TastyTrixie.com

Archive for the ‘webwhore insights’ Category

While Delia was webwhoring, I was watching . . . and telling you about it (five minutes, 10 seconds):

MP3 File

I can’t believe that the days are starting to get shorter again.

June full moon at twilight

I should be happy that the nights are getting longer and darker again because I haven’t been sleeping well at all. Part of it is that Delia in her post-operative state is having a harder time than normal sleeping, but mostly my brain and body chemistry is torqued again causing the chaos in my head to be ratcheted up too many notches. I have really loud, disturbing, repetitive thoughts and dream WAY too much. It hasn’t reached peak nightmare state (yet), and having been through this a number of times now for extended periods AND BEING ABLE TO GET BETTER/recover with no symptoms I’m not too worried, just annoyed with myself for not maintaining my health better.

I have way more pleasant things to blog about, but just thought I’d throw out a photograph and make it a quickie.

The good news is that I’ve done a lot of camming the past couple of days including some private shows which was pretty thrilling – it’s been a long time and I really enjoyed it, especially the longer one-on-ones. It’s such a relief to be able to immerse myself in someone else’s fantasy and do a totally concentrated job on satisfying one single person and know I did it well. It’s rewarding to bring people pleasure and have evidence of that in their gratitude, compliments . . . and the immediate payoff. It’s a welcome change from putting so much time and energy into promoting our sites and doing nerd work where the monetary payoff is very very detached and delayed from the investment of work and time. On the other hand, I can’t keep up with blogging and site maintenance and promos AND do a lot of camming AND stay healthy recover my health.

Here’s hoping I catch up on my sleep tonight so I can do more webwhoring this week! I’d like to be able to afford some time to spend with my family soon. I feel physical grief to my core at not having seen my nephews in MONTHS. They grow so fast and change so much, I hate missing out on all of that time and all of those changes.

Gah! Sorry this post isn’t more uplifting. If you keep up with my twitter I *think* you can tell I’m not the constantly miserable sad sack I sound like here.

Yesterday we had a really bad sales day. You tell yourself it’s just one of those days . . . bad luck and such. And then today we had ANOTHER really bad sales day!

Dirty Gutters & Cotton Ball Clouds: June 6th, WA

I’m not writing this to complain or ask why, I’m just logging it out for those of you interested in how business is. As always, I can think of tons of things I could do to improve sales. Like write sexier blog entries than these ones! That still doesn’t account for our sales this year being HALF of what they were at this time in 2007.

Suckerhole

It could be a destabilizing hint from the universe that I can’t really count on ANYTHING. If I’m going to gamble, I could gamble doing something else I want to do and haven’t already been doing for the past ten years, something REALLY crazy! Crazier than internet porn, YES!

It’s hard not to feel lame and sucky when you have much better “products” than you had years ago, but see a marked decrease in sales instead of an increase. Sure, there are patches of blue but many seem framed by thick, foreboding, suffocating clouds of doom.

Okay, I’m being melodramatic. But that’s the life of a small-business owner, I think. You have to be given to severe thrills of optimism balanced by degrading valleys of pessimism.

*****

Our crappy neighbor’s sweet one-eyed kitty was sitting on our welcome mat when I came home from the store, looking at me like she expected me to open the front door for both her and me and to welcome her inside for a feeding. We’ve lived here for years and I’ve never seen her do that, come to our door and indicate she wanted to be let in. It warmed the cockles of my cold, cold heart and made me sad for the millionth time in my life that I’m allergic to cats. I know it’s crazy, but I do believe stranger-cats know when a house is sad sometimes and come over to offer love.

Due to our poor relations with our neighbor and my allergies, I didn’t do anything to encourage the cat, but when I checked on her out there later as she was finally slowly leaving, she kept looking back at me over her shoulder and making eye contact with me, like “are you sure you don’t want me to stay? Because I’ll stay and even come in if you want me to. I’m of a perfectly comforting weight for a lap, see?”

I know: CRAZY. The cats just come to our house because the bird-hunting is so good. I don’t believe that, though. You don’t catch birds sitting on a fucking welcome mat in front of a door, alternating your gaze from the human to the door, back to the human and back to the door.

Over the weekend (on May Day) the members area of my site (TastyTrixie.com/members) turned eight years old!

