I’ve been holding to my word to take some time away from work, and the opportunity to reset my nervous system has been stellar. I feel great! Crazy what a solid 7-8 hours of sleep A NIGHT (and a nap, almost every day?!) can do for a girl! And I’ve been letting my big beautiful brain rest too, mostly by watching Reacher and Citadel: Honey Bunny, and playing dumb games on my phone. Weeee!

I’ve basically been trying to recapture what made 2020 and 2021 so great for my creative productivity… I know that seems like an odd thing to say but it’s true. Growing up as an isolated, weird kid on the Internet, I was well-trained in the art of never leaving the house and finding ways to entertain myself. But now things are back to “normal” but also somehow they’ve never been so NOT normal, and nobody knows what to do. I certainly don’t! And that’s exhausting. It’s hard to create art while wading through this miasma of burgeoning uncertainty, let alone feel sexy enough to create sexy art. In those earliest lockdown days, we were all seeking connection, and I don’t think that’s untrue for current times as well. But for me, personally, that period also contained an amount of slowness, with space between the hours to breath and to feel. That’s what I’m trying to find again.

And this past week+ has been helpful for that. Clearly, my body needed to rest! And some distance indeed makes the heart grow fonder, or in this case lets the brain gain perspective. Some time to breath before burnout hits. For example, I’m reminded how much I love having “project weeks” where I just go hard on scratching that special interest/fixation that’s been itchy and get it out of my system. It’s almost like taking time off, though perhaps not as drastically as this past week has been. But once you build a machine, and oiled it as necessary, the machine can run with minimal supervision; a necessary beast of burden in an industry where one is expected to be doing everything all the time, to be handling every aspect of managing a business yet still living a full life. Automations truly are key. My concern is that they remove an amount of that personal connection, but I think the space automation creates can allow for more opportunity to connect if one manages their time wisely.

ANYway. What was my goal here? Oh, just talking about what I’ve learned with my time off, right.

I think one of the key takeaways here is that I need to create more space in my life, in order to best access my creativity. The more I try to see my work as “work”, the more I pressure myself to “clock in” every day, to maintain a schedule, to hit those metrics. And… yo I know that’s not what any of us want for ourselves is it? Let alone for the people we care about and support. Nobody wishes the grindstone upon their favoured idol. We wish comfort, we wish happiness, we wish growth. None of that happens if we chain ourselves to and lean upon a (meat) grinder.

So, what does it look like for me to slow down?

I guess the best way to summarize it is “boundaries”, yeah? What is “vacay mode” if not an OOO auto-responder to your work obligations? A boundary. Posting less, probably. Or at least, planning posts better… not sitting down the night before to queue something for a 9am release every. single. night. this week. Yeah, that’s probably a bad habit. I need to get real about organizing my photography in advance, about editing in advance, about queueing Well In Advance. Which also means doing photoshoots Well In Advance. Making sure I have AFK Project Time. Continuing to work out several days a week (love it, I always sleep so good!); taking my dog for walks and also having lazy blanket days with her. Continuing to make upgrades to my home, and maintaining the aesthetics that create that space for my mind to feel inspired by the lights and shapes and colours I’ve brought into my space. Be direct about what I want and what I need. Living life for myself, and not trying to optimize my actions to maximize content; optimizing my content to maximize my actions in life (what a subtle but huge shift that is!).

But I think the core is to just be myself, to lean into the “me” things that I love about being me and knowing when it’s appropriate to let people in versus when it’s appropriate to be a private individual.

Also, I’d like to write more (again). Hi. :D

There’s that whole thing about how 80% of one’s success comes from 20% of their actions. So perhaps by that logic, spending less time on managing my paid fansites/platforms could actually benefit me? Spending more time off those sites, engaging in social media, publishing on different platforms, having the space I need to manage my sites instead of just maintain them, you know? Which is scary to consider, in its way; we’re trained to think we need to be posting multiple times a day every day in the week and also twice as much for holidays (even our birthdays?!), which just isn’t healthy or sustainable to me. Maybe sometimes I’m up for going all out (October…) but as a way of life/work… no. Because expecting 100% of my success to come from 100% of my actions on fansites is simply not how things work! As evidenced by my not actually making enough money to thrive, which is the key. Survival is nice, but again, we always want more for those we care for and admire. We want them to thrive; I want me to thrive. Work less profit more doesn’t seem to math but we’ll see!

