Walking Is Like Meditating

Walk

"Walk"

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day on freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

I went for a walk today because I try and do a walk almost every day and many days I fail but I keep trying. On Friday and Saturday I got a lot of work done on this book proposal I'm working on and Sunday I had a headache so bad that I spent the day in bed. By Monday the headache was lingering around the edges and then leaving.

Today was the first time that my head didn't feel like splitting open like Zeus birthing Athena straight from his skull which must've been painful for him but thankfully Hephaestus was there to help him and I almost had like a hangover from the headache.

Eventually I decided to go for a walk where there were clouds and trees and some otters that barked and hissed at me from under a bridge while I half-dangled myself over it to watch them.

I get some of my best thinking done when I am walking, I think. At this point I was able to go through the part of the book proposal I'd done piece by piece and put it together like a quilt and better visualize how it works as a totality.

I wondered while I walked home if you can think more clearly in this situation because everything shifts in perspective and you are not the god in front of the machine but the tiny figure moving through the world which is so very very big.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

This Is for the Ladies

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day on freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

Yesterday, I blogged about art, and the other day I came across this comic I did years ago, "My, My American Bukkake Too."

There's a "My, My American Bukkake" comic I did somewhere, I just need to find it. Then I should scan it and upload it.

I can't really draw, so I made this comic using photos I took on the set of a bukkake porn movie shoot that I went to in the San Fernando Valley.

Reading the comic today is pretty weird. It's sort of terrifying, and in a way still totally relevant, and makes me appreciate my ability at that time to not really give a fuck.

There's this idea floating around that women aren't funny -- at least in part because they're not willing to make themselves look stupid.

Sometimes, I suffer from this problem. I know there are times when I've done improv and hesitated because I was thinking, Are my pants going to fall down if I do that? Or some shit like that. That gap = awkwardness = The Not Funny Valley.

After I took the photos from the bukkake shoot, I uploaded them onto my computer, and I ran them through this Photoshop process called Stamp, and then I did what I referred to at the time as "messing with them," which is to say I took out some of the white, and I shaped some of the shapes, and I added back some of the black. Then I added the text. And, voila, a comic.

Of course, today, I can see all the things I would've done differently. The images are sort of too small and squished in some ways, and the white on black writing is practically unreadable, and I don't like how some of the prose is sort of poetry-ish.

But whatever. When it comes to bukkake comics, it is what it is.

I think if a young female journalist asked me for advice -- mostly, I just hear from guys in India who want to be porn stars -- I would tell her to make a lot of mistakes in public.

Be dramatic. Do insane things. Imperil yourself. Lose your mind.

Don't be this guy. Be this guy.

Or, better yet, be this chick.

Stop worrying about content and what your dipshit peers will think and who you may or may not offend on social media and whether or not someone will google you in the future and give you or not give you a job because those jobs will kill your soul anyway.

All of those things are things you don't need in your life. They are the things that come from without, not from within. And that's what matters: What's inside of you. That is the stuff of you.

Everything else is bullshit and a waste of time in a short road that we call life that dead ends in the cul de sac of death.

Go bravely to it, not as a coward.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

The Artist

My art.

"My art."

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day on freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

Years ago, I did some comics that were in some anthologies. I made this drawing on a dry erase board last year. I should make more comics. It's a good way to think more about images, and less about words.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

What It's Like to Be a Writer

Aries is best.

"Aries is best."

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day on freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