Here are some pictures from this year’s and last year’s May Day galleries:

Wearing a white corset outside: May Day 2010

I *loved* these pictures last year; they made me fall in love with myself (an important state of mind to be in for a webwhore):

It's like magic! And cleavage! And whirling!

My freckled shoulders, curly hair and big natural boobies!

This year’s set wasn’t so good, but it was all worth it to get charming shots like this favorite of mine:

Spreading May Day cheer!

So after eight years you might wonder how the indie porn site business is holding up, and the answer is NOT SO GREAT! I’m still optimistic though because there are so many things I know I could do (or do better or do more often) to boost business.

The only “problem” is I’m becoming more realistic after all these years and recognize I can’t do it all and maybe it’s not really possible for us to do more! better! and more often! It even got to the point where I seriously considered focusing solely on promoting and shooting for DeliaTS.com and putting updates and promotion for all of our other sites, including TastyTrixie.com, on hiatus. We are trying to do the jobs of too many people.

The past few weeks I’ve shifted my approach to work a little bit by

1) using to-do list software (both Swift To-Do List and Daily To-Do List). It’s helping me prioritize and sort my ideas and tasks.

2) making a 40 hour work week a goal / forcing ourselves to take days off like normal people expect to do with good jobs.

I use a timer with a stopwatch to keep track of when I’m working. In the notes section of Daily To-Do List I keep track of the hours I’ve worked and what I’ve accomplished. Yes, it’s very wage-slavey, but it’s more manageable (and more rewarding) than feeling like WORK IS NEVER EVER DONE! BITCH, KEEP WORKING KEEP WORKING TEN TWELVE FOURTEEN HOURS A DAY YOU KNOW YOU CAN’T REST BECAUSE THERE’S JUST SO MUCH!!!

I am beginning to accept that if we can’t succeed by working a humane number of hours and allowing ourselves time OFF that IT ISN’T WORTH IT.

And that’s where the fear/knowledge comes in that I am going to have to give up doing some things I’m very attached to because it isn’t realistic to think I can do them all. Spiritually (? or emotionally or psychologically or whatever word you’re comfortable with) this is an important confrontation to have with myself and reality. I suspect there might be a life of bliss (with lots of time spent checking out books at the library and reading in the grass) awaiting me on the other side of this confrontation but I’m still balking at it and refusing to let go.

I wonder if it’s normal to take a decade to resolve this conflict between what you WANT to do and what you CAN do and still be healthy. Ten years sounds like a long time, but I think it might be about right. I figure I still have two or three years before life finally batters me into submission so for now my site is not on hiatus. Who knows? Maybe my timer-and-to-do-list-software scheme will actually make me more productive because I’m not so psyched out and overwhelmed trying to do everything all the time.

One thing I did let go of is driving myself crazy trying to be RELIABLE at posting a new picture gallery or porno video every week in my members-only area. Instead I’m focusing on posting more frequently (multiple times a week) in my new members-only blog with more uniquely personal and candid stuff like vlogs, webcam snaps, behind the scenes stuff, fantasies and other intimate thoughts I don’t want to post in the open here in my free blog, etc. Things got interrupted a bit with the dog dying and some other stuff we have going on (that I may or may not blog about here, but you can hear all about in my vlogs) but after a couple of months of doing things this way I believe it will take off and be more addictive/unique for members.

Obviously I will still do the regular porn stuff of high res photo galleries and videos but I am releasing myself from the pressure of thinking “reliable” is more important than “personal”. Because in the long run I’ve NEVER read a testimonial like, “I’m very aroused by the way Trixie is so RELIABLE.” I have, however, been told a number of times that people would maintain their membership even if all they got was the blog (and/or the spycams).

I pretty much think my “porn” is virtually worthless without the personality, especially with so much competition online, so that is what I’m going to make top priority on my site and the feeling of it being alive with more frequency and easily-digested candid content (albeit with *possibly* a *little* less standard porn site fare POSSIBLY . . . we’ll see how it plays out — I think it will wind up being the same quantity in that department once I get on a roll). The people who love me and my site tend to gravitate towards the bloggier, vloggier, twittier, webcammier, embarrassing confessions, taboo weirdness and daily details stuff (along with panties panties UPSKIRTS and panties!).

