Transvestia

to put right for some stupidity in print", or any of a dozen other things demanding attention. Unfortunately, along with my sense of integrity (which has lost me a few friends incidently) I'm burdened with a sense of responsibility. I really feel burdened and annoyed by being unable to keep up to a publication schedule, by not answering letters, by not being able to pursue various missionary activities with personages, authors, publications, organizations, etc. And frankly, I'm beginning to resent this sense of duty always creeping up to prevent me from enjoying life as a person or doing something I want to do. I wonder how many of you can imagine just what I mean by all this. Only a handful I'd say.

You see my own personal life is pretty different now from what it was 10 years ago. I'm single, not obligated to a regular job, beginning life over again as a full fledged woman (the ugh not female that sex vs. gender thing again you know), with a big house and garden to take care of (and it is an obligation that I enjoy as I am loving being a housewife) and with lots of groups to join, lectures to attend, books to read, activities to take part in, in short a life to live. Under these new circumstances finding myself with a series of obligations and responsibilities of my own making it frequently very inconvenient and annoying because it means that they prevent me from doing some of that "living". And frustrations like this have piled up pretty deep recently.

So what to do about it all? I mentioned to one of the girls from back east who visited out here over the holidays that I would see TVia thru its 10th year which would be 1969 but that I didn't know whether I could make it beyond that time or not (I still don't for that matter), but on the train home she sat down and wrote me a nice letter telling me not to consider that thought seriously that there were still many thousands of our sisters out "there" waiting to be discovered and helped and to buck up and take courage in the knowledge that I was needed and that people depended on me, etc. Well, this was a lovely letter and was encouraging and appreciative and it somewhat soothed me. But it still doesn't solve the problem. I have to belong to myself as well as to you the readers, I have a responsibility to my own life as well as to your lives. Something has certainly got to give and it is a question of what How can I lessen the load of obligation on myself and

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keep the