Fail, fail, fail, fail, avoid, avoid, walk, eat, nap (briefly), google, Twitter, Facebook, google, Twitter, Facebook, blog, rage, eat, weep, listen to music, watch TV, sleep, try, try, try, try, frustrate, cajole, negotiate, dwell, ruminate, have an idea, reject the idea, write, have an idea, reject the idea, write, write, write, delete, have an idea, talk on the phone, Instagram, surf, walk, eat, sulk, lie on the floor, feel dramatic, read This Isn't Happiness, have an idea, write, delete, delete, delete, stare, dissociate, read The Smoking Gun, self-flagellate, give up, recommit, sigh, feel ambivalent, feel dizzy, go to bed, eat, go to Pilates, run errands, pray, stare at small bronze ram with little curved horns, read horoscope, review writing, decide to write a novel, decide not to write a novel, give up, try, fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, go to bed, eat, watch TV, talk to shrink, fall asleep, open mind, catastrophize, walk, feel determined, feel unsure, feel cocky, renounce writing, text someone, call someone, feel zen, watch a movie, pass out, get up, do it wrong, try again, do it wrong, try again, do it wrong, become enraged, try again, do the opposite, think counterintuitively, wonder if has got it, think maybe has got it, feels like has got it, isn't sure, checks, sees has got it, knows has got it, week ends.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

The Three Secrets to Creative Success

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day on freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

How to get creative? It's not easy! Here's how three recent movies I saw can inspire you to become a better creator.

Be ruthless

You know the "family" scene near the end of "Sicario"? The one where something unspeakably bad happens? That's how you should be: ruthless. You will only succeed in realizing your creative dreams if you annihilate anything that stands in the way of realizing your goals.

Be crazy

In "Far Out Isn't Far Enough: The Tomi Ungerer Story," a crazy children's book author and artistic pervert reveals that growing up under Hitler, turning into a completely anxious person, and taking a lifetime to locate your homeland is the key to being an imaginative maverick.

Be alone

The fact of the matter is that if Matt Damon had never become "The Martian," he never would've had the experience of growing potatoes in his own fecal matter. To really focus on your best use, it's important that you give yourself the time and space, both mental and physical, to really hone in on your creativity and express yourself fully.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

How to Answer Emails Efficiently and Effectively

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day on freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

I keep getting these emails from men who want to be porn stars.

I want job more many so my choice in porn star job in I'm interested

I don't know what to tell them.

I want to became a pornstar kindly reply me soon my contct no is [redacted]

They always sound so desperate.

my name is [redacted] iam india from lucknow
i want to work pron films. plz help me i like sex

A lot of them are from faraway places.

I LIKE DOW SEX HOT I LOOK GIRL FOR SEX

Half the time I don't know what they're talking about.

Hi
How i can to be a ponostara

Maybe they just want to feel less alone.

i can do any work regarding sex and dirty sex ,i m clumsy too about sex , becouse in sex , i cant imagine in sex time , what i m doing ,sucking pussy is my best ,secondly whatever girl women wants from my side

Maybe they want to feel like they're a part of something.

i want to join this group

Maybe they want to escape their lives.

i join in porn star male passive partener i need fully money so plz mail me

What am I supposed to say to them?

Message: hello,
i want join porn videos plz contact me
this is my dreams and i want my father is heard patios i don't have money pls pls pls contact me ?

This is their American dream.

HI MY SELF [redacted] . IM FROM PAKISTAN . I DON' KNOW WHAT HAPPENING TO ME WHEN EVER I FUCKED A WOMEN SHE WANT AGAIN AN AGAIN AND SHE LIKE MY COMPANY . SO MAY BE I THINK I MADE THIS TYPE OF JOB .SO THATS WHY I WANT TO JOIN YOUR TEAM . PLEASE CAN YOU GIVE ME ONE CHANCE THEN I WILL PROOF MY SELF. THATS MY CONTACT NO [redacted] .THANKS ALOT

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

The Best Notebook That Fits in Your Pocket

Gotta go.

"Gotta go."

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day on freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

Lately, I've gotten really into these Moleskine notebooks. I like them because they come in cool colors, they fit in the palm of your hand or your back pocket, the hard covers make it easier to write in than notebooks with soft covers, and they have a little elastic waistband around the end so your pages won't get all squished. Throw one in your vehicle's storage compartment so you'll always have one on hand.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

Finding Sources That Aren't Full of Shit

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day on freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

Awhile ago, I interviewed Bay Area entrepreneur Cal Caliente about his Slomocup, a cup that can be used for drinking, well, anything -- or, you know, lean.