Over the years it’s started to feel like I had to make porn to meet porn industry standards — to be digestible in a standardized (though less consistently hardcore) way — so that porn site reviewers and other people promoting our sites would be able to sell my site. It has gotten to the point where we shoot HUGE galleries of a zillion photos less because we think that’s what our members want or because it’s more valuable that way, but because we need to have more promo material and because that’s how people assess the value of porn sites: how many pics are in your galleries? How HUGE are the pictures? How many formats do your videos come in? How often do you add another HUGE photo gallery? It’s pretty fucking boring and totally ignores the CONTENT of the content. And what is the point anyway when all of those things are the easiest to steal? I want to focus on the stuff people can’t steal or is less desirable to the people who steal content. I’m sick of feeling like we’re shooting things to make webmasters happy instead of ourselves and our members who really dig us (fortunately there are some webmasters who dig me/get me as is).

Sometimes I look at the stuff I did back in 2001 when I didn’t have a clue what a porn website was “supposed” to look like or offer, and I miss it/love it/want to do it that way again (but better and less stupid in some aspects). I can’t find the earlier version of this that talked about wanting my site to be like the magazines you’d stuff under your mattress, but I want to get back to that. Here’s one old version though (which of course I would change in some ways, but want to revive the spirit of in other ways):

One of my first attempts at a members-only area

I do not, however, want to repeat some of my earlier horrifying uber-cheesy design mistakes like this one from 2001:

I was *so* proud of my red licorice design!

What can I say? It was the turn of the century! And they didn’t even let our screen names be long enough for me to spell my name correctly! Aahh, those were the days . . . and all these years later the porn industry STILL doesn’t “get” camgirls which is how they’ve managed to destroy that platform for us as a way of making really good money and connections. Yeah, I’m getting off track and onto that bitter old webwhore lament . . .

Anyway, the point is that I want to pull some of the purity of my old personality porn into 2010 and approach working in a realistic way that’s personally rewarding. I’m not sure if it’s possible, though, considering how much time I have to sink into promotion and the technical aspects of maintaining our sites and cams, etc. Just as one three example(s): there is nothing pornographically fun or personally rewarding about spending hours dealing with Blogger pulling the rug out from under those of us who FTP our blogs or with searching high and low for my router password so I can modify all of the settings because our cable company decided to fuck with my IP address AGAIN or with getting set up with additional payment processors because one of them is scrubbing so hard you think they’re trying to erase you from their roster of clients. There’s precious little time left over after those kinds of bullshit that I am TOTALLY FUCKING SICK OF. It’s not all sex and games and horny-girl-diary-entries here, it’s a lot of technical minutiae.

I think I blew all of my really-hard-working years (nonstop, no personal time except for ramen and sleep) working for other people and on not knowing what I was doing. I’m almost forty and I’m done with that.

Note: I have a feeling this post might be stupid, but part of being realistic is hitting “publish” without trying to make every fucking thing perfect. Thanks for understanding and putting up with years of me wrestling with these same challenges of self-employment as an internet sex worker and webmaster.

An affirming read (one of many lately) on recognizing that trying to do it all is TOO MUCH, and making a goal of doing less:

. . . they have decided to not work at the limit of their ability. they are not interested in finding the line that is their maximum output except to be sure that they are much below it. they have decided not to do everything that they could.

“and so” she said “we’re going to see what comes out of the space we’re allowing for”.

this has sat well with me. it is a breath before i eat. it is the light splayed across my wood walls in the morning. it is not trying to do everything i can. even though i’m excited by all the permutations, it’s about looking inside myself to decide the next movement rather than thinking about every possible way i could do everything all the time.

i think i have probably let people down. i still struggle with guilt. i freak out and bolt for maximization at least once a day.

but i’m trying to give my life wiggle room. just barely.

Last night we stayed up until four watched the last four available episodes of Mad Men and today I am reading for pleasure and having my period and thinking inspired thoughts about videos I could make but probably won’t. My hands smell like sweet and salty foods and stiff girly hair products and thick royal jelly eye cream. This feels a lot better than a week ago when I was wound up (again) thinking I had to do everything and all of it had to be perfect.

