4/26/21 -- Some thoughts/Please support my work

Thank you for visiting this blog. If you enjoy my work, please consider supporting it.

You can donate via Ko-fi by using the form in the sidebar or clicking the image below. Also, my CashApp is $PreemieMaboroshi.

This blog is a work-in-progress "table of contents," posting links to all the threads I've written on Twitter since I started using the platform in October of 2012. I've currently posted through June of 2019.

I occasionally like to do a "thoughts" post talking about my life during the time frame of the threads I've posted to this blog.

Through 2018, my professional life had been a roller-coaster. I do consultancy work, and through the middle of 2018, my workload was very low. Toward the end of 2018 it picked back up, and I was able to get through the end of the year comfortably -- though I'd had to get myself $9,000 in debt to tide myself over to the point where my client base picked back up.

At the beginning of 2019, I lost one of my clients and was left in a position where I was making slightly less than enough money to survive. My bank account almost immediately went negative. And then, at the end of March of 2019, I lost my only remaining client.

I found another client in mid-April of 2019 and got a tiny bit of work with a previous client around the same time. But I was still making slightly less than enough money to survive. Not only was my bank account consistently negative, leaving me, all said and done, with $3,500 in overdraft fees; but there were a total of 14 days during this period where I didn't even have food to eat.

However, in mid-May of 2019, I got another client. And then, from June forward, I added probably one client to my roster each month, through October of 2019, when most of those clients started dropping off, leaving me with two solid clients at the end of 2019.

So in 2019, I ended up making more money than I'd ever made in my life, except for in the year 2010. Nevertheless, it literally started with me having no food for 14 days out of the first 6 months. And it continued with me working my way, essentially, out of a $12,500 hole.

The client I took on in mid-April of 2019 lasted me all the way until the pandemic lockdowns in March of 2020. And the client I took on in mid-May of 2019 lasted me all the way through mid-March of 2021. Additionally, the client I took on in mid-May of 2019 boosted up my hours when the pandemic lockdowns started, as the lockdowns actually did a lot to boost their business. So even though I'd lost my other client, I was doing fine financially, all the way through the pandemic.

So from June 1, 2019, through now (April 26, 2021), I haven't really had any financial worries -- though that could change soon, as I'm now back to a point where I have no clients again.

I was dealing with a lot of stress in early 2019 -- not just from my job, but also due to my social life and my life on social media.

In my social life, I was so upset with how things were going in the political groups I was helping out that I slowly disengaged from them, basically only doing the things I had to do as part of the groups, but trying not to take on any other commitments.

Nevertheless, I should also mention that, even as I was trying to take care of my commitments, I was also blocked out of being able to take care of some of them.

I had been elected to serve on the Colorado Democrats' outreach committee. And nobody ever contacted me about the meetings.

I would talk to the heads of the committee while at party meetings, asking when I would receive information about participating in the group. The heads of the committee literally told me things like, "There's no way you could have been elected for this position," and they would drop the subject there, or just walk away from me altogether.

Eventually, I was able to participate in the Colorado Democrats' outreach committee meetings, toward the end of the summer of 2019. But, even then, after a few meetings, the committee stopped showing up at its regular place. And the committee heads again never returned my phone calls or emails to let me know where everybody was.

In one of the last Colorado Democrats meetings before the pandemic lockdowns of 2020, I got the attention of one of the committee heads. I was really distressed about not being included in the committee meetings.

And he basically told me, "Well, we're basically not having any committee meetings. Also, just the fact that you're even asking about this stuff means you're doing more work than anyone else on the committee. My advice to you is just, don't worry about it and don't ask me about the committee meetings anymore."

This from the guy who, about a year previously, told me, "There's no way at all you could have been elected to this position."

Funny thing is -- he was in the room when I was elected.

Oh, well.

But it's also worthwhile for me to get off my high horse, because I failed to be active, as well, in other areas.

During the Denver Democrats' reorganizational meeting, I signed up to volunteer on the Denver committees for outreach, rules, and platform. But even though I signed up for all three of those committees, the only committee I ever attended meetings for was the rules committee.

However, this story is also a little complex, as I don't recall ever receiving (or trying to get) info from the Denver platform committee. And I had such trouble just getting the correct info on where the Denver outreach committee was in the first couple months after the re-org meeting that I just gave up, and, even when people started giving me the right information, I just ignored it.

I admit that was sullen and spoiled. But it was just the way I felt.

Also -- in early 2019, I reached out to two Colorado State Representatives -- Leslie Herod and Alex Valdez. Valdez was representative of my house district, HD-5. But I reached out to Herod and Valdez because I knew them both, they're both gay, and I knew if one of them didn't answer me, the other would.