We've kept in touch since, and every once in while, when I have a question, I'll ask Cal for his insider knowledge.

For example, recently I read online that people were purportedly butt chugging lean. Was this true? I wondered. Are people really butt chugging lean? I had to know. I poked around online, but I couldn't figure out if butt chugging lean was a real thing or a hoax.

"do people really butt chug lean?" I DM'd Cal on Twitter.

"Lol wow," he responded. "Probably kids." He added, "16-."

Generally speaking, I've found that, whenever possible, journalists should avoid entering through the front door. Don't interview the CEO; seek out the janitor. Most publicists are professional cockblockers; cuntblock them and forge your own path. The appropriate channels are the death of true exploration; zigzag to create new connections in unlikely places.

The side door is the only way to figure out if you've got a story -- or if it's full of shit.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

Procrastinate Better!

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day on freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

I forgot to mention in yesterday's post about in medias res journalism that I'm working on improving my blogging game at Forbes, where I've been underperforming.

As a Forbes blogger, I'm required to post a minimum of five times a month. For several reasons, I was procrastinating, waiting until the final days of the month, and then doing them all at once.

Here are some ways I'm resolving my procrastination problem:

Set the bar low

I've asked myself to publish one post a week this month. That's very doable. So far, I'm on track.

Make yourself accountable

This blog helps me hold myself accountable. Without it, the failure is private. With it, procrastination will lead to public humiliation. Faced with a choice between doing it and admitting to not doing it, I'd rather just get it done.

Figure out what your procrastination is telling you

I really enjoyed a recent post by my friend Damon Brown at Inc.: "Why Procrastination Is the Key to Your Business." Typically, we pathologize procrastination. Damon suggests otherwise:

Procrastination is usually viewed as the absence of work (and, therefore, the loss of profit and productivity), but what if it was a compass to your true calling?

Damon says you should ask yourself: "What are you doing now that you're doing to prevent you from going back to the work you claim to enjoy?"

For me, the answer is: blogging.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

Eat It, Wear It, Write It

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day on freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

The other day I wrote about undertaking in medias res journalism. On Friday, I posted that piece on my Forbes blog: "I Tried the Best Burger in America." I'd say I wrote about 80% of that post on my iPhone while I was sitting at the bar in the restaurant. Then I added in some details, cut some stuff, and smoothed some sentences before uploading it.

Here's what worked:

It helped me focus on the narrative

And that, of course, was the moment at which the doors opened, and we rushed inside like the pack of carnivores that we were.

It helped me focus on the details

At the grill, a young woman with a face like a sphynx started laying out thick bacon slabs and perfectly formed burgers.

It helped me focus on how I felt

 At Au Cheval, one doesn’t so much eat one’s burger as attack it.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

This Horse Is Taking a Piss

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day about freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

Titles. They're important! Yesterday, I wrote about how I like doing series and find they're more likely to be successful because you don't have to spend so much time recruiting new readers because you have regularly returning readers, and it occurred to me that I'd titled the series you're reading right now "365 Days of Blogging," which is quite possibly the worst title ever. It tells you only about the process of the series and nothing about the content of the series, which is how to be a better freelancer.

So, I'm going to retitle my 365 Days of Blogging in 2016 project "Flogging the Freelancer." I picked this title for several reasons. It was either the first thing or one of the first things that popped into my head, and I'm a big fan of going with your first impulse, unless your first impulse is, "Drink that bottle of Clorox bleach." I also like the word "flogging," which, according to the dictionary, means "to beat or whip (someone) severely," which works well because freelancing is like beating yourself severely on your way to success, which is great if you're a sadist, a masochist, or a switch-hitter. Also: alliteration! I'm a fan.

Here are the three S's of titling:

Steal!

My epic longform investigation of how the Great Recession impacted the adult film industry, "They Shoot Porn Stars, Don't They?", is a revision of "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?", a movie based on a novel about a dance marathon during the Great Depression.

Short!