Every so often (but not today) I get a whiff of a cosmetic scent that reminds me of some little-girl-science-meets-makeup product where you “mixed” your own lip gloss, creme blush, etc. with tiny white spatulas. It reminds me of how exciting it was to go to World of Toys in Bellevue (where rich people lived!) in the seventies and how much crap Daddy compulsively bought us.

I simultaneously long for my childhood sense of entitlement when it came to pressuring him to buy us stuff and am HORRIFIED by the memory of it. It was pretty cool to actually believe that I could have anything I wanted as long as I could convince him to buy it for me and that everything else could be checked out at the library. I’ll bet if I could put my finger on the smell of that toy-makeup stuff or just remember the name of it I might be one step closer to dominating the world, or at least feeling like all of my time belongs entirely to my own pleasure.

Sooner or later I am going to have to detach from the things I want to do a lot, but less than the things I want to do most and am made to be better at than the rest of it. Sooner or later I’m going to have to recognize the futility of guilt. But today I am still just pretending I don’t feel like a failure because I’m enjoying myself.

Tomorrow I should go on a walk by myself and take pictures of apple blossoms on old trees planted by the wives of dead soldiers.

We were looking forward to doing our camshows last night and today for some orgasmic relief, but unfortunately our cable keeps taking a shit on us and going out during our shows. Today the reason they’re giving is “pocket outages” from downed trees because of the severe wind we had earlier this week (so I guess while they’re working on that they have to take it down? I don’t know).

Last night it went down during Delia’s show and stayed down during mine so I scrambled to do it in our bedroom on the DSL which is NOT set up as a camming station — no lights, no space to move the cam around, no toys, etc. It’s not something you can just adjust quickly, but it worked out alright because Delia came in and gave me her cock to suck on so everyone got to see her squirt a load on my tongue and have it drip down onto my juggies.

Today? I kept getting disconnected, had to log out ALL of our spycams on the cable to stabilize it, then my period randomly started gushing out of me which is great but requires some extra set up and me wanting to capture a few images since it’s so rare and precious . . . and right when I start fucking myself and was looking forward to an orgasm, the cable went out completely. With the amount of time I had left and my cramps starting it wasn’t worth it to try to move it into the dark bedroom/dsl station so I just had to cut it short and Delia canceled hers (she also has a really sore throat).

We’re still going to do members-only chat today, but the rest of it I’m sorry to say has to be written off as a loss and chalked up to bad weather, bad timing, etc.

I’m going to try to record a quick messy red masturbation video now. Which of course I won’t have time to actually edit and post.

FEELING REALLY FRUSTRATED.

Our friends Kristy and BeerCanMan have spent time with us on our spycams when they’ve visited. They know how it works having broadcast voyeur cams themselves for a time and have access to our sites so they can check our cams to see if we’re awake before they call or just . . . check our cams for fun to see what we’re doing. A number of our meatworld friends who are also porn colleagues have access to our cams so this isn’t unusual and our friends don’t report to us every time they peek in, but BeerCanMan did tell me that sometimes he and Kris hook us up on a big screen next to their regular tv via their xbox (or PS3 maybe?).

He said it’s like we’re all in the same room together, watching tv in bed like we do when we can get together in real life. They look over at the screen and there we are in bed, laughing and watching tv too and it’s almost like we’re really there. They can look over and see us, right there next to them.

*****

On Friday I got into an argument with one of the guys who now has control over that best spycam site we’ve been broadcasting on since 2002, SpyOnYou. The one with audio that our friends use to be in the same room with us and the best quality feeds of any of the adult voyeur cam sites out there. But also the one that’s been the biggest pain in the ass, too. The one I used to get paid to cam on, got fucked in a variety of unpleasant ways by the owner years ago, was no longer paid to be on but still couldn’t advertise my site there and last year was forced to start PAYING to be on and give our members access to it.

