Welcome back! It’s me, Merrick. In my last email I told you I’d be returning in a less miserable state. Which is technically true, though I am still semi-miserable. But the newsletter is back to its usual verbose state, at least.

The thing I—and a lot of the people around me—tend to forget or overlook is that since I am already chronically ill, non-chronic illnesses tend to take me 2-3x longer to recover from. I am, effectively, still sick with the flu. I shouldn’t be, but I am. I have to fight against my social conditioning that “I should be fine by now” after 10 days, and remind myself that I’m not, and that’s okay, it’s not my fault, and that continuing to treat my non-chronic illness will indeed get me over it sooner than if I pretended all’s well in the temple of Merrick.

Yes, I am muchly improved. And yet, I am still sick. It’s like I’m on day 4 or 5 yeah? Functional but dragging. I wake up every day feeling “okay” and it quickly transitions to “uncomfortable” while simultaneously people are like, “I’m glad you’re feeling better!” 😑 The fever wreaked havoc on my joints and nothing I do seems to alleviate the pain. The muscles in my back are killing me from all the stationary rest; tension in my neck has given me a week-long headache. And I’m still rebuilding my ability to digest normal foods, so most dishes that I’d typically enjoy sound like a gambit at best and disgusting at worst.

There are some silver linings in the mix (a thing one must consider when faced with frequent or lingering illness). For example, I was pushing 2-3 cups of coffee a day, and now I’ve cut back to… well, I just had my first cup since Thanksgiving day, after over a week of black and green teas. And for some reason, my skin is looking great?? I’m gonna thank the fever and sweating for that one. I’ve also been getting so much more sleep than usual, pushing 8+ hours a night. Woof! What a delight!

But it doesn’t feel fair, that I should still be this sick when others would have completely recovered. Doesn’t feel fair to have so few functional hours in the day, even on a “healthy” day. But for now, the rest is worth it, and welcome. Nature’s forceful reminder to slow the fuck down.

All the physical downtime has one additional benefit: it creates an eagerness for me to get back to doing stuff. All sorts of stuffs need doing! And I’ve had time to plan how to get it done, had the space to mentally go deep into the design of things. The forced rest gives me space to prioritize where to focus my energy, gives me time to plan those subtle factors so I can hit the ground running. I am reminded that while I’ve gotten good at focus weeks, I don’t give myself enough rest weeks throughout the year, time where I’m not taking any action but I’m just thinking about things (or not).

It’s December now, the end of the year—almost the solstice!—and things move slower this month anyway. We’re all wrapped up in wrapping up the year, wrapping up presents, traveling for or trying to avoid the holidays. So, another silver lining, I suppose, is that this illness came in right at the beginning of a slow month. It takes some of the pressure off from trying to “get well soon”. Next year is soon enough.

I’m not one for resolutions, but I do enjoy spending a crisp December day analyzing my past year and identifying what’s been working and what needs to change. While I’m not quite ready to wrap up my own 2025, I do be thinking. Maybe next year I’ll give the 8-Week Work Cycle a go, and start building in that week of rest? Anyone want to go in on this with me, and be accountability buddies that we take our sabbatical week? Could be fun!

This week, we have the return of Vibe Check (it’s been a minute!) as I muse on the concept of failure, as well as lots of things to watch, from political streams to YouTube essays to movies—including one to avoid. Also some notes on digital security, which never gets old.

☑️ Done and Done - Sat down at my desk and started dabbling in work again, catching up on some basics and also just assessing everything as the year winds down. Ate a lot of potatoes, drank a lot of tea. Spent my first functionally upright day doing some cleaning and tidying of my space, and set up a few more Black Friday purchases that came in while I was sick. Took an edible and fell deeeeeeep into some overdue spreadsheets work. Set up an account on a new sex work platform/app that seems promising. Started very very loose planning for 2026 Q1.