"A Girl and a .22" is a Forbes post that I wrote about learning how to shoot a gun and how it helped me overcome something horrible from my past. The title's juxtaposition of femininity (girl) and masculinity (gun) creates a curiosity-inspiring pull for potential readers.

Shock!

I wrote a very odd, surrealistic short story over a decade ago now called "Gangbang Tango." At least for awhile, the story ranked high on Google searches for my name. I'm not sure why, but I assume because people google "gangbang" and who could resist clicking on that.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

How to Get People to Click on Your Links

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day about freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

At certain points in my life, I've been paid by big companies to help drive traffic to their websites. At Forbes, contributers like me (aka bloggers) are paid by how many people read our blog in a given month. Here's a look at how I've helped generate traffic for my most-read Forbes posts.

1. The Hardest Thing About Being a Male Porn Star, 1,869,326 views

"The most difficult part about being a male porn star is the hard-on."

This is my most-read post on Forbes for several reasons: it's provocative, it's apparently something men around the world sit around googling every day, and it's informative. The title is a sex joke (see: "hardest"). The subject is catchy (see: "porn"). The take is original (see: what could possibly difficult about being paid to have sex with women for a living?). Plus: screw aggregation. I actually bothered to do some original reporting.

2. What Porn Stars Do When the Porn Industry Shuts Down, 1,037,780 views

"There is so much more to this job than just having sex on camera."

Provocative. Original reporting. Googleable. This post did better than I thought it would. Every time there was a moratorium on shooting in the industry, that fact would be blared across national news sites, but no one seemed to be wondering what the hell the performers, crew members, and producers were doing to keep themselves afloat when they couldn't work. It's not enough to get the story. Get the story behind the story.

3. Why You Shouldn't Be a Writer, 351,413 views

"Just because you can write doesn’t mean you should."

Writing is like photography. Everyone who picks up a camera thinks: Oh, I can be a photographer! You can take a picture, but that doesn't make you a photographer. It just makes you a person with a camera. Nowadays, anyone who can string a few words together can declare themselves a writer, but writing doesn't make you a writer. In this case, I spoke truth to the lie. Sometimes being willing to let people hate you is the answer.

4. How to Sell Yourself, 348,705 views

"Think of 'you' as a superhero version of yourself."

This post could've been titled, "How to Be a Hustler." Apparently, most people suck at selling themselves. They don't have enough distance or objectivity or shamelessness to turn themselves into their own used car salesman. People need help. Readers like to take something away from whatever they read, whether it's an emotional experience, a new insight, or interesting information. This post is "service-y." Be of service.

5. How Much Do Strippers Make?, 340,403 views

"[W]hen it comes to talking income there’s a general tendency amongst strippers to stay vague."

This post was part of a series of posts that I did on the strip club economy. I like doing series. (You're reading one now!) It keeps readers coming back for more. This technique was also successful when I did The Letters Project, which people loved. A clever, unicorn-like series can help you keep your readers returning.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

Stay in Your Lane

Liz.

"Liz."

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day about freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

At one point in my career, I started describing myself as a "photographer."

I am not a "photographer." I am a "writer."

Stay in your lane.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

Writing As You Go

Off with her head.

"Off with her head."

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day about freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

I've been in Chicago -- butt cheek-clenchingly cold -- for a few days and took the opportunity to do a couple stories while I'm here.

Both pieces rely heavily on deeply sensory experiences, which I find particularly challenging to write about, especially days or even weeks after the fact. You stare at your notes and search for the proper way to resurrect a since-faded feeling. How do you describe what something tastes like, smells like? No easy task. 

For the second story that I worked on, I tried writing the piece while it was happening, on my iPhone. It was a bit of a challenge to construct prose on the fly, but it forced me to better track action as it happened -- and, maybe, better capture sensory responses as they surfaced.

It definitely made me more conspicuous, which isn't ideal for someone whose usually strategy is to assume the pattern of the wallpaper. I had to hide my phone from prying eyes several times. I'd like to do more writing like this. I enjoyed the spiritedness of words generated in medias res. 