To make a long story short, over the weekend this guy disabled our access to the cams. (Note: we still have 24/7 spycams broadcasting on our sites through two other plugins). I wasn’t willing to keep paying for them without having more control and information and he was not willing to provide that information or treat us and our business with any respect or consideration or communicate with us at all except to demand money while moving up the date he wanted us to pay little by little each month and tell me it’s none of my business what the actual operating costs of the site are after we’d been led to believe something different by one of the other guys (the one that I *trust*). He screamed at me on the phone about how much his expenses are and how he’s just hanging on by a thread and then in the next breath refused to show me invoices for the hosting because “that’s personal!!!” Dude, you’re going to have to decide if it’s business or if it’s personal, because if it’s personal? Don’t cry about your expenses to me and ask me to help foot the fucking bill. We have expenses of our own and are hanging by our own threads.

I am used to being treated disrespectfully by camsites, but not having to pay them for that dubious honor.

This guy is part of the reason why our cams are often disconnected in the middle of the night without any warning or explanation, part of why the broadcaster has major problems, etc. when all of the other sites we broadcast on are usually extremely stable. But still, the quality was so much better when they DID stay up and there was the audio which the other spycam sites don’t broadcast. And really? The amount we were paying wasn’t unreasonable at all. Then again, he never responded when we indicated a desire to help pay the programmer to fix the software (which this guy now says he “owns” even though the programmer was never paid by them in entirety which is why it was left buggy).

So. I don’t know if I was just being an asshole or what, but after the way he behaved on the phone and made it his mission over the weekend to take down our cams and member access (and bizarrely and rudely Jess’ and Mina’s, too) because his ego was bruised BEFORE the thirty days I already paid for was up, I am glad to wash my hands of him and want nothing to do with him. I wish him well and everything, and especially two of the other people (Steven and Bonnie) that I worked with over the years at that company but after eight years I am done with wondering “what next?”

*****

Okay, I lied. I will never be done wondering “what next?”

I am wondering if what’s next is to partner up with our trustworthy cam friends to build a better spycam site:

Should we make MySpyCams.com someplace awesome?

We all have the vision and experience to know what would make it special, and more importantly WORKABLE for us as camgirls and for our members. But would it actually make money? Can we really afford the time and money to make it operate the way we envision it and without demanding MORE time and money we don’t have down the road?

I’ve been a camgirl since the year 2000 and have seen SCADS of people become giddy with the prospect of building their own camsites, dump tons of money and time into them, and FAIL MISERABLY. Of course they were different camsites — pay per view — but still. Knowing you COULD do something better than others who’ve gone before you and actually executing your supposed “genius” are two totally different things. On the other hand, this isn’t a crazy complex pie-in-the-sky scheme; mostly we just want to replace what we lost. And at least improve upon it a little. And while we’re at it why not make it totally fucking awesome?!?

Recently we’ve also seen well-established sites with lots of resources (time and money) make gigantic, huge, really fucked up mistakes (I’m thinking of Niteflirt and CCBill) in overhauling systems that basically worked and fucking the people who bring in their bread and butter. Of course I think part of that is that they have a fundamental disregard for the clients (I don’t mean the “end users” who pay for phone sex and porn site memberships, but phone sex operators and site owners) perhaps BECAUSE they have enough resources and can afford to make decisions from a huge distance from the people they will impact. Months later we have lots of  apologies and patched together fixes, but things are never quite the same (in the case of Niteflirt) and no one puts their money where their mouth is to compensate the people who got screwed (in the case of CCBill who should’ve lowered our processing rates/fees if they want us to think they really MEAN that apology; you know the programmers got assloads of money to make something substandard and force us to be their beta testers and lose money but what do we get? An apology! Nice, but it doesn’t make up for months of fuckery and trust lost with our partners – in my world if you make big mistakes you offer some freebies, discounts, etc.; god knows I have when it was the right thing to do even when I couldn’t afford to).

Point is, if these big companies with lots of dough can fail so miserably and hire programmers and project managers who TOTALLY DON’T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK THEY’RE DOING and send everyone’s shit sliding off the rails, how much easier would it be for US to fail miserably and not have the money to hire someone else to fix it? Do I really want to be part of investing time and money and friendships and friends’ time and money into ignorantly (because I know nothing about programming) searching for the right hosting and coders and programmers? That’s hard enough, just putting something like this together even if you DO have money, but when we’re all already putting everything we have already into the sites we already do have (and in our friends’ cases their other full time jobs)? And then what if we hire THE WRONG PEOPLE? Even if those people are well-intentioned and do their best and aren’t deliberately fucking you (and I truly do not believe anyone intended to fuck anybody at Niteflirt or CCBill, that’s just how it wound up; the rectum-ripping dick just wound up sliding right into people’s asses through bad planning, not malevolent intent), the end result could still find us wading in a morass of shit. I do not want to spend weeks, months or years unprofitably wading through shit.