📋 Coming up - I’ll be sitting in on a few web presentations this week: Monday’s congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh’s Twitch stream with Brennan Lee Mulligan, Wednesday’s EPA United Town Hall of “a conversation about politics and what erotic professionals are doing to meet the moment”, and Thursday’s Pinterest Predicts 2026 Marketing Masterclass. Also in the mix is one dentist appointment for me, and one dinner with extended family as they pass through town for some minor surgery. Otherwise it’s continued rest and whatever work I have the capacity for.

This was the last full moon of the year, which made it a prime opportunity for some self-reflection (moon pun!) and release. I inadvertently spent the exact moment of peak fullness engulfed in the edible I took, which was unintentional but maybe ideal. It gave my mind plenty of opportunity to wander as I worked on updating my spreadsheets tracking fansite and content performance metrics.

This year certainly hasn’t gone to plan. I feel like I really stumbled my way through this one, still trying to regain a sense of normalcy post Covid lockdowns (yes, still). Except, my life is completely different than it was in 2019—six years ago now!—my day to day has a completely different flow. And I realized that I’m not so much trying to regain, well, anything; I’ve been completely rebuilding. Some parts of my life have stood the test of time, others not so much.

Some of those losses were deeply felt. They were hard to let go of, and perhaps I held on too long to thinking this or that would go back to the way they were Before. But some things… some things I should have already released, well before Covid turned everything upside down.

And then moving forward to this year, when I finally admitted to myself that relying on the fansite subscription model for my primary income simply wasn’t working anymore. It did, it was, and then it wasn’t. As much as I knew that wasn’t my fault, I couldn’t help but feel like it was… I should have done more promotion, should have promoted differently, on different sites. I should have done more collabs or paid marketing or ran a free page or or or. This is all funny to me, in its way, as I have been a vocal believer that the fansite bubble burst in ‘22! So regardless of what I did—or didn’t—do, why was I holding myself so accountable for failing at something? Did I even really “fail”, or did I simply hold out for too long running a business model that was no longer viable, instead of adapting to a changing market? The concepts of “should” and “should have” heavy anchors that pulled me further from success, stubbornly locking me to my discontent.

Once I finally accepted that I needed to do something different, to pivot the form of sex work I was doing or else be forced to leave the industry entirely, guess what. I’m doing really well with camming. I’m making solid money again (*cough* catching up on bills), feeling creatively inspired again, and feeling supported by my fanbase and community—both folks who’ve been around for a minute and want me to succeed, and those who are just now meeting me. And I once again have room to breathe, no longer shouldering the weight of “should.”

I feel like now more than ever, I understand the value of failure. In life, in business, in whatever. We learn from our mistakes and we can learn from our failures too, if we’re open to it. They don’t have to equal shame or even downfall. Because the sooner we can recognize that something isn’t succeeding, the sooner we can take a critical look at what isn’t working, and find a way to adapt.

🌑 The last New Moon of the year is December 19, and is an ideal time to plant seeds of intention and to start making small changes you want to carry with you into the New Year. Save the date!

🎬 Movie - I’ve been wanting to rewatch Curdled (1996) for a minute, and it fit the bill for a not-too-much post-illness watch. I first saw this as a young teen and tbh, it explains some things. I know we’re upset that Quentin Tarantino is very pro-Israel, but I wasn’t aware of that when I watched this, nor even that he was an executive producer. The lead actress, Angela Jones, was also in Pulp Fiction (1994), and Kelly Preston plays the same newscaster that appears in From Dusk ‘Til Dawn (also 1996); we see her here also reporting on the Gecko Brothers, which means this movie takes place in the same vampire-riddled universe. Don’t let Tarantino’s involvement throw you off, this is a solid little dark comedy (with zero feet).

🎬 Movie? - I like Kevin James’ comedy work, and I like Alan Ritchson’s action stuff, so I thought, hey let’s watch this unlikely team up! Reader. You do not need to watch Playdate (2025). This is a movie produced from contractual corporate obligations. The script and overall plot feel very likely to have been AI generated at some point in the process. It’s full of outdated gender cliches. Not even the fight scene of Ritchson taking on 30 to 40 highly trained 12yo assassins could hold my interest. Overall a disappointment.