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

Have Laptop, Will Travel

Fall.

"Fall."

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day about freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

I'll be traveling, and blogging, over the next few days, but one thing I try and do as a freelance writer is to do a story every time I travel.

So, when I went to Hawaii, I wrote "Gun Tourism Is All the Rage in Waikiki": "It was like Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, California — except for instead of burning incense and selling hemp necklaces, they were hawking the fruits of the Second Amendment."

When I went to Miami, I wrote "How the Biggest Strip Club in America Grinds": "'I like dancing a lot,' she says. 'I’m not shy. I have a lot of spunk.'"

And when I went to Shanghai, I wrote "This Restaurant Is Shit": "I had no trouble eating the desserts that looked like shit at the toilet-themed restaurant."

Freelancing is about starting, and stopping, and restarting. I've found this process of living, and working, and reworking helps me stay in the flow.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

The Fine Art of Selling Yourself

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day about freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

Last year, I self-published a digital short story. It's called THE TUMOR. I used Gumroad to publish and sell it because Clayton Cubitt recommended it and because Gumroad takes less of your money than Amazon does. This Isn't Happiness designed the beautiful cover, Susan Clements did a beautiful job copy editing it, and Domini Dragoone did the gorgeous page layout and assembled the entire thing together into a variety of publishable formats that transformed it into a digital book.

Here are a few good reasons for self-publishing:

You can own your shit, soup to nuts

As a freelancer, there's a lot of relying on other people to get permission to do the shit you want to do. Editors, or bosses, or directors. When you self-publish, it's all you. If you fail, it's on you. If you succeed, it's all yours. I'm a control freak, so this was very appealing to me.

You can step outside the box

Who was going to publish a short story about a man that wants to stab his wife to death over a malignant tumor that wanders around the house? Well, who knows, but no one, probably. Except for me. If you're going to go through the bother of self-publishing, you might as well do it with something that's more interesting than the dumb ass crap you do for money.

You can make some money

I used the Pay What You Want Pricing option on Gumroad. So my customers could pay $1, or they could pay however much they liked. I sold 123 copies, and my total revenue was $697. That was nice.

I really enjoyed doing it, and I highly recommend it. Gumroad makes it easy. The rest is up to you.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

Master of All Jacks

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day about freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

My LinkedIn profile is sort of a complicated beast. To me, it makes sense: everything is words. To others, it may look all over the place. Am I a journalist? A blogger? An editor? A copywriter? A pundit? A photographer? A comics maker? An author? Am I a jack of all trades or a master of none?

On the one hand, it probably would've been better to have picked a niche and stuck with it. Say, journalism. And just done that. Improve those skills, sell those tools, climb up that ladder.

On the other hand, it was my ability to diversify and apply my tools across multiple categories that enabled me to survive as a freelancer. To be a marketer and a reporter. To write copy and to create fiction. 

In, say, 2000, my income was approximately $50,000. Half of it was from freelance writing and half of it was from TV appearances.

In, I believe, 2012, my income was approximately $100,000. Half of it was from freelance journalism and half of it was from freelance copy writing.

Looking back, I can't say I'm sure what's the best path. Why should I limit my abilities? Or did I create a kind of ceiling for myself? Perhaps I followed where things led me, to this place.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

The Challenges of Self-Censoring

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day about freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

A few hours before New Year's Eve, I posted my final Forbes post of 2015: "I've Waited for Virtual Reality Forever and Now It's Here." I wrote the post because I'd been sitting on the material for a while, and I felt underwhelmed by the work I'd published this year, other than "Blood Sacrifice."

The virtual reality porn piece combined several things: some backstory about me writing about porn, a visit I paid earlier this year to a virtual reality porn star where I donned an Oculus Rift for the first time, and a phone conversation I had with the guy who's arguably the biggest pornographer in the business.

