Blogging has changed how I feel about my work.

(I am an adult content creator; this started as a small rant to friends but grew by itself until I felt the need to put it here!)

I want to reiterate that I really do enjoy my work. It's responsible for almost everything I have in life, why I'm not homeless or stuck in a relationship that isn't good for anyone. It's why I have food and water and a safe place to rest my head at night. But I was definitely more passionate with camming than I have been with making clips. With camming, my pride for my work came from that one on one interaction, the customers who genuinely appreciated what I did. With clips, I don't have that one-on-one validation. Instead, it's just me and, when I'm not socially isolating /and/ choose to share my work, fellow clip makers. But it didn't intrinsically feel like something to be prideful over, just something to get me through life.

Due to the increasingly alarming political climate and my general irritation at constantly being tracked online, having ads shoved down my throat, and the doomscrolling state of social media, I abandoned it all in favor of the 'indie' web.
*Note: By indie web I'm talking about the non-commercialized web, including some blogs, personal websites, and forums.*
Blogging has lead me down an interesting path this last week, exploring my old love for writing, along with taking a couple swings at web designing as a creativity exercise.

But I've also been reading a lot of fantastic blogs, and it's left me feeling very excited about the ways I can incorporate that spirit and energy in my work. A not-insignificant amount also did youtube, and seemed to feel similarly about the two mediums. And when I came up with my most recent ripoff video, it's what I felt while creating the preview and cover art. I loved that feeling, of putting more effort in to see something I was /interested/ and /passionate/ in come to life. That's not to say I'm going to ignore what makes me money, in fact I'll be doing that within the categories my customers like. Quantity>quality has done wonders for my success in work, and I won't be abandoning it anytime soon. But if I can just, channel that passion and interest into making clips more often, I'll feel more content with my life and inevitably turn up the dial on the quality of my output.

This newfound passion and interest (and unlearning the learned social habits I had from social media in favor of genuine interaction by interacting with a number of strangers) has made me much more interested in connecting with fellow of clip creators, and as a whole being involved in the community. I naturally lean towards self-isolation, so this want is quite scary, but I did well enough socially during my camming era! To connect with others over our shared /craft/, to appreciate what each other do, it's worth it.

Speaking of passion, I'm already generating a lot of good ideas for both the present and the future. In terms of the present, I'd like to keep pushing my video editing/acting/ideas to new levels, so I can keep making things I'm proud to show. In a much more future sense, I can't help but imagine making my own webpage for work. Obviously with links to buy my content or join my LF, but also sillier things you'd find on the 'indie' web, like a page just for my favorite fellow creators or specific videos if I find them inspiring (obviously with explicit permission by said creators!). I can understand the argument that I'd just be driving traffic /away/ from my site, but frankly it'd be more of a passion project than a legit way to market and I really wouldn't expect that much traffic from actual customers.

You have to make bad stuff to make good stuff, and I think you have to make a lot of okay stuff that you don't really care about before you can make more good things you love. Maybe that can be my new year resolution. To a year of passion and interest, creating and connecting!