13th: Not everyone was there

I'm sort of pressing myself to write this today instead of something that may be considered more "productive." The productivity bug can be a sinister one. It's all well and good to drive you to Get Things Done until it starts driving you nuts in the pursuit, at times when you can't. Right now I could, I easily could, and while this sort of counts as that it's not urgent, it's just something I've been putting off and will hopefully feel good about when done.

It's been nearly two months, and busy ones I suppose. Work has gone along steadily. Mel just signed the papers for her new job this past Friday and will be starting next Monday. We saw Mom and the aunts and Cam and Ali, then we saw Dad (and Deb and Pat and Alan) for his birthday, then we saw Mom again for Thanksgiving. We've seen Mel's family numerous times, including for Mama H's birthday, a little backyard thing that we were responsible for DJ'ing (Mel did most of the playlist, I took requests.) Laura came by and encouraged us to finally get the old couch moved downstairs, with her help. I put together a shelf, a TV stand, and another shelf just yesterday. It rained a lot. I spent a lot of time on my phone, either playing Words with Friends or arguing with ding-dongs about wrestling. I watched the really good Danielson vs. Omega match and it left me hungry for more, although my life still does not have room to be a weekly viewer of pro wrestling. I wrote and wrote and wrote. I watered the plants -- maybe not always as often as I should, as our beloved Gerber Reggie seems to have died. We grew, then picked, tomatoes -- again, that plant may now be at risk...

The softball season ended and with our last win and another team's loss we were tipped into the championship bracket of the playoffs. We actually won our first game against the top-seeded team, which was amazing, but when the finals came, it was pouring rain and we didn't play so well. Like, it was a gorgeous day, then as soon as we got to the diamond the storm clouds rolled in and it was coming down by the second inning. Don't get me wrong, the other team played in the rain too, but we played much worse. I felt like, we usually did better when not everyone showed up, whether it was Mel and I who were skipping or some of the other floaters. Having all hands on deck led to some pretty inconsistent plays, but honestly even some of our clutch players were not doing great. Well look, I'm not a competitive guy, I just want to have fun so while I did not have fun playing in the pouring rain, I did have fun in the season overall and like I've said, there were games I liked playing in that we lost, and there were games I did not enjoy playing in that we won.

My free time has largely been defined by an acceleration of my hobbies. Although I throttled back on X-Cerpts for the end of summer, going to a biweekly schedule from mid-August to mid-October, I saw fit to finally launch a Patreon. For a few years now I've been hemming and hawing over how I would like to monetize the site, if that was something I'd like. It didn't feel right to add ads, or to keep the regular content I wanted to provide from people. I thought about a YouTube channel, but that's more of an added workstream, not that I'm ruling it out (it also seems hard to earn any meaningful amount of money from YT.) I thought about a tip jar, but it's hard to get any attention on, or maybe just a fundraiser (help me fund my annual MU subscription?). In the end, I woke up one day and just had one of those click moments, yes, I should do it as a Patreon, with exclusive content -- add-on posts to what you would find on the site, and other random stuff. It's a fair amount of work to make it worthwhile and I don't exactly have high hopes for the results (current membership: 2 patrons paying a total of $14 USD) but it's something I want to be doing, and I'm earning more for it than I am for the site itself.

I don't know. It's possible it's not a good deal, or a competitive deal, but it's the deal I have to offer. The key is whether I enjoy the work, which so far I so, so the money is a bonus (a modest one, but it's money I wouldn't be making for something else I could be doing and enjoying as much or less.)

This is all... I mean, it gets harder and hard to talk about what I'm doing without cracking the big secret window. Since this is SWP and we're all friends here, I'll go into more detail than usual. Because usually when people as I say I'm writing, yes, and mostly point to the X-Men blog, which takes up a good portion of my time and, if we're being real, is enough of an endeavor that if it were all I were doing it would be a lot.

But it's not all I'm doing, now is it?

I have been hard at work writing gross weirdo kinky stuff under a secret pen name, stuff that nobody can ever know that I do. But I do take a certain amount of pride in my work, and it's not really all that shameful, I just don't want to share that part of my life with people. Those who like my work like it a lot, which means so much to me. I uploaded a short story in August, and then September my first ever full-length novel (!! I'm a novelist and I can't even tell my loved ones !!) and both were very successfully -- in the sense that, I'm actually going to reap a certain amount of cashola from these projects. That success is probably what moved me to try to go legit and make a few bucks from the blog, although I know from every piece of work I've done there is a lot of groundwork to be laid and patience is a virtue.

So that is sort of what defined my end of summer and fall. Secretly writing, promoting, checking metrics... and then of course, wracking my brain trying to think of a next move. It's a bit like Half-Past Eight PM all over again, albeit on a different scale. All while maintaining my relationship, watching TV and cuddling, working, checking in with friends and family... I went to lunch with Joe, and we hosted a few other of Mel's friends like Gina and Katy. It's been busy, it's been good, I feel fulfilled.

At work, there's been a push to get partially back to the office, which I am not jazzed about. I did my first day back last Tuesday and it was a bit depressing to go through the whole ritual of going downtown in the morning and coming home at night. The prospects, frankly, sadden me, feels like it will be stifling a spark that has been lit in me this past year. I knew that the pandemic was going to be good for me in some respects, but this slavish devotion to the old ways is just going to bring back my lethargy and melancholy. It will help the business -- my "productivity" is way better in an office setting, no denying that -- but not my soul.

Well, more on this story as it develops.

Anyway, we're getting to late-dinnertime. I'm glad I did this, checked in before too much time slipped by.

Lastly, well... Mel and I are getting closer and closer to starting our family, if you know what I mean. That's the last thing that has been defining this part of the year. It actually goes way back to summer when we started moving toward it, putting things in place. So far, nothing to my knowledge, but that could change... hell, tomorrow.

But that's just between you and me. When there's something to know, you'll know.

Gad, man... I started this blog as a nobody teenager, now look at me.

But, you know... don't look too hard.

Keep on rockin'

-Scotto