I basically asked how I could get involved doing three things: finding a way to do a screening of the Leilah Weinraub film Shakedown (a documentary about a lesbian strip club) at a lesbian bar in Denver; finding a way to stop the promotion of sex-trafficking misinformation at Denver International Airport; and laying the groundwork for decriminalizing sex work in Colorado.

Representative Valdez responded to me on Twitter and asked me to send him an email asking about these items, instead of doing public Twitter, DM on Twitter, or anything else.

I honestly can't remember whether I emailed Valdez. I don't think I even did that. And even if I did email him, neither he nor I followed up with each other.

More than not attending two out of the three Denver Dems committees I'd volunteered for, my failure to act here really upsets me. I proposed trying to lay the groundwork for decriminalizing sex work in Colorado. And my State Representative did not dismiss the proposal. I could have taken the steps to make this happen. Instead, I simply let the matter drop. I really regret dropping the ball there.

There are two reasons I can think of for why I totally dropped the ball.

One is, simply, that sex workers say, The effort to decriminalize sex work needs to start with the sex workers. It can't be an effort that anybody else takes care of. I took -- and I take -- that point very seriously.

And so, When Representative Valdez said, Let's talk about this, I might simply have reconsidered. I might have figured I was crossing boundaries I shouldn't cross, into an effort that only sex workers should be concerned with leading. And so, correcting course, I might have let the matter drop.

The other reason is, I was just so angry and jaded with the Colorado Democrats by this time that, even when Valdez told me he would consider this issue, I might simply have figured he would just find a way to say he couldn't do it, after all.

After all, Governor Jared Polis himself told me he could see the validity of the arguments for decriminalizing sex work. But then, when I tried to put decriminalization into motion with him, he just started acting like he didn't even know who I was.

So this should show that my social situation wasn't as bad as I always like to make it out to be. Was I excluded from some things in my social life? Yes. But I was welcome in other areas. However -- when I was welcome in those areas, I failed to become active or stay active in those areas.

It's really important for me to be less self-righteous, to remember my own failings, to remember that some people actually do like me, and to be patient with myself and others.

On social media, my biggest concern at this time was trying to clear my Twitter profile of people who were making my Twitter life so toxic.

I've explained a lot of the ways people were being toxic on Twitter -- though I should say, I don't think people have studied or written about this issue enough. There are a lot of social habits and other phenomena that occur on social media that are immensely interesting and well worth studying.

To clear my Twitter profile of toxicity, I figured my best bet would be to lower the number of people who were following me and the number of  people I was following.

I should quickly mention that, in April of 2017, without really even knowing it (because I was on Instagram so much more than Twitter at the time), I'd gotten over 1,000 followers.

I thanked -- thanked! -- my followers for following me one day. And, that same day, some people in Denver who I now suspect did a lot to tear me down in Denver's art community, started sending out all these tweets like, What kind of arrogant person brags about having 1,000 followers? Anybody who talks about having 1,000 followers like they're so cool needs to be taken down a notch, etc.

Almost immediately, my follower count dropped drastically, down to about 850, where it stayed for the next couple of years.

When I realized that the toxicity of Twitter was really messing with my mind, and I decided to lower my follower/following count to get rid of the toxicity, I started by lowering the count of people following me.

At that time I was following about 650 people, with 850 people following me. My first step was to soft-block -- i.e. block and then unblock -- anybody who was following me but whom I wasn't following. So my following/follower list was even -- or, you could say, all mutuals.

But I quickly realized this wasn't getting rid of the toxicity on my Twitter profile, as many of my mutuals -- including a lot of people I knew in real life -- were either toxic toward me personally or else toxic about politics, sexuality, etc.

So at that point I reduced my follower/following count to about 100 -- i.e. 100 mutuals: 100 people following me, whom I was also following.

It may be interesting to note that, after I did this, some people I paid attention to but didn't follow would then start tweeting things after I'd post threads to Twitter. They'd tweet things like, What kind of person with only 100 followers thinks he deserves to be listened to on issues as important as this?

It was kind of hilarious. Because one day, I had 850 followers, and nobody made these kinds of comments. But the next day, I announced my cuts to my follower base. And after that, I'd tweet things out, and people would be like, Who wants to listen to somebody who only has 100 followers?

Whatever.

But -- even with 100 followers, I was still getting too much toxicity on Twitter. So, first, I took my following/follower count down, just to people I knew personally and felt I could trust, plus people I'd known long enough on Twitter that it was basically like I knew them personally, anyway. These had to be people I really felt I could trust. And that took my following/follower count to 30.

