Welcome back, Reader. Did you accomplish what you set out to do last week? Because, I did not. Ha! But I had a pretty solid week nonetheless. Tbh I hit a big mental wall, like some kind of weird combination of decision fatigue and productivity burnout. But, it’s not that I wasn’t being active or productive… I just couldn’t focus on the things I “needed” to do. Usually when this happens to me, it’s because there’s some seemingly innocuous thing that’s taking up space in my brain, some 5min task that I’ve been avoiding. Like when you want to have a snack but nothing sounds good… but you definitely do want a snack… but, what tho?? It’s annoying. I’m not sure I figured out what my snack brain was focused on this week, maybe the Everything going on just had me feeling pulled in many directions.

But also, my Monday Mondayed hard and I went into power saving mode for the rest of the day, taking some space to rest and regulate so that I could have a pleasantly productive Tuesday… and then my Wednesday was thrown out of sync because of my friend’s birthday (no complaints, love that guy), Thursday was the dumbass bill passing, and then Friday was semi-functional again… so… maybe I have perfectly valid reasons my brain was having a hard time clocking in this week. Still, a decent week (despite the Everything).

Let’s take a minute to acknowledge that it’s merrick:confidential’s two month anniversary! and I just want to say how much I am enjoying writing this! It’s been gratifying to have a place to muse out loud and at length. Also… shout out to those who have subscribed to the paid Ad-Free version of this newsletter!! Tysvm!! I’ve been very appreciative to hear from y’all when something vibes, or just that you’re enjoying the read in general. Even though it has been two months of weekly emails, I’m consistently surprised with how long it takes me to write these, as I tend to spend a solid 6 hours working on each newsletter. That’s a full day of work for me! It’s worth it, because I’m enjoying it, and you’re enjoying it, but you know, props to the newsletter writers out there; I can see why people try to make this their full-time gig. I’d absolutely like to be doing more writing, but at just shy of 60 subscribers, I’m not sure this email will take over my work schedule. But time will tell. 😉

What I also find interesting is how much I think about the newsletter throughout the week, even if I’m not actively working on it. I think oh, would this be an interesting link to share? Is this a good article? Wow that was a really inspiring quote, maybe I’ll share it with my newsletter. And I kind of love that, love how much I’m by proxy thinking about you. So, as you go about your week, please keep in mind that I’m thinking about you, and I hope you’re having a good week, or at least making it through mostly unscathed, and I’m going to try to take a picture of something good in the week ahead so I can share it with you.

This week’s newsletter covers bodybuilding as a mindset, planning and scheduling for content creators, and a whole bunch of other random stuff (there’s even a duck). Let’s do this.

☑️ Done and Done - Biz coaching group sesh, multiple live talks re: age verification laws, made cookies and got dinner w/a friend for his birthday, acknowledged my cornsnake Tanis’ 14th hatchday, had a virtual tea sesh with a biz buddy, kept the doomscrolling to a minimum, exercised a lot to offset the nervous energy, did a bunch of scheduling/calendar work to help me feel in control, got my dog super heckin’ high on anti-anxiety meds to “celebrate” the “holiday”

📋 Coming up - I’m OOT Fri-Mon to visit my mom, so the week ahead is just preparing for that. Thusly, the usual mix of editing, queueing, continuing to implement/refine scheduling goals… and prepping the next newsletter… and packing. There is another presentation on age verification, coming up on Thursday, and it features several adult industry legal types; strongly recommended.

Damn man just @ me next time.

If you’ve had a gym phase in the last five years or have any interest in bodybuilding, chances are you know who Cbum a.k.a. Chris Bumstead is. TL;DR he’s the six-time winner of Mr. Olympia Classic Physique and has one of the most award-winning physiques in modern men’s bodybuilding. Whether I’m in the gym or not, I love bodybuilding and strength training, because it very much is about the mindset. Sure, you’re chasing results, you’re chasing growth, but without the mindset… bro, it just ain’t gonna happen.

I came across this talking head video of Cbum on Instagram, and thought he dropped some serious truths during this little 3min car ride. I’ve shared a few more highlights below, but you should watch the full video. Regardless of what career you’re in or path you’re on, what he’s speaking to is pure truth: no one is ever going to be able to give you the secret to your own success, it comes from within, it comes from sheer willpower to better yourself, from knowing what you, specifically and only you, need to get there.

I think bodybuilders get a bad rap because their work is “pointless” or "vain” but IMO it’s phenomenal to observe not just what the human body is capable of doing and being, but what the human heart is capable of committing to. Body strong, mind stronger. And like entrepreneurship, writing a book, releasing an album, or running a marathon, bodybuilding isn’t just about your end goal. It’s also about your commitment to achieving that goal, and the work you do within yourself, the ways you fight with and against your nature, to make it happen. It’s about the journey, and the way we’re changed by it.

