This is only the third leap year since I’ve started the blog; since it doesn’t come around often, I don’t really have any set pattern for what it should look like. But when I looked back at the last one, I found some guidance:
Where will I be on February 29th, 2020? Will I still be posting every day, or will I have wound down somewhat? How many new books will I have written? Will I still be living in Seattle? What will my income be like? What new experiences will I have had? How well-known will I be? Will the “sex trafficking” hysteria be over, as I predicted just before that last Leap Day? Will I even be alive? There’s no way to know, or even to guess; the only way to find out is to wait.
There’s been a lot of change since then, but fortunately not as much as over the four years before (though I’m traveling more than ever). Obviously I’m still posting every day, but aside from news columns the average length is shorter and Fridays are sometimes quite short. My fourth book will be out soon, and I have plans for two more this year and three next year, including a third collection of short stories; I also have a documentary, The War on Whores, that was still in the talking-about stages last leap day. I’m still spending most of my time in Seattle, though of course now I have my farm, Sunset; on the last leap day I hadn’t even decided to relocate yet (that didn’t happen until December of that year). I’m making about the same as I did four years ago, but expending a lot less effort to do so; in fact, I don’t do traditional escort advertising any more except for my personal website and free ad sites, and I plan to mostly stop taking new clients at the end of this year unless they have impeccable references. I’m still alive, but unfortunately so is “sex trafficking” hysteria; however, it has backfired on its creators and promoters in a way I didn’t quite predict, with over half of Americans now supporting decriminalization (many of them because of the hysteria rather than in spite of it), and strong pro-decriminalization momentum in a number of US states. And as I head toward the tenth anniversary of this blog, I’m seeing a slow shift in the way I live my life (for the better, I think). Will I be around to answer these same questions on February 29th, 2024? Only time will tell. But as I look at all I’ve done over the past decade, I can say that I’m reasonably satisfied with my life and accomplishments. And as that’s not something I’ve ever really been able to say at the end of any prior decade, I think it’s enough.
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