But even that wasn't enough to calm down my Twitter. So, in August of 2019, I finally took my following/follower count to zero.

Almost immediately after I took my following/follower count to zero, two people re-followed me. So I re-followed them, too.

I currently only follow five Twitter profiles. And I currently only have sixteen followers.

People try to follow me. But I generally vet every profile that follows me. If it feels like there's something even the slightest bit ill-willed about them, I soft-block them. If it's obvious the profile is a trolling profile, I block them.

I keep my Twitter follower list very low, because I only want people to have my tweets on a person's timeline if they're a person I feel I can trust. But I also don't follow anybody new, because I don't want sudden explosions of toxicity to appear on my timeline.

Additionally, I pay attention to people on Twitter, even if I don't follow them. And, honestly, it's much easier for me to look up their profile and see what's going on with them when I feel like I can handle their news emotionally, than it is to constantly have news from them on my timeline, just automatically.

So just because I don't follow people doesn't mean I'm not paying attention to them. It just means I'm paying attention to them when I'm emotionally able to handle paying attention to them.

Taking my Twitter following/follower count to zero was one of the best things I've done for my emotional and mental well being over the past couple years.

Later on, in mid-2020, I also uninstalled Twitter from my phone. It's been almost a year since I've had Twitter on my phone. I actually took a number of social media apps off my phone altogether. And I have to say, that was another action I took that truly worked miracles for my emotional and mental well being.

So these were some of the issues in my personal life during this time frame.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

2/3/19 discussion about setting up a Ko-fi account

Here is the link to my February 3, 2019, Twitter thread about setting up a Ko-fi account.

I actually wasn't going to include this thread in this table of contents. However, as I reread it, I realized it still said a lot of stuff I still agree with -- about the fact that writing on social media is a form of labor, as well as the fact that asking for money for my labor isn't wrong.

I've actually never received a single donation on Ko-fi. I can't say I ever expect to. At the same time, I haven't really made that much of an effort to get exposure on or for my Ko-fi profile.

Twitter's platform has twisted each of my threads through 2018 and 2019 out of chronological order. This thread is affected, but is still moderately coherent. My apologies.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

4/19/21 -- Quick thoughts/Update

Thank you for visiting my page. If you enjoy my work, please consider supporting me.

You can donate to my Ko-fi account by using the form in the sidebar or clicking the image below. Also, my CashApp is $PreemieMaboroshi.

This blog is a table of contents for all the threads I've posted to Twitter since joining in October of 2012. So far I have posted threads from October of 2012 through November of 2018.

Every once in a while I like to do a thread reviewing some of the stuff that was happening in my personal life as I wrote these Twitter threads.

I am a Democrat, and I finished out the 2018 election cycle by doing a lot of volunteer phone banking with One Colorado, my home state's leading advocacy group for LGBTQ Coloradans and their families.

A lot of folks all across America worked really hard to achieve a "Blue Wave" -- an overwhelming amount of elections that were won by Democrats.

My work was certainly not unique. In fact, a lot of Americans did way more volunteer work than I did in the 2018 election cycle. But for my own personal life, my experience in 2018 had been unique. I participated a lot more in the activities of the Colorado Democratic Party. As a result, I got a lot of really great insights into how the party-politics process works.

While I'm extremely thankful to have had that experience, I can also say the experience showed me that party politics in America is, at the least, broken. It's hurting our country on a lot of different levels. And we either need to revisit how we're doing party politics, or just revisit party politics altogether.

As I've mentioned a lot in the past, I spent from 2015 to 2017 in the arts scene in Colorado. I essentially left that scene because I felt like I was getting bullied out of it, with nobody, in the whole arts scene, standing up to defend me. It often felt like I was fighting against everybody in the scene, all by myself.

I can honestly say that, while I never felt so completely disliked in politics, I eventually did feel like I wasn't wanted in a lot of the various aspects of politics. I've wrestled with that feeling over the years, not quite willing to bow out of politics disgracefully, like I did in Colorado's art scene, just because there's too much need for liberal loudmouths in Colorado politics. However, I still, even as of today, don't feel like I've found my place in politics yet.

I spent a lot of November of 2018 writing a new fanfiction, which I posted online in December of 2018. The fanfiction is called Paranoia Gotham. It's a fanfiction crossover of the Harley Quinn and Paranoia Agent universes.

