Welcome back, friendly reader. We’ve made it through another week; lookit us go. 😬

If you’re a perpetual “saving this for a special occasion” type of person, I encourage you to knock that shit off and start enjoying the things you have access to, without guilt or shame. I’m very serious.

I have a “nice” candle I’d set aside for when I was doing specific weekly admin/accounting work, but after getting caught on that and moving it to a once-a-month schedule, I kept forgetting my Nice candle and it wasn’t getting much use. A couple weeks ago I started burning it while I work on this newsletter on Saturdays. Yay!

The scent of the candle isn’t particularly notable, but it’s poured into a very nice simple glazed ceramic cauldron, which is what makes it Nice to me. And with the autumn equinox right around the corner (on Monday!) burning a little candle in a cauldron just feels good. And that’s the whole point of it. I like looking at it, it makes me feel like an adult to burn a “nice” candle, and it enhances my weekly routine/ritual of writing to you all. Such a simple way to improve my week (and my desk) as opposed to letting it gather dust and waiting for that mythical “someday”!

Similarly, I bought a little case of strawberries from the grocer recently and forgot about them for a few days (like, literally 3-4 days, not that long) and when I went to prep some for a bowl of yogurt, maybe 1/3 of them had gone soft or started to mold. Alas! So some Nice Things do come with a literal expiration date. 😅

Which is to say… if you dally too long, you lose access to the Nice Thing, and then you become disappointed not just with the Thing but with yourself for letting that moment/opportunity pass you buy. By enjoying the Nice Things you have access to without holding onto the concept of them too tightly, you both teach yourself that you deserve nice things, and that those nice things are so frequent that you don’t have to “save” them for a special occasional.

Some Things, like the candle, it helps to pair with an existing thing as a way to give oneself permission to enjoy it… I can light this candle because I’ll be working on something while it burns. But like the strawberries, sometimes when you bring Nice Things into your life, it becomes your responsibility to enjoy them. (I swear, this is literally about using/eating/enjoying objects in your home but yeah, I suppose this can absolutely be applied to greater elements of one’s life… work opportunities, spontaneous opportunities, friends you don’t talk to often, et cetera.)

Because otherwise we’re all staring at headlines and social posts that look like this:

And that’s no good.

So go enjoy your Nice Things! Go on, git!

☑️ Done - I had totally forgotten I had signed up for a niche masterclass from one of my fave sex work educators/mentors, which was an intense 2 hours of information and psychology, oof. Spent most of the week focused on getting back into camming, as well as dealing with some monstrous EDS-induced TMJ and related headaches. The dryer half of my stacking W/D started making a Bad Sound back in January and I never got it repaired or replaced, but now the washer half isn’t draining properly so will I finally repair it, bring someone in to repair it, or replace it entirely? Only time (and budget) will tell.

📋 To Do - More camming, more adapting my live/work space to be cam-friendly without feeling cluttered, wrapping up September content on my fansites, working on rebuilding a decent cam playlist, maybe even getting some laundry done (and put away).

I wish I could remember where I heard this quote from… I wrote it down on Monday so most likely one of the business newsletters I’m subscribed to? I thought it was an interesting reminder that you don’t need to “master” something in order to utilize it well. But I think, removed from context, it’s open to a lot of different interpretations, all of them interesting.

It reminds me of the Arthur C. Clark quote, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” You don’t know how the technology works, but it does work, and that benefits you. That’s the fruit. But someone somewhere made the technology itself; the roots.

And obviously, it behooves us as members of a society to have some semblance of awareness on how certain things work—politics, for example—so that we can easily identify when they aren’t working and we’re not gaining any fruits. Ahem. But a lot of things and systems, we don’t need to understand… I think of the movie The Menu (2023) was a really good example of that. Some of the dinner guests’ enjoyment of the food they were served was lost in their entitlement to the process of how it was made; the food had lost its magic.

You can also apply this premise to business, if you’re in the position to outsource or hire contractors. I know a lot of content creators hate editing their videos, and I’d hazard a guess that it’s one of the most commonly outsourced forms of work within the creator economy. The creator trusts the editor to fully understand the roots of the editing process in order for the creator to harvest its fruits.

