TastyTrixie.com

Archive for the ‘work’ Category

Have you noticed us getting up earlier and going to sleep sooner on our cams? That’s (partly) because starting September 3rd I’m going to get up early to head over to the cabin we’re (good news!) officially renting to do off-cam no-internet work sans distractions. Normally I quickly grow disgusted with a morning-person routine, but now it seems totally different knowing there’s a purpose to it.

It rained heavily on Thursday. If I hadn’t gotten up at seven in the morning, excited about the possibilities of such early rising once the cabin time begins, I’d have never known there was any blue sky to be had that day. I’d have missed seeing this moon:

Blessing Bestowed from the West

There’s a place – a real live place – where women artists can apply for residencies. Actually, there are lots of places like that, where those kinds of people can get free lodging in inspiring locations to focus on their work, but the one I’m thinking of is SUPER DREAMY . . . fucking storybook-land perfection in terms of its tiny private artfully-crafted houses (each resident has one all to herself) and woodland setting.

Most shockingly dreamy of all is the way the women are catered to; the small handful of residents (women, all of them!) have a chef who prepares crazily wonderful dinners for them every night. There are pictures proving how thoroughly stocked the kitchen is with racks of zillions of containers of spices and rows of carefully labeled provisions and specialized pots and pans used to make what appears to be an ABUNDANCE of food every night just for these six or seven women. Meats and comforts and fresh green things and berries and sauces and fanciness and desserts and lots of colors and textures on big plates and side dishes.

On top of all that, the chef ALSO prepares individual baskets for each resident full of her favorite foods to help sustain her throughout the day while she works in her perfect little house. And there’s a garden full of plants someone else tends that each resident gets to pluck and cut flowers and leafy things from. FOR INSPIRATION AND SHIT!

I know that being there wouldn’t be actual utopia, but it does provide a model to ooh and aah over. I think it’s awesome that a very teeny-tiny percentage (wish it were more) of talented women in the world get to experience opportunities like that, to be told that their own self-directed art is so valuable as to warrant a few days . . . maybe even a whole month(!) . . . of concentrating on nothing BUT the work she most wants to do and that she will be sheltered and reliably fed to delicious excess if she likes so she can take care of her work while someone else takes care of her basic needs with sensual generosity.

Same time as picture above, but looking 80 degrees to the south.

What an exquisite fantasy! But it seems so decadent, like I know that I personally could never warrant such treatment. It’s a nice daydream but it actually makes me nervous to think about having such a giant privilege bestowed upon me. I’m nervous enough about the idea of renting this cabin, feeling like I need to prove that I “deserve” it. That I’m worth blowing more money on when I already have so much.

And then I remember that my grandma made my grandpa dinner every night to his specifications. Dished it up and brought it out to him. It wasn’t fancy, but she SERVED him. And every day she fixed him a box lunch even on the days when he was only working in his garage out back, a one minute shuffle away from the back door. I know times have changed, but when I was growing up I never fucking once saw a man prepare and serve a grown woman food. NEVER ONCE outside of restaurants (which I rarely saw) and pancake breakfasts at the Masonic Lodge where it was a wonderful novelty to see the men with aprons on, coming out to the long tables to pour coffee and bring us our hotcakes.

It wasn’t just my family that was like that. Most people my age and older grew up seeing men (and children) waited on at home and women NOT.  I suppose gender-blind egalitarianism is the ideal I should desire (and I do in some ways) but part of me needs to experience the balance of intimate privilege tipped dramatically towards women to undo what I learned by watching. I wasn’t brought up to BE that kind of woman who waits on men — not at all; I wasn’t taught with words to do it  — but that’s what all the women in my family DID to one extent or another and the men DID NOT. You have to be crazy to think that kind of learning is something you can just erase with your intellect when you grow up or even along the way with words of “you-go-girl” encouragement.

