Day 800
I've been writing this thing again for yet another 400 days. The first 400 were FetLife exclusive, with the other 400 days as a sort-of "phase 2" which, to be honest, should have culminated in the book release as poetic justice or sometthing, but I kept going for another 100 or so days after that.
In the last few years that I've been writing this, it's gone from me just venting about something like not getting enough sleep to threatening to active subliminal suicide messages embedded in the writing, to becoming a commentator about pretty much anything in the local kink community. And then I needed a break.
I came back to this thing 400 writing-days ago with a slightly different focus. I started telling more stories. I would comment on larger issues outside of the kink world. I would occasionally bitch about something or get analytical about some of my bigger kinks. I effectively started editorializing on a larger scale, and with a signficantly larger audience.
I tried to do other things with this little corner of the intarwubz as well. Some were interesting, some were stupid, a handfull were fucking moronic, and some that were just a good goddamned time. Kinky Mad Libs, some of the stories that eventually ended up as part of "Hold My Beer & Watch This", an open forum for discussing taboo kinks, or even a few Ask Me Anything's.
All of which I did while still being absurd and amusing to all but a few idiots without a sense of humor. And those idiots just made it funnier for those of us WITH a sense of humor.
That's before I even mention my ever-present commentary on world events, local kink community bullshit, and even making the attempt to be the voice of fucking reason when some of you people lose your goddamned minds about shit and go off like crazy townspeople chasing down Frankenstein's Monster. And I still took the time to make fun of idiots, hypocrites, and the over-sensitive naval-gazing children that seem to be running rampant around here over the past few years.
And when I need to be the voice of reason on ANYTHING... well.... that should be a good indication that you all have gone off the fucking deep end. I mean, come on... I don't know the last time someone described me or anything I do as "in moderation".
I hadn't planned on doing this. I wanted to try to see if I could keep up the energy to work on the 2nd book and hit Day 1000 without a break (except for when I'm on vacation or out of town on business), but in the past week or 2, it's really been reaching that point where I just need a break.
I'm kinda tired of wracking my brain 5 days a week for the past nearly-3-years to find something to talk about. When I first started this up again, the ideas just came out every day. I could sit down and not even think at all and 1000 words came flowing right out of my fingers. Then 2000. Then 5000. Then an 80,000 word book. For the record, that's about standard novel length.
But since the new year, I've been struggling. I've been devoid of inspiration. Nothing strikes me. I don't want to just keep writing the stories only and hold nothing back to get you motherfuckers to actually buy the next book when it comes out, but at the same time, I feel like I've been only in the "book mode" for the past few months. The problem with that is that I spend so much time thinking about what I want to write for THIS thing each day that I just don't want to think anymore to start working on actually getting the stories back out of my head (and double-check some of my more fuzzy memories from them by asking friends that were there) and onto the screen.
So I've just been feeling worn out by it. And I wanted to just take a break.
But I still couldn't. I kept going for another month or 2 and pushed thru it. I know that the quality has suffered since then. I've kinda hated just about everything that I've written this year, and judging by the lack of comments, you don't seem terribly moved by it either. Though the page hits on the blog site have been increasing every month for the past 6 and have nearly tripled since March of 2012, so you're all either getting the link from Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, or actually looking at the blog site for the full versions cause you're tired of the text-only version on Fet. But comments have dwindled to almost nothing.
And well, comments and loves are what puts the Fet version into your activity feed. It also puts it into the Friend Feed of everyone on you friends list, which then they eventually click on after seeing something different of mine getting commented on or loved by you every day, which slowly expands readership. This is kinda the basics of grassroots marketing.
Hell, 95% of the positive comments I've gotten on the book have been either in the form of private messages or in-person. And while I love those, hey guys... maybe tell OTHER people about it. I don't mean to be a dick here (or maybe I do)... but I KNOW the book was good. I wrote it. Even if I hated it after reading it through like 7 times during the writing/half-assed-self-editing-because-none-of-my-volunteer-editors-actually-edited-it-or-even-read-it process. The thing is... other people might NOT know it's good. So um... tell them? Not me?
(Oh god, kill me... I just resorted to a combination "you're doing it wrong" and self-promoting-asshattery and a request for grassroots advertising help in the same 2 paragraphs. I kinda wanna kill myself now. Sorry.)
Throw in that Fet has been a fucking ghost town for months now and I'm starting to see the tumbleweeds rolling from everyone other than the 50 Shades newbs and the asshats that feel compelled to constantly pimp their groups or events (for the record, I don't even ANNOUNCE anything. I create an event and walk away and still get 40-50 people to show up for something. Call me when you can pull that off while still being an outright dick to most people at the exact same time) or the people that do nothing but argue the administraive and protocol bullshit of different groups or Fet's Terms Of Use.
To be perfectly blunt, opening up Safari to just see that shit every time I look is just taxing. And draining. To the point that I'm not even sure if I care about cross-posting to Fet anymore. Mostly because I don't want to look at the pointless boring shit that is being posted there at this point. I just don't care.
So with all that said, I need a break. I am putting this column on indefinite hiatus. I know that I'm going to get bored soon and my brain will again start filling up with things to say and I just feel completely compelled to bring this thing back from the dead once again, but in the meantime, I need a break.
I guess 400 days is where my gas meter hits zero after all and it's time for a fill-up.
I'll still be here and I'll still be tweeting and occasionally status-updating and shit, but I'm taking a break from this one thing in particular. When the fun morning thing that you do while waking your brain up to do real work start turning into draining work before actually doing real work, it's just not worth the effort. In the meantime, I'm going to tak the time to recommit to working on the 2nd book (seriously guys, I even gave you a contest to name the next book and got exactly 1 response that wasn't even an offer for a book title. That should probably explain why I'm tired of writing this thing right now) maybe do some other minor tweaks to Hold My Beer & Watch This, and possibly work on expanding the web presence to launch an actual website with some of the better stuff there, but that still links back here for the RTOTD.
So yeah, when this comes back again, I can guarantee that I'll have changed it yet again. Because it will never remain static. Every attempt I've made it focusing this onto 1 or 2 more focused themes has been pointless. Because I'm not that focused of a person. I am random. And strange. And I do wildly unexpected shit because that's what comes natural to me. I mean... seriously. This is me we're talking about here? Or that I'm talking about.
So I'll catch you later, kids. Try to entertain yourselves without me?
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