So, huh, it’s a year to the day since I last posted on my blog. I don’t think I’m the only one on the internet guilty of this. I used to be a prolific blogger but social media stole it all.
Although the truth is, over the last year I’ve stepped back from porn and tried to build a different life for myself. Because I was burnt out and, almost 20 years in, totally out of ideas. I was also having health issues as a result of 25 years sitting at a computer.
End of August last year my spouse and I bought a new house and moved to a different town. We’d been in the old place since 1999 so I had to pack up 19 years worth of crap. I had to leave my little office where I’d first bought a PC and built my porn empire. There was a lot of sorting, a lot of giving stuff away and waaaay too much cleaning and gardening. Also, I realized I’m a hoarder of books, letters and documents. They all came with me into my new office, where I painted the wall purple.
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We moved ourselves and my hip is fucked now because of it. It took six months to sell the old house. There’s still things in boxes.
But I love where we live now. It’s got a large artist community and it’s a beautiful place to be. I’ve made more space in my life for painting, reading and non-porn creative writing.
I’ve done my best to take a mental break from porn, politics and the internet. Truth is, the whole thing has become pretty soul destroying. Beyond the trolls and Nazis, the internet isn’t the free place it used to be for porn. I got tired of the constant fight against censorship, of losing what few spaces were left to express sexuality. There was the UK plans to introduce their ridiculous age restriction laws, Google relentlessly giving all traffic to Pornhub, FOSTA-SESTA, the end of Tumblr and the ongoing squeeze of social media censorship. Even Twitter is almost gone as a porn-friendly space. Add to that the infighting I see among left-leaning sex-positive people and I was over it. I just couldn’t face trying to work in an environment where every step is a struggle, where my business is always a second-class citizen, where the only way I can get any traffic is if I have a PR whiz and a bunch of contacts in the mainstream media working for me.
So I haven’t filmed. I haven’t written blog posts. I took Twitter off my phone and didn’t post on FB much. I’m still happily running Bright Desire and I’m licensing films from other filmmakers who have made some great stuff. But overall, I’ve just taken a break.
I’m still taking that break. I’m only back because fucking Vimeo has just deleted my account and I need those videos for traffic. They’re embedded all over the place and it will take several days of work to replace them. I am too tired and old for this shit.
In any case, that’s where I’ve been. That’s what I’m doing. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
Image via Wikimedia Commons