But maybe I’m being fearful for nothing. This isn’t something I will be doing alone and everything could just as easily work out great as it could not work out at all. Still, there are potential headaches and risks even if we have an awesome site with perfect tools that practically runs itself. Some of those headaches and risks are called CAMGIRLS. If you are good at this shit at all, you’ve got a strong personality. Strong personalities working with strong personalities can be volatile, dramatic and time consuming, even if you avoid the former by doing a lot of the latter (consuming time) making sure you only work with people who have their shit together. But jesus fuck I know that’s not even fair or realistic considering *I* do not always have my own shit together and have been known to be a royal pain in the ass.

And how about liabilities? Porn is under enough legal scrutiny and persecution that even static content is risky; add in LIVE 24/7 camfeeds and you have the potential to get into trouble for all kinds of things, even on accident. I don’t even want to provide examples for fear of getting into trouble, but I will mention a couple of areas of concern: music broadcasting and accidental children sightings (not necessarily at the same time). Here’s a situation: maybe your sister comes over with her kids while you’re in the shower and before you had a chance to turn off ALL of your spycams and she brings her baby in the bedroom to knock on the bathroom door to let you know that she’s arrived safely at your house and you don’t even know the baby is in there until you jump out of the shower and open the door naked and then there you are NAKED on a PORN site with a BABY! And ohmygod the whole world is going to crumble because you have done the unthinkable!!!!! And your business will be ruined as soon as someone takes a screencap and sends it to the feds and your payment processor and visa and FOX news and the locals who didn’t even know you were making porn in their neighborhood and there was a BABY involved?!? That’s just a hypothetical situation though. That never happened to me last week at all I’m just describing how easily your life could be destroyed by participating in this industry and having a family. ONE FALSE MOVE AND THEY’LL GIVE YOU THE CHAIR!! Okay, you won’t get the chair but you could wind up in a business-destroying legal battle. Even a little snafu can ruin you. Normally I don’t worry overly much about these things, but that’s partly because I’m only risking mine and Delia’s asses as opposed to the asses of friends. I do not want to be a liability to people who trust me.

So the next question (which should’ve been the FIRST question) is whether or not this has the potential to make money. While I actually have a lot more faith than I seem to have that we could build an awesome site that virtually runs itself (we aren’t trying to do anything nearly as complicated as other camsites; it doesn’t need to be fancy) I have serious doubts whether or not this would actually pay for itself (development and monthly hosting) let alone make extra money as a stand-alone site or even just as a promotional tool for the exhibitors, especially if we don’t have the time or budget to promote it heavily out of the gate. So would it be worth it if it just pays for itself and is a reliable, high-quality plugin for our members? The truth is that all of us are really struggling with the sites we already have and I don’t even know if that many of our members care that much about having the higher quality cams with audio and a chatroom we control (rather than a chatroom where we can’t link to anything offsite, can’t “promote” ourselves, and have to follow their rules, which is understandable but very limiting when you can’t even link to a news article when you’re talking about shit that’s going on in the world). There are so many places you can get explicit and entertaining cam feeds for free now that it seems foolish to think we can compete with a for-pay model where the cams don’t even promise anything exciting; most of the time we’re just washing dishes or blogging or crying over the most recent dip in sales.

The funny part, though, is in my heart of hearts I vehemently believe our camsite would be special and offer something a lot of people (camgirls/boys/couples AND customers) would appreciate and recognize as valuable. After writing all of these fears and doubts and well-reasoned concerns I am too attached to these spycams to let them go. Even though we still have assloads of spycams broadcasting right now! It’s just not the same on those plugins without audio. I am extremely ATTACHED to the idea of a camsite owned and operated by the people ON them who feel the same way I do about them and promotes THEM as much as the camsite itself. Even more than that I am extremely attached to the idea of making something GOOD, and since we would be working with other people that seems a lot more attainable than Delia and I trying to make something good alone.