Paranoia Gotham is probably the only long fiction story that I'd written since 2009 that didn't have something to do with fetish. The story is really a straight fanfiction, like the old, funny fanfictions of the 1990s. I do my best in the story to focus on the characters in the story, and to write them faithfully, so that fans of those characters will feel like they're really reading those characters.

So as 2018 came to a close, I wrote a few threads discussing various aspects of Paranoia Gotham, a story I'm still pretty proud of, even today.

My personal life felt like it was on an even keel going through toward the end of 2018. I had two steady consultant gigs, and even, I believe, at times, three gigs. I was able to go to more movies and plays, which made me happy. And I was reading a lot of books.

I was still very affected emotionally by FOSTA-SESTA, the federal law passed in early 2018 that basically made life a lot more difficult, for sex workers especially, but also for anybody who practiced any kind of expression of sexuality online.

I wanted to help address the bad effects of FOSTA-SESTA. And I figured the top priority along those lines was helping in the fight for sex worker rights. So, as 2018 ended, I was starting to read more books about sex work. I was also trying to involve myself, however I could, in the fight for sex workers' rights in Colorado.

At the same time, I was finding that there were people other than sex workers who were hurting because of FOSTA-SESTA. One big example of that was the Tumblr purge in December of 2018. A lot of people -- even sex workers -- didn't care about the Tumblr purge. Many people, in fact, made fun of the people who had had years of art deleted from Tumblr as part of the purge, who had lost their livelihoods because of the purge, and who had lost their communities as part of the purge. Some of these people were sex workers.

It became clear to me that, while I could continue learning about sex work and helping in the fight -- however I could help (usually by donating money and retweeting people's tweets) -- for sex workers rights, I couldn't really expect sex workers to help people like me -- fetish artists, especially ageplay and ABDL artists -- in our fight for our rights.

So, even as I was just starting to read books about sex work, I was also starting to read books relating to the topics that, in my opinion, always seemed most under attack when fetish artists on sites like Tumblr were attacked.

Quite honestly, I strive even today -- I mean, literally today -- to find a way to make my attempts (really, they're nothing more than attempts) to help the sex work community mesh with my attempts to help other folks in the fetish and fetish art world. I wonder if I'll ever succeed. I'm starting to doubt it.

Thank you for reading. And thank you for visiting my blog. Please enjoy.

Quick thoughts/update

Thank you for visiting my blog. If you enjoy, please consider supporting my work.

You can donate, in $3 increments, via Ko-fi, using the form in the sidebar or the link in the image below.

Also, my CashApp is $PreemieMaboroshi .

This blog is a sort of table of contents, linking to all the threads I've posted to Twitter since I started using that social media platform in October of 2012.

So far, I've linked to threads going up through September of 2018.

Every once in a while I like to do a post talking about how my life was going during the times I was writing these threads on Twitter.

As I've mentioned before, I'd been having a sort of roller-coaster ride getting started as a consultant since mid-2016. I ended up stepping back from one client in early 2018 and started working to find ways to build my own book of business -- not so dependent on a small group of folks who would hand me business -- through 2018.

Through the summer of 2018, I had a few short-term projects. They tided me over. In August of 2018, I secured one project that lasted until January of 2019. And then, in October of 2018, I secured another project that lasted until March of 2019. These two projects really helped me finish out 2018 without having too much to worry about financially, which was a relief.

If you look through my threads from early 2018 and compare them to the threads from September 2018 going forward, you'll see that my political activity is a lot less focused on attending events and a lot more on phone banking.

I was feeling a lot less welcome at big events. In fact, at some events, I sensed some hostility. I also wanted to be effective in getting out the vote for the 2018 elections. I knew the best way to make that happen was by doing canvassing and by doing phone banking. So I ended up doing phone banking and phasing out my attendance at meetings and events.

As I look back on this time, I also remember with pleasure how many fun books I read, as well as how many enjoyable art events I attended in Colorado. I'm really thankful for all these experiences.

As I've mentioned before -- and I'm sure I'll mention it again -- Twitter's platform has gone through a number of changes over the years. Due to some of these changes, I believe, the platform has twisted each of my threads through 2018 and 2019 out of chronological order.

What this means is, the individual threads don't read in their original order a lot of times. The first and second tweets usually stick together well. But then, from the third tweet down, the thread can be slightly, moderately, or extremely jumbled up. Some threads are in worse shape than others. The threads in the worst shape are the ones that depend on a chronological or numerical kind of flow. They're the most noticeably jumbled up.

Honestly, I'd spent months agonizing over whether to link more threads to this blog at all.