I’ve never been a big risk taker; I saw a post on IG today about how a perceived risk is viewed as bigger/scarier than the potential for success. But like, it literally always works out, doesn’t it? Or if it doesn’t, is it ever really as bad as you thought it was going to be? Rarely. I’d say I was raised to be afraid of a lot of things, but life isn’t ever as scary once you’re actually living it. Perhaps this is vain of me to say but I think I can be a good role model for how to live a good and healthy life. For you, for other creators, for other entrepreneurs, for other women, for other weirdos, whomever. The trick being, I have to make sure I’m living my own first.

This year marks my 20th year as a sex worker.

Admittedly, I haven’t been a full-time sex worker for 20 years. There have been seasons, my involvement has waxed and waned as my life shifted through relationships and living situations and attempts at civilian careers. In the back of my head, I’ve spent those years still identifying as a sex worker; though I wasn’t active, it was a part of me that I wanted to keep.

This year, I am choosing to honor that history by recommitting myself to the work. Recommitting to my peers… those who are just starting out like I was 20 years ago, and those who have dabbled. Those who have built empires within the industry and those who swing back through when they need reliable work they know how to do or that feels accessible to where they are in life.

Over this past year, I’ve learned that there are many ways to measure success. America’s capitalist culture will have you believing that money is the only true measure. But we look around at those with money, and we don’t see ourselves; we don’t want to be anything resembling these oligarchs of selfish destruction. I see little value in wealth, personally. But I was recently reminded that success can also look like showing up, consistently.

Some days I can give 110%, and some days I can only give 20%. There have been days where I couldn’t show up at all… so I showed up the next day. Some days bring in multiple zeros while others are oppressively quiet… but I still show up the next day. That’s become my measure of success.

20 years ago, I answered an ad in the back of my town’s alt weekly newspaper: LIVE MODELS WANTED. After a quick phone call, a woman showed up to my apartment and handed me a camcorder and a video extension card for my PC, and I became a sex worker. I worked on a cam network alongside some of my favorite names in mainstream porn… me! Lil ol me. I felt connected, and powerful. The work was hard; I didn’t have much guidance. I made some impressively stupid mistakes. But I showed up.

Life continued, evolved. I weaved in and out of sex work, sometimes missing it when I wasn’t active, sometimes resenting it when I was.

Four years ago, I once again returned to sex work for the third? fourth? time. So much has changed since I started twenty years ago (and so much hasn’t). And 2020 was… interesting times; it was easy work at first, not terribly demanding. That shifted as the market shifted, as the world “returned to normal” but with all of us changed in ways we often couldn’t put into words. The work isn’t as easy now, but I still want to do it. Difficult work is still worth doing.

Two years ago, I bought a website from a woman; it was a website I had used myself. I saw the potential in it. It felt like a jewel in the rough, and I wanted to hone it. I’ve accrued so many very diverse skills throughout my life and this website felt like it could be a fruitful amalgamation of those experiences, honed to a gleaming gem. And then, a little bit at a time over the next six months, my life fell apart. It was all I could do to show up for myself some days, let alone my fans and customers. I couldn’t fathom how to show up for my community.

Being a sex worker is one thing, but running a business for sex workers? In this economy? Oof. But I refused to give up or admit defeat or walk away, tending to the project as it simmered quietly on a back burner. Giving it a stir when I was able. Adding a bit of water as needed. Not the measure of success I was expecting of myself, but I at least showed up enough to hold down the basics.

