Some Weeks I Post, Some Weeks I Ghost: The (Imperfect) Hustle Continues

I'm very aware that it's been several months since my last post, and there are so many reasons for that. In all honesty, when I had started this blog with the intention of posting once a week (remember that?), I had no idea what was waiting for me. Sex work is a wild ride in entrepreneurship and self-employment, and as someone who has a full-time vanilla job, I recognize now in hindsight that I flew too close to the sun.

Yes, this is none other than a "coming back from burnout" post. But I'm not really sure if one "comes back" from that, because I see myself swinging on a pendulum. One of the most common tips I hear from more experienced sex workers is the importance of consistency. Post consistently. Show up consistently. It's not about your mood or your motivation, it's about running a business. So even if you're feeling "meh" about your body, show up. Even if you're feeling uninspired, queue that post. And it makes perfect sense, but as someone who runs on dopamine, I operate on a very fragile ecosystem where "showing up" sometimes feels like pulling teeth.

This is especially true with a day job that demands most of my time throughout the week. It doesn't spark joy the way sex work does, but it does provide the stability and security that sex work currently doesn't. I'm trying to have it all, I know, but sometimes that desire to have it all means I feel like I'm being cut in half. I don't track my hours with sex work, but looking back, I know there are many weeks where I've spent 40+ hours on my sex work side hustle... when I already spent that much time on my day job, too. In other words, a bitch needed to crash. And crash she did.

For much of October and November, I did very little sex work. I was stretched thin by the demands of my day job and my personal life, and there was very little of me left to sleep, rest, and enjoy my life—much less pour hours into creating content and taking phone calls. I had finally hit the burnout slump that all my fellow sex workers are too familiar with. When you're no longer able to create or engage, and you end up feeling behind on this business you've so carefully built. It's a demoralizing feeling to feel like you've "run out" of content to post, that you're slipping through the cracks, that maybe your fans and customers will forget about you or turn to someone else who's more available, consistent, and reliable. It makes you doubt in your ability to succeed in this industry.

But I love sex work. I love the freedom, empowerment, and creativity that comes with running my own business. The flexibility of choosing when I work, how many hours I work, and what kinds of work I want to do. I love the playfulness of it—discovering the wildest fetishes and fantasies I never could have dreamed of in my own imagination, and knowing that I can play with those fantasies in a way that customers will love. I love how competent and capable I feel—when my fellow sex workers compliment me on my graphic design, on my content ideas, and it makes me feel like I'm good at this job, that I could get even better if I allow myself to grow. So quitting was never an option.

I just had to learn how to keep going, even when things get hard. And I had to keep going with the expectation that there will be many more moments like this—where I feel exhausted, overwhelmed, burned out and in need of a break. That this comes with the territory of having multiple jobs, one of which is your own business that you could theoretically throw all your waking hours into, at the expense of everything else in your life. That walking this balance would become a responsibility I needed to take more seriously if I was going to have any longevity in this line of work.

In my trial and error, I've discovered a few things that help me keep pushing forward. I've found plenty of community with my fellow sex workers, who are always ready to listen to, to hop on a call and keep me company, to share their advice and their own experiences. In this isolating line of work, I can't emphasize how important it is to find community with people who are in your corner and who understand exactly what you're going through. Sex workers know that what we do is hard work—more often than not, we're doing the jobs of at least five different people in one. I am not only a model and a phone sex operator, but I am also a photographer, graphic designer, video editor, voiceover artist, scriptwriter, social media marketer, content strategist, project manager, and god knows what other responsibilities come with this job. It's hard to understand unless you're in the thick of it, and finding a community with people who see and understand me has been incredibly important, especially during the hard times.

Another thing that's helped me move forward is rejecting perfectionism. It's realizing that not everything I post needs to be a top-notch quality photoshoot or clip. If I don't have the time to block out a whole afternoon to shoot content, then I squeeze in some spicy pics while I'm in the kitchen making dinner. If my bedroom is too messy to film in, then I record some short clips in the bathroom of me changing or in the shower. If I don't have the energy to script a 10-minute audio clip, maybe I can get myself off to relieve the stress and get a quick orgasm clip out of it too. I've been forcing myself to expand my notion of counts as "content," and it's helped me move toward an abundance mindset where I know there's always something to be photographed, recorded, filmed, or written. That even when I'm short on time or low on energy, there are still so many ways I can show up to this work.

I came back from my initial burnout strong in January, publishing 2 clips a week and scheduling content way in advance. I managed a biweekly content shooting schedule and set my sights on publishing 100 clips by the end of the year. This past month, though, I found myself struggling to keep up the pace I'd set for myself. I had travel plans that took me a week to recover from. I got sick for another week and spent most of my time in bed, screwing up my sleep schedule. And now, I'm slowing pulling myself out of that hole and trying to get the ball rolling on creating more content again. But I know that if I did it once already, I can do it again. And I can keep doing it again as long as I'm committed to this work.