It’s My Blogoversary: Four Years!

Today marks the fourth anniversary of Waking Vixen. And on this day, I will say this: more than anything else I’ve done, blogging changed my life. Through blogging, I’ve met lots of fascinating people, some of whom I count among my closest friends. Blogging has brought me the biggest opportunities of my career, and it’s shaped a lot of who I am today. And though it’s also given me some heartache, I would pretty much recommend blogging for anyone who is in a state of becoming - it helped me sort my shit out both personally and professionally, and it has created more opportunities than I can count. Especially for someone like me - I’m not shy, but I’m very much an introverted thinker type - blogging has really gotten my voice out into the world in ways that I couldn’t do otherwise. In person networking is really difficult for me, the thought of approaching strangers still makes me want to throw up, but blogging gave me a platform and a voice.

Though obviously a lot has happened during each of the four years I’ve been blogging, here’s a run down of my blogoversary posts, starting with the very first one, which was cleverly entitled “A beginning:”

Things haven’t always looked like this - divided. But somehow they are now, and I’m starting to learn a thing or two about the closet.

The thing is: three years ago, I turned my academic (and prurient, lets not forget that) interest in sex/identity/gender and most of all FUCKING into a career. And I’ve been plugging away like that ever since - doing formal research on sexuality (in the cultural history sense, not the scientific one), working for a porn company, doing some responsible pervert stuff like teaching HIV/STI prevention workshops, and dabbling a bit in sex work - the kind with nakedness and fucking instead of just thinking.

But now I’m at a kind of crossroads. Because there are many facets of me, I’ve decided to go in a direction that, while it isn’t new to my life, requires me to be more closeted about my perversions (professional and otherwise). While in many ways I’m totally psyched about my choice, in other ways I’m utterly terrified and sad to be moving into a world where people will assume I’m like them or potentially freak out if they know that I’m not.

So that’s - roughly - what this blog is to be about: the process I’m going through as I try to figure out what it looks like to try and create a balance between Straight World and Pervland, in both the professional and filthy senses. You’ll get to read plenty of ruminations on sex, politics, history and get acquainted with the inner workings of my brain as I think these things through - but you’ll also get to hear funny stories from the daily worklife of a half-time professional pervert. And, of course, you’ll also get some dirty stories that aren’t about work at all.

That closeted direction that I wrote about in my first post was my choice to go to Columbia for my MA in American Studies - initially the plan was to pull myself away from sexuality stuff and work towards doing material culture and late-nineteenth/early-twentieth century stuff with an eye towards a career in museums, oral history, and educational/documentary media.

On my first blogoversary, I was finishing up a month of study at the University of Amsterdam summer institute on sexuality. I had been very on the fence about whether or not I should commit myself to working in sex 100% - being in Amsterdam answered that with a resounding yes. Here’s one of the things I wrote, in a post called Blur and focus:

As times goes by, I presume that there will be fewer secrets with more people knowing more of the story. It’s not a bad thing; its something to brace myself for.

I think I’ve pretty much solved the initial problem of this blog - how to live the divide between Pervland and StraightWorld. The answer, in short, is: don’t be such a wimp, kill the divide.

On my second blogoversary, I put up a really short post, entitled July 28 - I didn’t have time for more because that was the first day of the three day shoot for The Bi Apple.

On my third blogoversary, I was relieved to be home from my eight city tour for my book, Naked on the Internet, and I let my blogoversary pass unannounced.

Though nowadays I spend more time on my Village Voice blog Naked City and my video blog Live Girl Review than I do here on Waking Vixen, this is the hub, the place where it all began. And though I go through my quiet periods here and sometimes feel annoyed with the internet, this space has been and will continue to be really damned important to me. So: here’s to the future!