Fighting for My Life
I am excited.
I honestly don’t think I’ve felt like this in years. I worked all day yesterday, more or less, on the various tasks at hand, of which there are many. It was eleven o’clock at night before I remembered I hadn’t eaten any dinner. I took a stroll down the hill in this weird and deserted tropical fishing town with warmest breezes blowing and me wearing just some maroon Thai pants. Cut down the side of the mountain through the town’s ghostly white sand soccer field. Down by the beach it was louder, there were more people, muttering variants of Spanish and English and Hebrew. I bought a chicken hamburger, it was terrible, greasy, I didn’t care, walked fifteen steps to the side of the sea and sat on a log to eat and while I did watched a tied-up boat rock back and forth. And I couldn’t stop thinking about this project.
I feel like I am fighting for my life here. It is such a good feeling; like the stakes are high. I went to bed last night thinking about what I had on my plate — got to upload a version of the book to Kindle, got to register the site with Google, got to learn about keywords and SEO, got to assemble a personal list of media contacts, got to create a Facebook fan page, got to create a working bio for Shane to use — and ten other things. I fell asleep and I didn’t dream and I woke up and I was right back. I’m getting obsessed and I love it. I haven’t got anything else but this and I love it. It reminds me . . . well, it reminds me when I was on my mission to create porn. It reminds me of when I first moved to Los Angeles. I was 24 and I had logged about 8 months in Santa Cruz making my own movies; and when Periwinkle and I got pushed out of our house by our greedy landlord, I moved down south with the intention of going pro. The move took all my money and I showed up in Los Angeles almost completely broke — but I had a working computer, a dope video camera, a cheap studio, and a website. And I had a plan.
I remember those first months I spent there, toiling from morning to night on videos and writing, trying to figure out how to make a buck with my own ingenuity as a young adult in a new city. I had more chutzpah then than I have ever had before or since. I was calling up every single contact I had in my adult-film book and begging for work. I called up people I had never met before and talked myself up, like I really had something to me. It was amazing and I don’t know where I got the courage. But I really believed in what I was doing. And I had my back against the wall.
I don’t have much money over here. About two thousand dollars, which’ll take me about two months or so - maybe more, depending on how cheap I can be, or maybe less, depending on how much we decided to spend on advertising/web development. We’re working towards a May 1st official launch of the site, and it’s imperative that we start selling some books by the end of that month. I will be in Peru by that time, or maybe Bolivia, and while those countries are cheaper than even in Colombia, people still are going to want to get paid for their ceviche. If I fail then I will be forced to come on home. I left my life in Portland and I cannot go back there. More, I have no desire to go back there. No, my only option if I am forced to return to the United States will be to go live with my parents. They will take me in and feed me greatly; and late at night I will sneak outside to smoke cigarettes. I will search for a sad job in a depressed economy and fruitlessly will go for long walks in the woods. Inspecting my body for ticks afterwards. No. This is no way to go.
I must succeed. It’s as simple as that. But I love situations like this! It’s exciting! Yesterday I got all excited because I created my first video in over three years:
We had the idea that creating short videos, sort of like ads, and posting them on YouTube would be a marketing strategy that would be effective, free, and maybe lend itself to that “viral” status to which all artists, businesses, and trend mavens seem to aspire to these days. So I got on the bandwagon, opened up iMovie, learned a new program, and busted out a little clip. I actually think I like it. It’s no great shakes, but it’s content. And that’s what our job is right now - build content. And build content and build content. So I’m working on a new video right now as we speak. And I will post it to the site when I am done.
I am excited because I have a mission and I have a purpose and I am scared.