Finally I decided to link them. I feel it's important to make this table of contents. When all is said and done, we might be talking about 1,200 threads I've done on Twitter. That's 1,200 reviews, not only of books, movies, theater, and art exhibitions, but also of political and social events, in my home state of Colorado and even, sometimes, outside of Colorado.

I'm an average to slightly-below-average person. My reviews and discussions aren't important because they reflect a strong mind. They're important because there are a lot of discussions here, in as plain a language as I can present, about a wide array of experiences, from an average person's point of view. In the future, as people analyze how average people felt about certain things, hopefully my reflections can help add to the data for that analysis.

So the incoherence of some of the threads is less important, in my opinion, than making easily accessible my life as data for people who decide in the future to analyze how average people felt about things.

In the meantime, while we're all waiting (hoping? praying?) for the future, I hope you also find these threads enjoyable.

Thank you for reading.

A few quick thoughts/Support me on Ko-fi!

Hi everybody! Thank you for reading my blog. Just wanted to do a bit of self-promotion and share some quick thoughts.

First -- if you like my work, please visit my Ko-fi page, where you can support my work by giving a one-time donation in increments of $3 (i.e. the price of a cup of coffee).

Second -- I just wanted to share some thoughts for folks who have been watching this blog for a while.

As you've noticed, this is a blog gathering together all my Twitter thread reviews over the years.

When I started the blog, I started where I could first find threads by using Twitter's easy search function. That got me as far back as late 2014.

As I explained in my previous update post, I recently noticed I was missing a lot of stuff. So I decided to go all the way back to October of 2012, which is when I first started posting on Twitter, and use a more thorough search method.

So you'll notice that the posts near the top of the blog are longer than the posts near the bottom. That's because the newer posts link directly to threads, whereas I did a lot of my earlier reviews by just tweeting out individual tweets. So, for the earlier reviews, I've just copied out all the tweets, so nobody else has to hunt them down.

The last few posts I've done have seen a lot of "firsts" for me. The first art gallery and museum reviews I did on Twitter. And the first time I went to the RedLine Contemporary Art Center, which is my favorite art space in Denver.

Also, sadly, one of the tweets mentions my sick grandmother, who, in fact, passed away in late March of 2013. I'll always remember and love her.

Anyhow, thank you for visiting. And I hope you all enjoy the content.

Couple quick items -- Ko-fi support -- My recent/future posts

Hi everybody!

Thank you for visiting my blog.

Just a quick heads up -- if you like my work, please consider supporting me by visiting my Ko-fi profile and making a donation.

Ko-fi makes it easy for people to provide one-time donations in increments of $3 (i.e. the price of a coffee).

Every little bit helps. Thank you!

***

Also, a quick heads up for my regular readers on my recent posts.

As you know, this blog is an attempt to make a table of contents out of all my Twitter reviews.

I had originally been using Twitter's free analytics system to find my old posts. I hadn't been able to find posts earlier than late 2014 that way. So I started from there.

I was definitely noticing gaps in my Twitter threads, just based on my memory. So I started going back through my old paper notebooks to find records of things I had done since I started using Twitter in October of 2012.

I have found a lot of older stuff using this method.

So now I have gone back to October of 2012 and am working my way forward from there.

I assume I'll still have gaps in my record. For instance -- I have no notebook documentation of things I did between May and August of 2013.

Anyway, I'm assuming it won't be long before I get back to 2015.

However, I did want to be as thorough as possible, because early 2016 was such a big emotional transition point in my life. I want to make sure that I have the previous years as fully documented as I can before I head into my documentation of 2016.

Another thing you'll notice is, through 2013, a lot of my Twitter reviews aren't in thread form. They're posted via separate tweets. So many of the 2012 and 2013 Twitter reviews will be reproduced (in text) in their entirety in the blog posts.

I'm not crazy about doing that, because I like preserving the feel of Twitter for my reviews. But it's the only practical way for the earlier reviews.

Anyway, thank you as always for visiting. I hope you enjoy!

Support my work on Ko-fi!

(Image: Ko-fi)

Hi everybody! Just a quick heads up, I'm now on Ko-fi.

Here is my profile.

Ko-fi is an easy way to support artists. You do one-off donations in increments of $3 (i.e. the price of a coffee).

If you like my work, please feel free to visit my Ko-fi page and give as you'd like. Any amount, from $3 up, helps me out!

I will probably do reminder posts like this once a week.

There's no pressure at all to donate. If you visit and enjoy my work, that in itself is fabulous!

But if you do like my work and would like to support it, please feel free to stop by and make a donation on my Ko-fi profile.

Thank you very much!