Am I very capable of figuring out a lot of things on my own? Yes. Am I pretty good at picking up new skills and knowledge that is applicable to very specific situations? Indeed I am. But is it the best use of my time to dig through all that dirt to fully understand the roots, or is there someone out there who has already done that work, and I can maybe benefit from the fruits of their shared knowledge? Magic 8-Ball says, signs point to yes. But sometimes, sometimes, it is really satisfying to get your hands dirty and figure shit out on your own.

Fruits or roots, take your pick.

Okay so, I’m camming again. Mic drop lol. And I wanna dig into it a bit because I think the whole thing of me getting back into live cams is really interesting.

I know I’ve said a few times that the spicy fansite bubble has burst, that it happened a few years ago once people had to start returning to the office and things have slowly petered out since then. There just isn’t the engagement that we had in 2020-2021, when people were always online and bored and interacting with posts and DMs almost immediately. What used to be part of people’s daily routines moved to being one to two times a week, only on weekends, maybe once a week, until they just stopped visiting the fan sites altogether and subscriptions ran out. Of course, there are a few exceptions… but those few exceptions (as lovely as they are) are no longer sufficient for sustaining income as a content-focused sex worker.

There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, because pivots are inevitable and keeping an open mind about the work we do and how we do it is how we make sure our bills are paid. So then the question becomes, if not fansites, what’s next for the online sex work industry? What’s next for me?

As I considered my history within the industry as well as what kind of work I myself enjoy doing, the answer felt apparent. The thing that I liked about fan sites was the engagement and direct interaction, connecting with people personally and intimately. And while I have enjoyed my work on text-focused sites, the payouts are low for the amount of creative labor and focus required, plus there is a lot of nuance and personality lost in holding text-only interactions. So what was “next” for me personally wasn’t anything new or particularly innovative, but was instead returning to my roots as a camgirl.

I’ve spent the past two weeks researching and organizing myself to prepare for this shift. The goal is not to completely change my business or how I work, but to augment it and enhance the system, or rather, the ecosystem, of the work I do and how I create and distribute it. I’m hoping that by interacting with new audiences on cam sites, I’ll draw new followers into my social media and fanpages, creating a cycle of live interactive content to longtail viewership/fandom that then turns back into people seeking immediate interactions and intimacy.

Now the best way to learn is by participating so of course I’ve been doing “research” 😏 going onto cam sites and interacting like a customer would, taking notes when I see something working well for a model that I might be able to apply to my own live cam room. But I’ve also been talking with cam models, getting their advice and guidance from the trenches, as well as doing plenty of more traditional research for getting started and learning each platform’s best practices. This means a ton of notes, a ton of screenshots, a ton of bookmarks, and yes, even a few spreadsheets.

It’s true that a lot has changed since I first started camming over 20 years ago… the tech is both more accessible and more beginner friendly, and the accessibility of information and guidance has improved through social media and sites like Reddit. I would also say the expectations of what it means “to cam” have shifted. When I started, you were expected to do a lot more for a lot less, so I’m glad to see the tipping culture has changed, empowered by improvements platforms’ functionality as well as the most prominent change of all: tip activated wearables and sex toys i.e. that ubiquitous pink antennae and its ilk. We have come so far with sex+tech!

In the past, I’ve gotten really burnt out on camming, so I can understand why I’ve been so avoidant of it for all these years. It can be really difficult to put yourself out there and to be so visible, remaining in a positive headspace despite the people that will inevitably come in and give you negative feedback or hold expectations over you. But all forms of sex work require a really positive and optimistic mindset, as well as a lot of personal fortitude. Taking time away is a good thing; rest is a good thing. I’d like to think that all of my combined years in sex work plus all of my years in traditional retail work have taught me a lot about maintaining a healthy mindset as well as personal boundaries both for my mental and my physical health.

I’m only a few days back on cam at this point, but it’s like riding a bicycle. I’m reminding myself that the goal isn’t to show up and as a Perfect 10 on a fancy stage, it’s to show up as myself. To learn and adapt as I go, and figure out along the way how to best respond to this moment, both in the economy of sex work and in my own career. Yeah my set up is messy, my promotions are nonexistent, and I’m constantly fiddling with settings. And that’s okay! It may be true that I have experience with this, but when I consider how things have changed since I last went live in this way, some amount of learning curve is to be expected.

There’s a lot of different ways to be a sex worker, and there’s a lot of different ways to be a camgirl(/camboy/camwhore/camwhathaveyou). At this point, there’s not a lot of things that I haven’t done in this industry and it’s interesting to see how my own work has evolved over the years, and how work that I did 5, 10, 20 years ago informs the work that I do now. It’s interesting to observe my own evolution within the industry as much as how the industry has changed… to chart how my career has moved through these different stages and responded to different challenges, as well as what facets of this work I find myself drawn to… or drawn back to.

