Hello there. I was talking to my counselor today about gender transitioning, and how I would feel awkward about presenting differently in public or around my friends. She suggested that I could look into ways of experimenting with gender privately. Which sounds obvious in retrospect, but hey, that's what counselors are for.

I'm lucky in that I live alone, so I don't have to worry about transphobic family members. But I'm a little unsure where to get started. What are some ways I can experiment with presenting differently in my own home? Bonus points if it doesn't cost too much. For context, I'm AMAB. At the moment I usually think of myself as nonbinary or questioning, but I want to consider HRT and more feminine ways of presenting as well.

Clothing is an obvious choice, although clothes shopping can be (a) expensive, and (b) daunting, especially for someone who still looks like a creepy 30-year-old man like myself going into female-dominated spaces to try on clothes. Also, it's not obvious to me where to get ideas on how to dress differently. The obvious way that occurs to me would be "Take someone whose look I like, and try to emulate that. Do this enough times and I'll develop a sense of how I like to dress." But this is fairly new to me.

Makeup seems like another obvious thing to try, but again, I'm not sure how to get started. I've never purchased makeup in my life and I've heard it can get expensive.

Presenting differently online is something else worth trying out, although I'm having trouble thinking of ways to do that beyond listing different pronouns.

I've tried the lessons on the TransVoiceLessons YouTube channel with varying levels of success.

What other ideas am I failing to consider?