[Current Mood | creative ]

[Listening To | not Ed Sheeran, that's for sure ]

Good morning, world. Yesterday’s sun is gone and it’s another gray morning. Shawshank took down the blackout curtains and the window screen, eliminating Podrick‘s bedroom hyperfixation, so we had a relatively tame/quiet morning. Our crows are out in the yard, cawwing and pecking at their wheatypuffs and whatever kitty-kibble they didn’t eat up yesterday.

With the blackout shades removed and the window open to the light, I’m back to streaming in the glorious natural light of the bedroom. I was somewhat worried I would need to do a lot of fucking about with my lighting before I was happy, but things worked out fabulously. I actually stumbled on some old stream highlights just the other day, from just before we put up the blackout curtains in May. Some were from before I had my curtain backdrop, some were from after, but they all looked great. While I absolutely love my RGB sunset/aurora combo, I’m being honest when I say that they do give my stream a very “studio” look, and I’ve wondered more than once if that was hurting my ranking.

It’s too soon to draw any conclusions, so I won’t. Yesterday was just one day. Traffic was good, I dare say better than normal, and I made enough for a Wendy’s combo meal, but I won’t be out there proclaiming “NATURAL LIGHT IS THE KEY TO SUCCESS!” just yet. I was actually annoyed I didn’t stay online longer. I logged out for dinner, ate, then tried to fix my false lashes before I logged back in, which promptly fucked up everything. Annoyed and looking like a tweaker, I cleared up my set, and dealt with some Fansly stuff.

I’ve been ignoring the Fansly for a year now. Camming gives me more money for less effort. I’ve been meaning to raise my subscription prices for a while now, and decided now was the time to do it, while I only have 1 subscriber. Considering how much content I have uploaded – not including Chaturbate highlights – subcribers were getting a fan-fucking-tastic deal on my top level “all access” tier. I added a new subscription tier for the highlights, which will be the new entry level tier, and jacked up the prices on everything else. I’m still not convinced I’m charging enough for my top level tier.

One more night of work, and then we’re off for a couple of days. Tomorrow, we’re helping Shawshank‘s mom start to move house; his parents are downsizing and Shady Acres is moving– directly across the street from us.

[Current Mood | perimenopausal ]

[Listening To | Senate judiciary committee bullshit ]

It’s fucking Tuesday, y’all. And it’s raining. It’s another ✨lovely✨ day and I’m filled with ✨gratitude✨.

My Monday shift wasn’t bad at all, and I managed to comfortably go 4+ hours. I took a little break after an hour, then a longer one an hour and a half later. I made myself some mac and cheese for dinner, enjoying it on the couch while I caught up on Reddit and Discord. Thirty minutes later, I was back online albeit on a slightly weaker connection, for another hour and change.

I had a lot of traffic, and my room’s ranking wasn’t awful the entire night. I didn’t make a lot, but I had a good go at things. I’m trying to make an effort to stay on longer, which will be especially helpful because I won’t be able to work much next week. I had a bunch of repeat visitors last night, which I find crazy. I’m not super-interesting, but these guys love me and my voice. I figured out the base of my mic unscrews, meaning I can buy an adjustable arm for it rather than a whole new mic setup. That will probably my next upgrade.

I put the bedroom back together, then uploaded highlights to Fansly. My Fansly account has become simply a respository of 59s clips of me telling people to stroke for me. I’m not really uploading pics or any other content lately. The work I was willing to put into things was not worth the money I was making for it, mostly boiling down to hating the nonstop grind to promote myself. My next big project will be revamping my tier structure. I have nearly 4 years of content, and it would be incredibly time consuming to edit all of that content to reflect new permissions for everything. However, I can set member limits on the tiers. I’ll probably set up one of two new tires – at higher prices this time. Then I’ll edit the older tiers so people can’t sign up for them, but the content from those tiers will be available in the newer tiers.

Back to the grind today. We have two more shifts before we have a couple of days off.

[Current Mood | frustrated ]

Good morning, world. It’s a chilly and wet morning outside in TinyTown, and I heard the heat kick on this morning.