And so far, it feels pretty good to be back.

🎵 Listening - Thursday opened with a Bandcamp listening party for Igorrr’s new album, Amen, and if that first listen wasn’t itself a holy experience…! I’m glad I put my good headphones on for it, because it’s a beautiful album and triggered my auditory-tactile synesthesia in all the right ways. Also fair warning but Igorrr is… not for everyone… there’s a lot of literal screaming and breakbeats and also chickens (Igorrr really loves his chickens) mixed in with the dark baroque vibes.

☕ Eating - Having now tried both the Oreo Reese’s cookie and the Reese’s Oreo cup, I can definitely say that of the two, the Reese’s cup with white chocolate and Oreo bits is definitely the better of the two. The Oreo cookie is basically just peanut butter flavoured which is… fine, but not very interesting.

👕 Wearing - Camming again means not wearing clothes that leave indents in my skin from seams or elastics, which means I’m just casually wearing silk slips and robes around on the days I plan to go live. Years ago I won a (no longer available?) cashmere robe from Nadaam in an IG giveaway and I’m always excited to swap out my upcycled sari silk robe for my cashmere one when the seasons shift. Issa whole mood.

🍜 Eating - Soup. Sooouuuuup. Not only are we leaning back into soup season, but my TMJ has been in overdrive this past week. I’ve been clearing out a few “emergency” quarts of soup from the freezer, making way for a new rotation while giving my jaw a break from chewing (such a hassle… soups are clearly a time-saver).

💸 I’ve seen this pointed out a few places and have reposted thusly but wanted to reflect the sentiment here: if in protest you’re cancelling your subscriptions to corporate entertainment entities like Disney or Spotify or what have you, it would be very cool of you to redirect those funds to a creator. Go subscribe to a Patreon, set up recurring tips on your fave’s Ko-Fi page, support someone on their GoFundMe, you get the idea. Oh and, go get a library card, and then ACTUALLY USE IT. Libraries also have DVDs and power tools and kitchen equipment and all sorts of cool stuff now, in addition to, you know, the books.

🔞 I know I said I wanted to write something more in-depth about all the age verification laws and content restrictions that seemingly “came out of nowhere” a couple months ago, but that all escalated so quickly it became too much for me to tackle. I have since found the excellent newsletter, Not Safe For Who? by Ana Valens, which focuses on the intersection of sex censorship and lewd content/entertainment. It’s nice to see someone doing deep dives on how this type of censorship is unfolding and effecting people/industries outside of traditional porn.

🦋 An old mate of mine from the OG days of blogging, Rhys Wynne recently released a WordPress plugin that grabs a random older post from your WP blog and posts it to your Bluesky account. Because blogs aren’t dead, we just have to change how we use—and talk about—them. Grab the Revive to Sky WP Plugin here.

🐈 Another long-time friend, Monarkie, recently released his first game. The premise is simple—you’re a cat trying to get to your favourite box—and the stakes are low. I mean, that all sounds like a pretty ideal bit of kid-friendly escapism to me. Download A Cat Game on Itch.io.

🕹️ Do you invert the controls on video games? Your reasoning behind inverting—or not—has less to do with your hours logged in a flight sim and more to do with your ability to mentally rotate objects in space, according to this study that was actually aided by the pandemic lockdown. Neither is “more correct” btw; it’s kind of like being left-handed.

🤭 Following up on last week’s link about horror author Gretchen Felker-Martin getting dropped by DC Comics for her comments about the death of certain right-wing Christian influencers, this statement by the author:

Monday the 22nd is the autumn equinox proper, which means I’ll be leaning fully into fall vibes. There’s lots of transition occurring for me alongside the change of seasons; perhaps for you too? I hope it’s comfortable change, or at the least, necessary change that will lead to future comfort. I say to myself as much as to you. 😉

Change isn’t always fun, but it is sometimes necessary. Keep an eye out for how it’s occurring within your community(/ies), and whether you can step in to help tend the roots of change or if there’s a way you can support those who are doing the work So that you can enjoy the fruits. Expected or not, change is always best weathered together.

And burn the nice candle, dammit; the night is dark and you deserve the comfort of its light.

xox,