Looks promising upwards and eastwards

Even though I never grew up wanting to be a woman who takes care of a man, once I outgrew the entitlement of childhood I came to FEEL that having someone take care of me wasn’t something I deserved or could expect the way a man in my grandparents’ and parents’ generations could and that the only way to live my life just-so, to my specifications, was to live alone. I didn’t think this on a conscious level, but I think the past ten years (and then some) of webwhoring have involved more conscious efforts to recognize and reconcile this conflict; I want to work — to do MY work and do it MY WAY — and have someone else take care of the housekeeping and cooking. For my work to be the most important thing I do and everything else to be relegated to the distraction pile which I should be able to demand someone else pick up and put away. To believe that my work is so important that I should be angry and frustrated when I do not have the tools or environment to do it properly. BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT MEN OLDER THAN I AM GREW UP EXPECTING AND DOING. And so what if their work wasn’t important or they would bankrupt the family with their business schemes? You didn’t fucking criticize the work, jobs or dreams of men. You just didn’t unless you wanted to be the evil villainous bitch in the story.

I shouldn’t feel guilty about wanting to have as many places to do my work alone as my grandpa did: a garage, a basement, a toolshed, a closet where he kept his Black Velvet and other private treasures, and a windowless office he hardly went into that nobody else was allowed into that was always at least 15 degrees cooler than the rest of the house. My grandma didn’t have any place in her house that was her own like that, just like my mom didn’t have a special place in our tiny house for herself like my stepdad had a whole room for his model train. And if Grandma fucked up some shit in the kitchen Grandpa would go ballistic on her ass. So I guess maybe I SHOULD feel guilty about wanting all that man-privilege since being an abusive asshole came with the territory. I don’t know. But on Friday morning I’m going to work alone in the cabin AND I CAN HARDLY WAIT!!

Also? I’ve drafted a new personal ad for a slavey-houseboy type. Not putting it up for awhile though as that’s a whole time-consuming process in itself. I also keep wanting to blog more about how going to college totally distorted my idea of money and assessing the worth of an investment in myself, perhaps making me approach financial risk-taking in a more “manly” way than I would have otherwise.

More morning moon pics to come?

*****

So. I don’t anticipate members and fans seeing a noticeable change in focus on our sites because of this and will probably see more exciting stuff on cam rather than less since we have to cam more to pay for everything. One of the good things (in terms of “earning” my cabin keep) is it’s already making me more disciplined and focused in how I prioritize things, clarifying what needs to come first (which is really REALLY challenging when you have boatloads of everything to do and have an easily-overwhelmed mind like mine). Right now at the top of the list is simply getting ahead on shooting and getting updates lined up, so that’s what I’m going to get back to work on right now.

I often fantasize about having a windowless closet with a narrow cozy built-in bunk to sleep and daydream on. Where nobody can see me, cut off and curtained-in by dark, heavy layers of hanging clothes. Or of being in a fantasy sleeper-car on a train on a comfortably narrow berth, dark wood paneling all around with chugging train sounds and gentle rocking. Or of being in an even-smaller, quieter version of this cabin, this time with a built-in little bed. No electricity, no webcams. Or of having my bookwormhole.

Sometimes I close my eyes in bed and time-travel back to the best drugless, not-sick sleep I ever had. I went on a women’s retreat with a bunch of gals I really didn’t know. Upon arrival I half-assedly engaged in the crafts they’d set out, then went to the cabin. There were a handful of these cabins on the lake, a BIG lake with no motorized boats allowed. QUIET. The other women complained about the cabins – the uncomfortable bunks something they were only tolerating for the coolness of the Retreat. In the middle of the day while the cabins were completely deserted I climbed onto my little wooden shelf, nestled down into Delia’s perfectly awesome sleeping bag, faced the wall, and fell asleep for hours. Undisturbed, unseen, far removed, not missed. I absented myself from everywhere else except my private cocoon.

I got up for a late dinner, and that night slept again in a completely heavy, renewing, needy, guiltless way. Even with the women sharing the cabin with me, I felt alone with my earplugs in and my lack of intimacy with them. There was a woman on the shelf above me, two shelves holding a woman-each perpendicular to my head, and two shelves parallel to me across a tiny open space. I was the first person to go to bed, and the last one to wake up. I liked having the shelves of women around me, being in a small hibernating hive, quietly together without any of them knowing me. Not talking.