It’s been 20 years since I became a sex worker, and so much has changed in that time. The technology, first and foremost. The laws and legislations, absolutely. I’ve changed too, in so many ways… and in so many ways, I haven’t changed at all. And now I see that—being able to see myself, and being able to show up as myself—as a kind of success as well. So that’s two ways I’m successful: in my life and my work. Nice.

It’s been four years since I came back into the most welcoming, strongest community I’ve ever known, into this work that feels natural to me despite its challenges. And it’s been two years since my life turned upside down, for better or for worse. I’ll admit: life is still hard. I feel like I have more 20-30% days lately than I do 80-90%. I’m by no means financially successful. But I show up.

I’ve finally hit that point where I have hiked long enough to know the environment, even if the terrain keeps shifting. I’ve hiked high enough that I can see a path ahead, even if I don’t have all the tools I need to clear it yet. Maybe in the past I’ve walked a trail cleared by others, but now? Now I get to choose which direction I move in. I’ve been traveling these woods for twenty years and now, I think it’s my turn to clear the path for others. Right now I feel strong enough to do that work. And there’s no time like the present.

Here’s to our continued success, mine AND yours. Hell, here’s to another 20 years.

It’s a bit of a problem, really.

Because what does one do with that knowledge, once it’s obtained? Have I been implementing what I have learned along the way? Nay; like a dragon on a pile of ancient books and scrolls, I’ve been hoarding it. Mine. Whether it’s compulsion or passion at this point I do not know. I simply am driven to learn. The more I learn, the more connections I can make between seemingly disparate concepts or topics; the more I understand.

It’s a habit I’ve been trying to break myself of this year, finally presented with the reality that if I do not put into practice what I learn, I’m simply distracting myself, dancing around my goals with the excuse of self-improvement; maybe this will be the morsel that lets everything else click into place… maybe this is the solution I’ve been seeking all that time.

Enter: XOXO Fest.

I almost attended the event in 2015, ending up sick just before the weekend. This year, attending what is billed as the final XOXO, I lament that occurrence even more. I think it could have changed my life. Because now, almost 10 years later, having attended an abridged version of the event, I am driven to act. That mysterious, intangible something has finally clicked; it’s almost like XOXO gave me permission, saying, actually, you are ready. Now go do.

The 3-day conference was not your usual event. In fact, only one day’s programming was even called a “conference”. The bulk of the XOXO experience was social, with a whole day of events blocked off for meetups, hangouts, and presentations on how veritably silly (and/or toxic) the internet has become. XOXO is people!! It’s literally the friends you made along the way. A Slack board handled most of the pre-event communications between attendees, with many people bragging in their intros about how many Fests they had attended. No, bragging is the wrong word: they were proud. I can see why.

Therein lies the only issue I can find with the event: after so many years of attracting repeat attendees, XOXO developed a self-referential culture of in-jokes and references and it seemed like everyone knew what was going on but me. And just like the first day at a new school, I was anxious leading up to the event. I had no idea what I was walking into, with a large portion of the weekend being self-managed time where attendees were encouraged to choose their own adventure without trying to do it all.

Right out the gate, I fell in with people I know. No, literally. No sooner had I passed through the gated entrance and picked up my badge did I hear a long-lost friend call my name. I hadn’t even collected a lanyard yet, my anxiety was riding high, and her greeting felt like a miracle. I do belong! I’m going to be okay. Thus began an avalanche of branching social circles, one person introducing me to two people, which led to amazing conversation, joined by another new person, evolving into this topic or that project, oh and did you meet so and so? Have you read this book? Watched this movie? I think you’d really like it. From being greeted by my friend at the opening party on Thursday night to leaving the closing party on Saturday night and finding myself in conversation with the stationed security guards who both happened to be from my home town… XOXO is people. Was people.

The biggest takeaway for me was not the speakers, nor the presentations. It was the solidarity. The recognition that we were all in this together. I can’t think of a single talk that was not itself a result of community and connection (or, in some cases, the corruption of community and the resulting disconnect). I do not recall another time where I felt so thoroughly surrounded by peers, people finding joy in their craft and peace in their creativity, be it for money or for fun or for the advancement of society. Everyone had something cool to talk about; everyone wanted to talk to you about your cool thing.

