@LoriTG: I would like to try to answer your question, except that we have so few specifics. where do you live? how well do you pass, in your estimation? what do you like to do? how long have you tried? what sort of events have you done? a million questions…
for starters though (and for closers, if you don’t answer the other questions, and I asked a bunch of them), it would help for you to think of yourself as TS before anything else or for you to think of you as TS. because on either side, that will get in the “just another person” part.
it would help to practice, practice and practice how you talk and move until you won’t have people immediately scoping you as a tranny.
do what fascinates you and do it for its own sake. if you find social functions awkward—which I do—, then do something where you end up working alongside and helping other people. then conversation will flow a lot more naturally, in my experience. instead of having to force yourself to come up with conversational topics, they will emerge naturally.
also, I advise you to not make so much an effort to have friendships with women in particular. that will make things more unnatural. at least initially, though, I found myself accidentally meeting the female partners of MTF transsexuals. I didn’t develop super-close friendships with their partners though I did with them. (one of them I met while in the check-out lane of a supermarket, the other through a group. I hadn’t transitioned at the time.)
you might want to use any local TG support groups—though I personally have not had much of anything to do with those… not my thing—where their partners can come along.
but really, since I know so little of your situation, I don’t know what to say. you probably want to ask this on specialized MTF and TG messageboards and forums.