One of the challenges of writing the post for Forbes, and probably why I sat on it for so long, is that because it's the Forbes website, I knew it couldn't be X-rated. So that meant leaving out any graphic description of John Holmes in a porn movie I saw when I was 15, like how it seemed he barely had the energy to get his monstrous appendage erect; leaving out the part about getting a lap dance at a strip club in 1997, and the dancer's implant-stuffed boobs in my face, and her skin smelling like peaches; leaving out the spectacle of the girls fucking themselves with dildos atop the tables at the Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theatre while guys sat around them in booths like it was some kind of explicit diner; leaving out the five years I spent chasing the most extreme things in the porn business, including bukkake, and gangbangs, and other weird ass shit; and leaving out the part where the virtual reality porn star stuck her fingers inside herself and put them in her mouth and her spit glistened like something otherworldly in this alternative universe. 

Does including or leaving out that information make the piece any better or worse? I'm not sure. Self-censored, it becomes more discreet, obviously, and there's something to be said for that, but it's not so raw when it's cut, and the point of pornography is to rip things down to the raw so you can see the pink.

At one point in the post, I write: "At a certain point, she opened her mouth, and she leaned forward like she was getting close to me, and the only thing that was missing was the sheer scent of her, and I thought: I’m sold." And, for now, you know, that is one thing that VR lacks for sure. When you visit a porn set, the smell is unmistakable: the meat, the fluids, the things that happen under the heat. That's the action. That's the story. That's the truth.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

365 Days of Blogging

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day about freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

Since I tend to do better when expectations are too high instead of too low, I thought I would try blogging every day in 2016. We'll see how that goes. My goal, today, January 1, 2016, is to focus my blogging on my professional work. I'm a freelance writer, and I'd like to up my game a bit this year. I hope to share that process in the course of executing this process.

Fuck Your Hustle

I started working on the freelance writing portion of my career earlier this week. Among other things, I prostituted myself on this blog, I sent queries to 30 people regarding potential work opportunities, and I updated my LinkedIn profile. I've got some leads, so in future posts I'll be sharing how many work out, how many don't work out, and how many people ignore me.

Spanking the Monkey

I started blogging for Forbes in 2010 (!) after I got downsized. Initially, the blog was in the women's section, and it was called Pink Slipped. At a certain point, I got tired of churning out self-help drivel, and I changed the focus on the blog to covering the vice beat. Now it's called SIN INC. Then I took a year off. I returned to it at some point this year. I've floundered at covering this beat properly, posting on a regular and sufficient basis, and generating the same massive amount of traffic that I did when Forbes blogging was young and there weren't 1,000+ other people doing it. I would like to solve the conundrum of doing that blog properly and return to my former glorious status there.

We Are Not the World

It would probably be a good idea if I did something to help other people. I regularly get emails from people asking for advice. Most of the time (by which I mean all of the time), I delete them. I could devote, say, one post a week to answering a professional, say, gig economy question on this blog. If you're interested in asking for professional advice from someone who is a veteran freelancer and inappropriately overconfident, you can email me.

This Trap Queen's Game Is Tight

I'm working on a book proposal. I have an agent. I hope to sell that project this year. That is my long con for this season. I'll be going into more detail on that in upcoming posts, but there may be some vague-blogging on that front. It depends on how things go.

In any case, I suppose that's a place to start.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you can email me here.

I Wrote About Virtual Reality Porn

I wrote this piece about my life in porn, my junkie ex-girlfriend, and virtual reality porn for my Forbes blog.

I was in this other world, this virtual reality. Overhead, the sky was pink with dusk, and nearby there was a tranquil pool with lit candles and lily pads floating in it, and there was a vast expanse of perfectly manicured lawn leading to a line of autumn-leaved trees and maybe a river beyond that. A massive mansion sat several yards away. It was all very lush. I knew Ela was in the other room of the apartment, but she was in my head at the same time, and I realized I could no longer tell which one was real. You could say I suspended my disbelief. It was just me and her pixelating, and I reached out my hand into that empty space that was me not touching her in a world in which I believed that I could. At a certain point, she opened her mouth, and she leaned forward like she was getting close to me, and the only thing that was missing was the sheer scent of her, and I thought: I’m sold.