I spent a day this week diving deep on scheduling and planning. To me those are different things; planning in the overarching approach to something, and scheduling is dialing in the minutiae. It was a very satisfying work session that, yes, was partially just me wanting to feel in control of something for a few hours. But it also feels like a weight off my shoulders to have a plan to follow. Like spending one day a week to plan and prep your meals for the days ahead, it means I won’t have to think too hard about what I’m posting or when to post it. At least, that’s the goal; having only just devised this plan, the next step is implementing it.

I sat down and thought long and hard 😏 about the trends I’ve noticed for when people interact with my fansite pages, and what I know about my fans. Not deep data analysis, because it feels more authentic to me to base some aspects of my business on vibes (okay and maybe some autistic-tier pattern recognition). I drafted a loose 31-day calendar with 10-13 content drops throughout the month. Writing that number down felt scary, like it’s not enough. But things have moved away from daily posting for me, and I’m very much a quality over quantity girl. And after I laid that out in a calendar grid, it actually looks like a very busy calendar! Especially when you consider that’s 10-13 drops/sets of unique content.

I took that 31-day schedule and drew it out to a full year, restarting at the beginning of every month and adjusting to accommodate the days of the week, major holidays, personal holidays, etc. My aim is to do 1-2 larger drops a month, offset by a handful of more casual posts, content throwbacks, etc. Keep things loose (ayoo), keep it random and personal, but just build in consistency.

Then I went through and added in (promotional, not personal) social media posts, based on the content drops on my sites. If a week has a big release scheduled, I noted which social posts should be advance promotions for that content to give people time to sign up before the drop. Other times, social posts are earmarked as casual, or throwback, or focused on some dumb holiday (National Rubby Ducky Day is a personal fave, iykyk).

None of this is a set-in-stone schedule, and it’s very much a work in progress, and I’m going to try very hard to work within this structure but to also be completely accommodating of change if/when it’s not working for me. I’ve basically spent these years running my pages by the seat of my underpants, so doing this kind of planning feels huge for me. After four and five years of running my fanpages, I definitely have my foundation laid for this work. This schedule is a loose framework built on top of that foundation, so that when I sit down at my desk to work, I know where the drywall goes. I know which rooms have chandeliers (big drops) and which have recessed lighting (smaller posts). And it leaves me more room for direct interaction with subscribers, for spontaneity if I want to post something different than what’s scheduled. In time, it’ll help me create workback schedules for my bigger releases so that I have plenty of time to shoot and edit, instead of squeezing everything in to the days before and having themed content with a single day’s relevancy. 😅

Here’s an example: Valentine’s Day 2026 is on a Saturday. Most people will get paid that Friday, and will be planning to use that paycheck to fund date nights, flowers, and last-minute gifts. While it’s very likely that people will be open to discretionary spending early in the week, weekends themselves are bad for large releases because people are busy with families and friends; waiting too late in the week butts up again people realizing they really should buy that gift before Friday. So, if I decide to release a new photoset or video for Valentine’s Day, I need to have it ready to drop by Monday the 9th at the latest. I don’t work on content during the weekend, so everything will need to be edited and queued up by Friday the 6th, which means shooting earlier in the week (I prefer to focus on one large release at a time), and that means having the shoot itself planned by mid-to-late January to leave time for for buying any new lingerie, set pieces, or props (“props”). I would also need to be promoting the release early i.e. the week before, sending subscribers some teasers from the day of the shoot, and posting social promo later in the week as I wrap up editing. I can then plan to re-release older holiday-specific content that weekend—or to eschew it all together—as a way to connect with subscribers who aren’t celebrating Valentine’s Day for whatever reason.

Say it with me now: OOF. Without that breakdown, I probably wouldn’t start thinking about Vday until February 1 (and by then it’s too late!). And, I hope obviously, that kind of production schedule is not realistic for 10-13 content drops per month! But 1-2, when you’ve done that much planning in advance and you’re not just going all willy-nilly about it? Absolutely doable! Especially when you’re shooting B-roll content to publish seperately… Does everyone run their content business like this? No, but, some absolutely do, and I want to be one of them.

I think the current political climate really has me wanting to just commit to the work and go hard at it. And sure, maybe that’s just a little bit out of spite. But like I’ve said before, the fansite bubble has burst, and it’s really going to be the people who put in the labor and the dedication to run a business who will last the longest, and have the healthiest mindset around the work. And I hope the fans and subscribers reading this will see this approach as a boon to what you in turn get to share and experience, and not purely as commodification of the interaction. Okay? Okay.

This all really has me wanting to get one of those huge wall-sized calendars of a full year so that I can just… map all this shit out and have a visual on it. For now doing it all on a dedicated Google Calendar will suffice. But please, do let me know if you have any project management apps to recommend!!

And if you’re a content creator, spicy or no, and you’d like to talk about this more, please definitely hit reply and let’s chat! I’m totally open to questions or conversation on this, especially if I can maybe help you find some scheduling relief in your own content business, or hear how you’re working with similar structures and systems. 💜 Plus it’s just extra gratifying to chat/commiserate/share space with our peers right now. (P.S. please do not DM me your question on socials! Just hit reply! I hate typing in that tiny DM window.)