Actually, that is my biggest takeaway from the event: it was the first time in, well, ever, that I had people actively asking me questions about my work. People sought me out to talk about it. Learning what I do, they asked, “How can I help? I want to be involved in this.” Nobody’s offered to help me before. Sure, I’ve had friends casually say that I could reach out if I needed their help on something, maybe in a few months when it aligned better with their schedule, if it aligned with their personal ambitions. The people I met and talked with at XO saw the value in what I’m doing and wanted it to be in the world in a way that felt… selfless. That was humbling, in a way I’m still processing. My cup has never felt so full.

Leaving XO was hard, because I knew I was removing myself from that environment to return to spaces where I’m the one filling other people’s cups. I’m the one helping them. Now I carry those conversations with me like a chalice of Holy water from a sacred sea. I keep it on my desk. I put a small vial of it on a chain that I can wear close to my heart, a reminder of what’s out there, of what is possible. A sacred spell ingredient for what could be.

In the week following my first and last XOXO Fest, I’ve been busy. I registered a new domain name, and set up hosting and email. I signed up for a newsletter service, drafted welcome emails and templates. I got some payment processors in order, and set up a consultation with a business registration service. I’ve got a napkin-esque gameplan for the next few months on a project I’ve been working on for years, with ambitious claims of a 2025 release. And none of it feels daunting. After years of hoarding knowledge, I’m finally ready to implement. I have everything I need to get started, and the rest I can figure out along the way.

If you asked me to describe just what XOXO is as an event, I wouldn’t be able to give you any kind of concise answer. Part internet millennial homecoming, part tech industry meetup. The event describes itself as “an experimental festival for independent artists who live and work online.” But now I know the truth: XOXO is the secret sauce on the Delicious Burger of life.

XOXO was.

Was.

Now, it’s our turn. And we must appreciate everything, endlessly.

Thank you, XOXO. Thank you, Andy & Andy. Thank you. I can’t wait to look back in one, five, ten years, and to say, without a doubt, that XOXO changed my life.

Gallery

The Conference

Comings and Goings

Photowalk Meet-up

3D Shaky GIFs

First first weekend out, a Saturday spent at the Oregon Renaissance Faire. I didn’t capture much at this event, but the outfit for the fantasy-themed weekend was certainly on point! Elf ears + horns = Dryad vibes, no?

Weekend 2 was a much calmer pace on the first Sunday at Canterbury Renaissance Faire. The pointed ears saw a return, this time with fairy wings. Overal my little ren faire kit is certainly locked in!

There was plenty to see, and eat, and drink(!) at both events. I always try to get at least one horn of mead! But my drinking horn can be (and has been!) also used for something as magical as lavender-infused sparkly iced coffee or as basic as water. Turkey legs are a classic but can I recommend the lamb & rosemary meat pie as well? Perhaps a scotch egg?

There’s always quite a cornucopia of animals around at ren faires… I’ve seen circuses performed by cats and rats, raptor sanctuaries providing education on raptors like hawks, owls, and vultures, and of course the noble steads for the knights in the jousts! But if you keep a keen eye out you’ll spot lots of other little fantastic beasties tucked away in their nooks, hiding among the trinkets. And while I always have my eye out for more trinkets to add to my trinket collection, sometimes a passerby will extend their hand with a tiny trinket as a gift of admiration! I’ve started integrating these trinkets in my outfit, so that my kit reflects the adventures of ren faires past.

See you all back at the faire next year!

I woke up today with plans to post a full nude on my main OnlyFans page. A not uncommon occurrence, all things told! What I didn’t expect was to completely revise my “full nudes on the wall” policy by the end of the day. So what changed between when I first hit that Post button, and when I went back to delete it?

Honestly, nothing.