It wasn’t a great morning. I don’t know exactly what happened, or what time it all went down, but I woke up to a scraping noise and Shawshank shouting. From what I can put together, the scraping noise was my phone sliding between the wall and the bed, which startled Podrick. Pod flew up and came down on Shawshank‘s ribs. Unable to find my phone in bed, unwilling to get up and look for it in the dark, I laid in bed and hoped I could sleep. I didn’t. I rawdogged the morning.

This morning is just the latest bullshit to come out of a ✨wonderful✨ 24 hours. I streamed on TikTok, which wasn’t bad, then I set up the bedroom for Chaturbate. Ready and dressed, I booted up the Dell, then OBS. Immediately, the entire laptop ground to a halt. The video preview was lagging and choppy, and OBS looked to be hogging about 25% of the CPU. I closed and restarted OBS, with the same result. I knew the next step was rebooting the system, noticed that Windows wanted an update as well, and decided to kill two birds with one stone. The update was awful, ominously warning me not to shut off the system while sitting at about 7% for a scarily long time. Then it shut off (on its own). Then it turned back on, continued the update from 7%, only to hang up at 30% for a while. After 45 minutes, the update was finished, but shit was still fucky, even after a couple of extra reboots. Something is hogging everything, OBS is jacked, and on top of that, Windows stepped up its vendetta against Chrome, wiping all of my logins and settings.

Pissed off, holding back angry tears, I pulled off my fake lashes and put my pants back on, resigned to the fact I wouldn’t be working because I needed to figure this shit out. I coiled the cables and started putting away my stuff, giving the Dell one last reboot for good measure.

That son of a bitch booted up and was completely normal, like nothing happened at all.¹

I finished putting everything away and went out into the living room to angrily play “Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance” until just before Shawshank came home.

Today will be better.

1. except, of course, having to fix everything in Chrome, which is ongoing. ↩︎

[Current Mood | blah ]

[Listening To | Sunday news fluff ]

It’s fucking Sunday, y’all. The sun is up, the cats are in the window, you know the drill. The coffee is hot. The crime shows are on.

I did clown shit yesterday. I love putting on the makeup, I love having a built-in excuse to be an oddball. Unfortunately, it doesn’t translate to tokens. I worked four hours in a split shift, got more followers, and wasted my data. When I logged out, I made a bunch of stupid TikTok videos that will live in my drafts. No worries, I’ll be back on The Bean this afternoon.

Shawshank is working today. I’m planning to do my #grwm on TikTok when he leaves. I’ll set up the bedroom, make some lunch, and go back to work. By the time I log out, it will be almost closing time for Shawshank, and he’ll come home and make us some cheeseburgers to eat while we watch some wrasslin’.

[Current Mood | blah ]

Good weekend, my friends. The sun is shining, the coffee is flowing, the cats are sunning themselves. I figure we’ll let them enjoy the open door while they can, there won’t be many more weeks of this before winter is here. I’m reaching the point where I’m mildly uncomfy in bed. Sleeping naked under only the comforter keeps me from dying if my internal furnace decides to ramp up at 3am. I’ve been experimenting with supplements to help with that, and while the night sweats aren’t eliminated, things haven’t been nearly as bad. Unfortunately, the overnight temps – outside, not my own out-of-whack body temp – are reaching a point where what little bit of moisture is on my skin makes me cold when I wake up in the middle of the night.

But, if I wear anything to bed, I worry I’ll be back to square 1 again: a sweaty, miserable, menopausal mess.

We slacked off yesterday. It was a frustrating morning, with Podrick being an absolute shit from sun up, chasing Pippin around. Shawshank started playing Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 pretty early in the day to avoid watching the nonstop 9/11 memorial programming. I showered and washed my hair, put on real clothes, made some lunch, and we went to the meat shop. Shawshank bought us some local beef burgers, then we drove around town for a case of soda and fries.

Podrick never stopped being a dickhead, so I put him in a shirt. He didn’t move much when we put it on him the other day, and I figured if it didn’t outright stop him from chasing, it might slow him down. It worked pretty well as a perfectly acceptable $1 Thundershirt.

We’re kicking off a straight 5-day workweek today. For my own amusement, I plan to kick it off by doing clown shit today.