I was reading Strangers on a Train that trip. I accidentally left it at the lodge so I never finished it, but it was good to have it when I did. A sugar daddy sent it to me off my wishlist so I feel a little guilty over losing it, but my possession of the memories of that trip are so clear the book is still one of my treasures even though I don’t have it anymore.

*****

The opportunity to rent a small cabin/shed space came up this week, synchronous to a handful of needs/desires/opportunities converging on me/us. It’s the kind of thing I would never seek out because I don’t think I deserve it, but under the circumstances and upon careful thought and discussion we both recognize we’re way overdue for what it will offer. It is just THE THING. It’s not in a remote location — in fact it’s on very shared space minutes away — but because we’ve been there and know the person really well who’s renting it I’m familiar with the setting, comfortable with the people who might be around, and aware of the benefits of its location. I haven’t actually been inside this cabin on the property, but I’m going to check it out soon.

Yes, I’m worried about how we’re going to afford it, but the with the house and the cabin/shed we’ll be paying the same amount we were paying for rent on individual houses before we moved into this place with its cheaper rent. I’m pretty sure it will be worth the relatively small investment in terms of providing space and opportunity for more creative content creation for our porn sites, too.

It’s not a done deal but if it works out I will be healthier with a space to be solitary and invisible, to write without obligation or interruption (I know, we don’t have kids and we work at home, but there are SO MANY INTERRUPTIONS mostly named THE INTERNET and webcams and too much space with all of it messy with cables and overwhelming work things everywhere), to sleep with complete cozy abandon, and most excitingly for our fans this might give us the kind of space and convenience we need to have more sexual adventures with other people. I will have someplace to go if Delia wants someone over for fooling around, and vice versa (though I mainly anticipate fooling around with mySELF, dreams, and pages and pages of watery blue words). We’ll have a convenient place to go away together, away from work. Because working at home with 24/7 voyeur cams on you means never getting a break unless you leave, and when we leave work I want to relax, not wander around a mall or drive hours to see a movie, or blow money to sit on uncomfortable chairs in a restaurant, or wander around in the woods being scared of cougars wondering how we’ll get home when our car breaks down (I still need to blog about that).

I’m also really excited about sharing the dreaminess of a little place like that and the things I do in it. But not having to share it WHILE I’m there.

I’m grateful to a number of people and strangely-timed messages for helping me decide to seize this opportunity. Two of those people are Heather and Libby, so thanks for the inspirations.

I just used some of my webcam money to subscribe to one of my favorite radio programs ever, Hearts of Space. Nevermind the ill-advised acronym (so typical of nerds to make a hilarious mistake like that, god love ‘em).

Since our porn business operates on a subscription basis, it’s interesting to research other subscription-based internet products, their price points, and comparing the offerings. I loved reading the HOS: WHY PAY? page. Like porn, music is something you can get free online in a million places. Even when people don’t ask you to justify charging for it, many of us feel we MUST explain it (I’ve been criticized by adult webmasters for the times when I’ve disclosed similar information and confronted those questions when maybe I should leave them alone). It’s inspiring to read the way Hearts of Space explains some of their business approach (and costs outsiders don’t comprehend without being taught) because it’s so firmly rooted in a clear vision, one that I know DELIVERS an experience I’ve never gotten from any other radio programming. There is a certain personality, there are seductive, hypnotic voices I’m attached to, and there is a well-planned journey offered by HOS.

HEARTS of SPACE PRODUCER STEPHEN HILL’s CAREER seemed to take a sharp detour in the early 70’s when he abandoned his architectural career and opened a recording studio. . . . In retrospect, Hill realizes he never really left architecture. He simply became a sound architect who learned to build his castles on the air. “Architects create environments with physical materials.
I do it with sound.” - Stephen Hill

It’s also interesting to observe my own thought process in deciding what kind of subscription to get: I chose the $13 a month all-access plan because I don’t feel like I can shell out the money for a year even though I know it would save me money in the long run. Also, The internet radio channel only (no archives or playlists) probably would’ve been good enough for me, but if it wasn’t, I didn’t want to try to figure out how to upgrade mid-month. Out of laziness/a desire to be efficient with my time and not necessarily need or probable usage, I chose the more comprehensive membership. I know people go through similar though processes when deciding which membership plan to get for our sites.

