle you with her own baggage, unlike a lot of people, and I respected her so much for it.

Weeks before she passed away, I organized a kind of tribute blogpost here, where I invited people I knew to post their own positive messages about her without mentioning or alluding to her cancer. And it is a pleasant thought that we were able to show her how much she was appreciated here before it was too late. She even posted a few comments.

There are lots of people here that are quite... excitable, and once I was brutally torn down for the tongue-in-cheek humor in one of my blogs. Can't really blame them, coz it seems that my humor was a bit too subtle, and my choice of words were not well thought out. I took all the vitriol that they so-righteously deigned to heap on my blog, posted a comment to apologize sincerely and explain, and edited the blog appropriately. I am a firm believer in trying to fix things when I believe I am in the wrong.

However, in minutes of my posting of my apology and explanation, the whole thing was unpubbed, with no one seeing my apology and explanation.

Naturally, I felt depressed that people will only know my "bad" blog, and not see my apology and my attempt at correcting it. I also felt a bit angry and betrayed because of it.

And then Holly Hart swooped in like Batman: she apparently saved the entire blog and all the comments, which allowed me to actually repost it all. It was amazing. People even put up new comments in the reposted blog.

I wouldn't be surprised if someone were to tell me that Holly had a cape in her closet. Lol

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The online TG community isn't too big, and I have a few friends that I originally knew from other sites, and have crossed over with me to BCTS as well. One of them, who I gathered was a long-time member of the community, maintained our friendship across the sites that we were both members in - someone named Angel O'hare (whose avatar was - you guessed it - a bunny rabbit). She always wrote with a theme - she mostly wrote a lot of sentimental stories about her favorite pre-adolescent character-stereotype best represented by her character Angel, who was a pre-teen boy having to cope with being genetically transgendered. The overly-sentimental style of her stories have rubbed some people the wrong way, but, hey, there are all sorts of people here, just like in any community. She was very nice to me, and I wish she was still around.

But, like in any community, it's not all sunshine and light here, and I've had my own run-ins with less friendly folk. Not everyone will have the same points of view as yours, and that's okay. I guess all I really wanted was that people realize that a person disagreeing doesn't mean the person hates the other, or is questioning the other as a person, and there is therefore no excuse to insult or be disagreeable. I used to comment on other people's stories, but when some of the writers were extemely... unfriendly, that practice lapsed. And though I still read other people's stories, I don't comment on them anymore. Nowadays, I limit my comments to my own posts, or to blogbosts.

I guess it takes some maturity to expect that. Most folks who live too much of their lives in their heads and spend so much of their time on, and take much of their identity from, the internet, don't really develop much of that (and before any of those "excitable" people react, they should know that I am actually including myself here). I think we all need to ground ourselves in the real world by being out there more, and learning to interact face to face with people, and learning that everything is a give and take, instead of a take-and-take as it can often be on the net: people need to learn to get along with other people, even on the net, so people need to learn to be more civil.

And, yes, I call those people whose hands are always poised over the "fight and argue" button the "excitable" people. And I am in a my own battle to not to be one of these "excitable" people myself. I think I am making progress. It's slow but it's progress.

In the meantime (with some stretches of quiet from time to time - some of them almost as long as a year), I kept on posting stuff here. I have a handful of complete stories now, as well as a handful that's not complete yet (most have been well received), and a couple of blogs that were popular (they're old, but I see some people still reading them).

I can go on and on about my friends and experiences here - there's ten years' worth of them, after all, but I won't. All I'll say is that I'm grateful. (I'm even posting a little story to celebrate the fact.)

And here I go now, starting on my next ten years in BCTS. Feel free to join me.

I am Bobbie C (remember the "IE"), and I am a member of the BigCloset.

Hello.

(p.s. Click this link if you want to check my 10th Anniversary story, "Crossover:" https://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/fiction/80669/crossover )

 

click here to read my old Working Girl Blogs, click here to read all of my blogs, click here to read my stories in BCTS, and click here to see my profile & know more about me.

 

 

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click here  for the prev. Family Girl post
click here for the Family Girl MainPage

click here to go to the main page of The Working Girl Blogs, which preceded The Family Girl Blogs

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