🎬 Movie! - I needed some non-spreadsheet based entertainment and randomly pulled up Caught Stealing (2025). It’s also billed as a dark comedy which is my jam. But… it felt full tragedy to me? Austin Butler’s lead caught up in Horrible Thing after Horrible Thing, never seeming to get ahead nor escape the circumstances of his past. Was this a, “Men, Go To Therapy” movie? or simply an honest portrayal of corrupt systems that lead to lower class oppression? If this was a Guy Ritchie movie it would have been funny, but it’s by Darren Aronofsky, which should have been my first clue. Stellar and unexpected cast tho.

🎵 Listening - I do enjoy a good sunny Saturday afternoon spent with the windows open and a bit of City Pop streaming through the speakers, though I’ve never took the time to explore the genre’s origins. Then one of my favourite Bluesky users, artisan Takuo Matsuzawa, posted this thread about Eiichi Ohtaki’s A Long Vacation. I was delighted to read a bit about the album’s cultural impact and importance from someone who grew up with it, and then dive into the music itself. I know it’s about the halcyon days of summer, but there is a bit of a jingle bell vibe to that first track that makes this not entirely inappropriate for December? I was already familiar with the last song via a cover by KAYO from POLYSICS!

📚 Reading - Needing mental stimulation but not wanting anything with copious white space (like webtoons etc) due to light sensitivity, I opened my Kindle app, wherein I have years’ of free ebooks accumulated from Amazon’s First Reads program. I skimmed a few synopses and settled on Under a Gilded Moon, a little historical mystery with a tinge of romance set against the Appalachian mountains. Good so far, with some descriptions of food I really want to recreate!

☕ Drinking - I keep a few herbs on hand in my cupboard for blending with loose leaf teas, so my recent illness has me digging out those jars for some DIY herbal medicine. I’ve been adding a scoop of tulsi aka Holy Basil to my evening chamomile. Is it helping? I’d like to think so; at the very least I don’t think it’s hurting.

🏢 Legendary architect Frank Gehry passed a few days ago. Most of us are familiar with his most notable work, The Guggenheim museum, but he also designed one of my personal favourite landmarks in the Pacific Northwest, the MoPOP in Seattle! I’ve always loved the amorphous, lava lamp-like fluidity he brought into his designs, but the way he played with static shapes and contrasting textures in unexpected ways was also delightful. Here’s a nice podcast interview with Gehry, and exploration of his life and work.

🤦 I’m slowly working my way through this 2-hour YouTube video about tech fascists keep co-opting Star Trek, and all the ways they get it wrong. (Source: video essaying Jessie Gender on Bluesky)

📱 Wired published a very solid little Guide to Digital Opsec for Teens. I love a good opsec/infosec guide! This is super straightforward and basically required reading for both conscientious teens and parents, but also very worthwhile for adults and their parents. I’ve always been quite thankful my mom has never had any interest in being on Facebook. (Source: Wired security & investigations editor Andrew Couts on Bluesky)

🖼️ One of my favourite things about photography is that as an artist, a photographer is largely at the whim of the scene before them… but that doesn’t mean they/we don’t have an eye of exactly what we want to photograph. You gotta admire the dedication.

Well we’ve done it again. Another email! How many has it been? I keep saying I’m going to mix up the format but I haven’t sat down and spent the time on that yet. Maybe that’ll be a good end-of-year project… as if I don’t have enough other things I need to make sure to put a bow on before the clock strikes midnight. 😅 Some people make New Years Resolutions, I guess I make Year’s End Resolutions?

It’s the time of year where there’s all-day traffic jams and everyone’s on edge, so remember not to take anything personally. Unless it is, in which case you can swing by the farm supply store for some coal. We love an easy gift.

xox,