Hearts of Space is an inspiring model of how to create and sustain and love a “product” that’s not personalized for each individual listener but still manages to feel intimate even though it’s mass-delivered and not even live (except maybe one hour a week, I think).  It speaks of a void and manages to fill it –inside of me and outside of me — at the same time. I’m fascinated by people and groups who design and deliver stimuli producing what appears to be a relatively mundane experience (compared to, say, a roller coaster ride in a theme park or a provocative theatre piece, etc.) that manages to infiltrate people’s lives by being constantly accessible in private, demanding little of them but providing addictive stimulation. A little like a favorite diner or coffee shop. Something offering sustenance you could get elsewhere, but elsewhere just wouldn’t be QUITE right. I believe there’s something about the earnestness of the proprietors to deliver an actual EXPERIENCE they’ve envisioned in rich detail and feel in their own bones that makes Hearts of Space , some bookstores, a couple of Indian and Thai restaurants in Tacoma, and some porn sites exceptional.

I love music and I love feeling distant connections to people, but it’s impossible for me to listen to voices or most music and WORK at the same time. “Space music” offers me the kind of escape and transcendence I long for. It’s a spiritual salve for me that allows me to imagine journeying into a meaningful peaceful nothingness of wind and colors and stars and the smell of ozone. It gives me a lot of the feeling I get from imagining my ideal forms of church or prayer or sanctuary or space travel. It’s like having a lucid flying dream. That’s totally worth $13 a month to me. “Greetings, space fans . . . “

There’s a vibe on Hearts of Space that I’d like to infuse my own site with – that I’ve always wanted to be there and have maybe succeeded in transmitting some of the time (not the SAME vibe, but a quality or peculiarity of vibe). I think it will be helpful to listen to HOS on a daily basis to remind myself of the possibilities and how personality and vision and voices (even in very limited doses, more often without words) can combine in powerful, seductive, and soothing ways. How to make transportation out of your aesthetics and values to take people to a place they recognize as one where their belief systems make perfect sense. Or freewheeling careless nonsense. Where you look around and feel yourself and even though nothing has changed, you’re like, “THIS is it, what I was trying to remember that was bothering the tip of my tongue.”

Like, fucking psychic alignment, man!

Click here for an older post about new age music, porn and more.

*****

I know, you’re all like . . . post some porn, woman!! Are you losing your mind?

I can only answer in a predictably crazy way by insisting that no, I’m totally on the verge of genuine SANITY, motherfuckers!! Seriously, like, all is about to be REVEALED!!

I’ll try to post something porny and down-to-earth for you soon, mkay? I’ll TRY.

I am always trying. I don’t know if that’s apparent or not, but it’s true.

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.

I’m getting better at recording ideas as they come to me, developing a system.

We know a guy in town who nearly wrapped up writing his novel and also had a system for compiling all of his stacks of inspiration-containing idea-notes weekly. His novel and many years’-worth of weekly compilations were stored on his computer at the offices of the non-profit he ran saving seeds of native and/or rare plants.

One night the building burned down. He had no back ups of his his novel or his notes.

He and his wife sold his car to someone we know, who then gave the car to us for free. I wonder if it’s bad luck to drive it. I feel like I need to compile years of stacks of notes-on-envelopes now, back them all up and store them in three different places.

Until I get a fireproof system in place there’s no point in even STARTING to write a novel. But maybe since I would never say “novel”, only “I’m writing a book” (and would never even say that to anyone even if I WERE writing one), maybe that would protect me.

I’m not sure, but I think a lot of the seeds were duplicated elsewhere so all was not lost in that department. I can’t remember what he called his note-compilation ritual, but I think I have it written down somewhere on the back of an envelope. Lately I’ve had to stop myself from searching for that because I don’t really need to know what he called it. I could email him or even call, but I don’t know him that well so to my mind searching through shitloads of scribbled-on papers seems the more sensible thing to do, but obviously not sensible enough that I’ll allow myself to do it.

His wife collects the jokers from decks of playing cards. That’s almost everything I know about them.

Note: I really am not writing a book, and most of my ideas aren’t FOR books. This post isn’t a hint of any kind, it’s more of a confession  about my idea-hoarding compulsion.

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.