Nothing changed that hadn’t already been on my mind. But something said, you know what, just do it. Today’s the day. Who’s going to stop you? If you don’t say anything about the change, is anyone going to notice? Probably not so just do it! Make the change because it’s what you want to do, it’s where you’re at right now and, if you’ve been thinking about it this much, you’re reasoning is probably not wrong.

This year has been my lowest performing year on my OnlyFans page since I started it in 2020. And yes, as much as the economy and world politics are factors in why things have slowed down, I also know–I know–that I myself am a big part of why my revenue from the site has dipped. I hit burnout hard in 2023, not once, but twice, at least. Is it possible to have a burnout that lasts for months and months and maybe most of the year? Because… that. Oh damn, I was down bad, and there was absolutely nothing that could pull me up by those proverbial bootstraps.

Trying to celebrate my OnlyFans page’s anniversary amidst burnout

I knew I was burnt out last year, but there wasn’t much I could realistically do about it without maxing out my credit cards and sleeping it off. So I tried to kickstart my enthusiasm again, or really just to maintain my life; I went out to bars and movie nights and coffee meetups, I kept posting on my social media, I did all the “normal” things one does. I also wanted do something big for my OnlyFans page’s 3rd anniversary so we celebrated with my first wheel spin game that included spin videos, scorecards, and tons of bonuses. Wee!

In reality, I had over-designed my anniversary event in an attempt to break myself out of what I thought was a creative rut (it wasn’t). Everything looked normal on the outside but behind the scenes I was coasting, scrambling, not paying attention to much and not fulfilling my obligations to my subscribers.

Consistency is one factor of success, but so is showing up in the ways you say you will. So is doing the work people pay you to do. And I’d do the work… sort of. I’d get started on it and just… kind of… peter out, losing interest or momentum on each project just a few hours’ work shy of the finish line. “There’s always tomorrow,” I told myself. Reader, when I tell you how embarrassed I am that it’s a year later and I still haven’t sent out a couple of those prizes… oh boy.

Somehow, I always found a way to justify the delays. Something always happened “tomorrow” that interfered with the completion of “yesterday”. Construction outside, an unplanned internet outage, dead batteries, camera malfunction, THE NEWS, et cetera. Piled together like that, it was all too much to process let alone work around, and none of it was my fault.

I started to shut down. I turned away from the things that were bringing me down, saying it was “for my mental health”. Except ignoring all my social media channels is dangerous when I use those channels to promote my work. Staying offline for the day isn’t ideal when your fans are waiting on replies; hyper-fixing on optimizing the editing process isn’t great when your customers are waiting for you to actually edit and deliver their custom videos. Oops.

Eventually, I realized I hadn’t been paying attention. To any of it.

I looked back on recent months and didn’t recognize the content I’d posted. Didn’t remember shooting some of those photos. Was embarrassed over my lacklustre captions. And it was scary to realize how out of touch I was, with both myself and my work. What had I been doing with my time? I truly had no idea.

When you’re a business owner, a freelancer, or a contract worker, you have to be paying attention all the time–and let’s be honest, that’s half of where the burnout comes from. If you aren’t paying attention… you probably aren’t making any money. Your subscribers will fall off because you’re not fulfilling your promises; your engagement on social media dwindles even when you do post because you’re no longer relevant to the algorithm, and you slowly chip away at your safety net month by month, telling yourself “it’s happening to everyone; tough times all around…” Again, none of it was “my fault”.

New year, new me (and a new approach to managing both my burnout and my OnlyFans page)

I started mixing stuff up on my main OnlyFans page at the beginning of this year, baby steps when compared to my all-in anniversary celebration. I began trying new approaches to how I distribute content and how I engage with my fans. To a degree, I was grasping at straws to try to ignite that creator spark, but it was also valuable experimentation to gauge what would be engaging for my fanbase.

In one of my weekly blog-style recaps, I vulnerably shared that my sub count was the lowest it’s ever been… but I also confidently shared that this also meant it was a great opportunity to play around with how I was managing my page, and would be relying on those stalwart fans to help guide me. And I meant it!

