I've been doing some thinking recently. As this blog is about my internal struggles with my gender, I have felt the need to try to drag (if you'll excuse the pun), the blog back to the reason I started it.

As I feel the need to become my alter ego more and more, I am finding it harder to swap from my male role to my female role and back again. This got me thinking about how I present myself to the world in general, how I act around people and do I really act the way I feel inside.

As I have been bought up male, married, work in a predominately male orientated industry, there is a norm that society says you should conform to. That of the football loving, beer drinking, bloke. I like football - I support my local team; I like a drink - usually a nice single malt, but, I don't feel like a bloke inside.

I don't always feel comfortable with the role society pigeonholes me into. I believe in the individual - that everybody should be who they want to be, be with whoever they want to be and do whatever they want to do (as long as they don't hurt anyone). I feel like I have spent too long conforming to who people believe I should be, too long acting in a way that hasn't always felt comfortable. Given my life over the past few years, the changes I have already made and the emergence of my alter ego, I have decided to act how my mind and body feels it should be acting and start to find my true identity for the first time in 15 years.

So - what is going to happen? As I display all the rough and ready edges of being a bloke, I think it's time to smooth those edges over. Add a dash of grace to my movement, take more care of my appearance and slow down when doing anything. This will give me something to concentrate on, to stop me sitting down and watching the television all night. The inner me is fighting back!!