I am also very attached to the part of my identity that’s been a “camgirl” all of these years. A lot of the experiences I’ve cherished most as a webwhore over the years are exchanges we’ve had via our spycams. There is a raw authenticity on the spycams with audio that’s incredibly intimate BECAUSE it is often so mundane (and when it’s not mundane is all the more intense because of the contrast). There is a dailiness and reliability and easy sharing that I think is a tremendous and comforting gift. While part of me craves more anonymity and less-ready accessibility, a large(r?) part of me is massively attached to providing this spycam experience and I don’t want it to just be mediocre.

I’ve been relieved the past couple of days not to have the audio on our spycams, but also have felt painfully aware that people are missing out on being close to us and knowing what is going on, even if that is nothing very “entertaining”. How will they know we’re laughing at Star Trek? How will they survive without hearing our Captain Janeway impressions?

I started talking REALLY LOUDLY. I don’t know if it was just because I *could* without sounding weird or if it was because I thought maybe people could hear without audio being broadcast if I JUST ENUNCIATED REALLY CLEARLY. Without even thinking about it, I’ve begun exaggerating my facial expressions to try to communicate without sound. Part of my life is knowing you are out there, watching and listening, for better and for worse. It’s like one of my limbs has been amputated and I’m trying on different prosthetics.

Anyway, I don’t know if all of these attachments are good. Maybe I should break away from something that is turning me into a bizarre version of a silent film star wannabe. I can’t seem to decide if this is a business decision or a personal decision. As a business decision it will depend on how much it costs to build. I think my struggle is more personal, though. I’m torn between “these cams are my identity and I love them” and “I really need more time away from work and more time focusing on CREATIVE static work; building another site and business entity with tech that if it goes down would need IMMEDIATE attention so as not to fuck customers and exhibitors doesn’t sound like a good way to get less stress and more private, in-my-head creative time AT ALL.”

So you know how I said I don’t want to spend weeks, months or years unprofitably wading through shit? I’m not even sure I would want to wade through shit for extended periods of time PROFITABLY. As much as I want this lovely spycam site to work out, the truth is there are many other things I want even more. I’m getting to an age where a couple of priorities/desires to create are rising to the top  and realizing that I will have to give up some (a lot of?) things if I ever want to immerse myself in what I want MOST. But I guess I’m still having a hard time letting go of the delusion that I can accomplish way more than I’m probably capable of. I suspect I’ll be happier when I fully accept my limitations and give myself over to one or two things that I want with gigantic private bigness, but apparently I’m too attached right now to these other things. But I could DEtach myself from them right now if I chose to. And this does seem like a perfect opportunity to do so that wouldn’t be a big deal to anybody but myself. So what if our voyeurcams aren’t the best and don’t have audio? SO WHAT? WHO CARES?? My life just got easier!! Why not embrace that??

I just realized, though, that I *can* quit/pull out of this at any point if it doesn’t work out. And right now it’s working out FINE to go forward. Or maybe it’s not. A month before taxes are due I should be making as much money as I possibly can, not spending time and energy on something that won’t be ready to make money for months, if ever. I’ve already dumped more time and energy into this lately than anything else. Hell, in the time it took me to write this tormented blog entry I could have been doing something USEFUL like promoting Delia’s site (which is really ALL we should focus on selling if we really want to make money fast) or at least working on my own site. But spycams are PART of both of our sites, right? Right!!

*****

Thanks for letting me muddle through that. While I sound uncertain, the truth is my mind is already made up that I want MySpyCams.com to work and I feel like I’ve already committed to it.

PLEASE NOTE: I am *not* looking for advice by posting this, I’m just SHARING the process in case you’re interested in reading it. Blogging about it helps, but even with all of these words there are a world of details I’m leaving out so it doesn’t put anybody in a very good position to “advise” me. But that doesn’t mean I won’t solicit feedback and help later! AND you’re WELCOME to share your own stories of similar dilemmas or relevant anecdotes/observations – I would love that! And if you have any recommendations for hosting, programmers, etc. THAT would also be awesome, or if you want to volunteer (or advertise as for sale) your own talents, that TOO would be fantastic! We’ll have a form up later for people who want to actually broadcast on it and more details about how that would work, requirements, etc. All in good time . . .