📚 Reading #1 - William Gibson’s The Peripheral is on sale for $1.99 (on Amazon and elsewhere) through July 10. I read this book a couple years ago and it is such a disturbingly accurate discussion of recent/ongoing events that I had to keep checking to see when it had been published.

📚 Reading #2 - Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim Book 2, Kill the Dead, is also on sale for $1.99. Imagine John Constantine in a slightly more raunchy, back pocket pulp fiction format, and that’s Sandman Slim (Book 1 is ~$8 fwiw).

🎵 Listening - As soon as I heard the lead single The Velvet Line from Milk Talk’s self-titled album, I was hooked. This album… you guys, it’s so fucking smooth. So smooth! I love city pop for those really just chill but upbeat vibes, and this has me thinking back to some of the earlier stuff from Swedish pop group The Cardigans (one of my all-time favourite bands). Also the album sounds really good in headphones.

🎞️ Movie #1 - Heads of State (2025) ended up being a rather good movie to watch on the 4th of July, I started it at about 9pm and the loud sections timed perfectly with nearby fireworks. The plot was very predictable but it was fun (does Bezos know he funded this?). Do you think the music attached to Jack Quaid’s big action scene was low-key a Star Trek reference? Also I really like that Priyanka Chopra was the action lead on this, and that Cena and Elba were her “can’t believe that actually worked” backups.

🎞️ Movie #2 - July 5th still needed some loud action distraction from the big booms outside, and that ended up being The Old Guard 2 (2025). Buuut tbh I found the pacing off, as the momentum would really drop off in between the big action scenes. Still, I’ll watch any action movie that pits Charlize Theron against Uma Thurman!! Also I really really want to know more about Theron’s training routine, because she is always, always goals. Old Guard 3 when…?

☕ Drinking - It’s the time of the year where I’m either drinking my coffee black when it’s freshly made, or I’m adding creamer and ice cubes to chilled coffee. I brew with a large Chemex pour-over system (Coffee snob alert! Yes it’s true!), and I try to set aside at least two jars of coffee from each pot so as to not drink the whole thing. In the winter I reheat the coffee in the microwave, but why do that in the summer when the first thing I do every day is turn on the AC? I could say I drink it in a mason jar for the aesthetic, but it’s honestly just because that’s how I portion it out, and I’m lazy.

🚫 Sweden has started its controversial Nordic model-style moderation of digital sex work, which treats any engagement with a digital sex worker—say, ordering a custom video, asking a model to sell photos of a specific body part, paying for Snapchat access, very average and innocuous things—as a form of sex trafficing. This is horrible, and is why the Nordic Model a.k.a. End Demand model is bad and doesn’t help anyone. Read more: here’s how OnlyFans is handling the change for its Swedish creators, and here’s how ManyVids is handling it. Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid.

📰 Recently-launched news outlet Unbreaking is poised to do good and important work in tracking “how the administration is breaking the government, and what it means for all of us.” In 2024 I saw Unbreaking founding contributor Erin Kissane give this talk at XOXO about her work with the grassroots Covid Tracking Project in 2020 and it moved me to tears. If you’re a clever sort, have expertise in any of their tracked topics, and are feeling pulled to positive community action, here’s how to contribute your time and skills to Unbreaking.

👽 RIP Mark Snow, composer of the theme for The X-Files and thusly a core part of my youth.

💾 Holy shit, it’s happening. I guess I’m going to have to finally get an AppleTV subscription.

✨ This particular post quoted below was part of a slightly longer thread about the logic behind changing your pricing structure when you add more to what you offer as a business, but a couple people took it out of context to read that I support genAI as a form of art. AND TO BE CLEAR, I do not, but I recognize how I phrased that ambiguously. It’s just… if you’re trying to explain to someone the ins and outs of pricing structures, using that opportunity to also yell at them that they’re doing their art wrong and are a loser will result in any sound advice falling on deaf ears. A digital artist at best… a thief and a hack in reality, and certainly, certainly not A Photographer. Sadly, genAI isn’t going anywhere, so. One battle at a time!

I know I’m not the only one who feels like we’re caught in a news cycle of misery and despair. But! I implore you to try to not avoid the news or current events entirely… let’s talk about it a little, let’s take a moment to acknowledge the outrage we’re all feeling, and then move on to the next part of our day. Maybe even let that anger guide you to something that feels productive? It’s not fun to sit with the bad stuff, but it’s isolating to try to process bad things alone. Community is built on shared experiences, good and bad. And your community needs you to be present; your community wants to help you.

I’m going to try to make sure the newsletter happens on time next week, but, no guarantees! The Beehiiv app is kind of iffy on both my phone or tablet, but I’m sure I can pull it off by the end of Sunday and keep my weekly publishing streak on Beehiiv (I’m very motivated by gamification features lol). Oh and, as promised: duck! TWO ducks, actually! Lovely.

xox,