For me, mixing up how I run my page has two goals. One, it keeps things new and interesting for me, and two, it allows me to test out new things to see how my paid subscribers respond. I’ve been running polls, asking for feedback, trying different themes, adjusting my posting schedule and post structures, and creating new methods to make the sale. So while I haven’t been active on social media throughout this year, I have been active on my pages… if not consistently then at least transparently. This meant that the people who stayed were 100% fans of me and had a personal interest in supporting me/my work.

During the lead-up to my OnlyFans page’s 3-year anniversary, I had been strongly considering raising the monthly subscription fee to match the extensive catalog of content I’d created, but my gut was telling me that doing so would ostracize a lot of those loyal fans. Yet this year, as I’ve played around with restructuring my page, a new thought has been creeping in: what if I lowered the monthly subscription price?

Initially, I bristled at the premise. If I know my page is worth more than $7 so why would I go lower?! But I’ve been digging deep on my imposter syndrome and reconnecting with one of my favourite parts of myself: my entrepreneurialism. Shifting my mindset back into business management has been planting all sorts of delicious ideas in my head about who I am as a brand, an entertainer, an artist, et cetera. This is difficult work in many ways, but I realized I’ve never had a plan when it came to my OnlyFans. Like many of us, I kind of just threw the proverbial spaghetti at the wall when I launched in 2020, but I never had a plan.

So that brings us back to today, when I randomly decided to start taking steps toward that thing I’ve been thinking about. Part of that was to acknowledge that yeah, some of the stuff I’ve posted on my page gives more access to me than I’m comfortable with for a mere $7. Looking back, that is a big part of what led to my burnout: feeling like I was not being adequately compensated for what I was publishing.

It took two hours for me to go through four years of posts and archive a bunch of stuff. I didn’t warn anyone that I was going to do that, but I did let my subscribers know that I was changing my approach, and how it would effect them. Moving forward, any nudes I do post will expire after a month or less (be real, how many people scroll back to content older than a month? They really don’t!) but hey, they’ll always be available over on that VIP page… you get me?

And that’s that. I don’t know precisely when I’ll be ready to drop the price on my OnlyFans page. But now that I do know it’s something I want to do, I’m one step closer to doing it in a way that works for me and my mental health. I can continue to strategize about how and when I want to make that bigger change of lowering my subscription fee, and what chain of events needs to occur for me to get there.

This blog post, too, is a step forward out of burnout

When was the last time I blogged, in earnest? I’ve been telling people for at least 5 years, “I think blogging is going to come back in style.” Not the fulll-force influencer Pinterest mommy blogger with the Amazon affiliate store and an MLM side hustle that I think the term “blogging” has become synonymous with… but, that older kind; the kind of blogging we did when Blogger and LiveJournal were two of the biggest platforms and none of us had any idea how perfect Google Reader was.

And, in my business education dabblings over these recent months, one thing has become clear: I am not alone in thinking blogging is poised to make a comeback. Most people are referencing it as “long-form content”. I don’t think blogging was ever specifically about the length of the post, but moreso about the intimacy of writing online, the transparency of sharing for whomever may read it. I think that in truth, that is what we are all missing from the current state of the Internet and social media.

Perhaps hypocritically, I was touting blogs as being an amazing form of content but I wasn’t ready to start blogging again myself. Not yet. When? I didn’t know. There was always a hurdle, a roadblock, something that I “needed” to do first before I could justify writing; there’s that pesky “tomorrow” again. But one thing that’s been drilled into my brain by all the webinars and business podcasts I’ve been enjoying: there’s never going to be a perfect time. So start. Start now. Start yesterday (you already did, when you started thinking about starting). But don’t wait to start tomorrow; start today.

I sat down at my desk this morning and decided to remove all my full nudes from my OnlyFans page. It sounds like a scary move but, trust the process! Now I’m ending the day by hitting publish on my first full public blog in well over a decade. And I didn’t wake up today planning to do either, but, here we are, blogging like there’s no tomorrow.

Welcome back.