No need for cold turkey

Its like some crap drug addiction, having to increase the doses to get the same effect. It used to be fun, drawing, sketching, tracing the contours. Thinking it was an innocent diversion, some kind of artistic project, that it would get me into the club that evades me.

But of course, it wasn't art, it was engineering. It was functional design, carefully construction for a specific effect. To draw as much traffic to the site as possible.

The YouPorn thing was a godsend, everytime I put up a picture, it would go on their blogs aggregator, the more often I put up pictures, the more often I'd be at thetop of the list and get more traffic than those at the bottom. I plotted graphs of different times of the day, and when I post to get the maximum traffic.

I begged other sites for link, I coerced and bribed. I carefully selected those who would be likely to reciprocate, those sites where they keep a keen eye on where links come from and go to. Which sites were worth the most effort, and most likely to pay off.

But each time the results were less than before. The traffic figures slowly rose, but the peaks were smaller. I'd have to work harder and faster for the same results. In early months I'd churn out 20 pictures and a link on indienudes would get me ten thousand hits. The animations where in one night I'd do 20 pictures, they could get half a million hits on video sites, but just the once. And now in the final month I'm churning out six or seven a night, the lines still going up, but not as dramatically as before.

Some of my best stuff, but no longer with the thrill of the new.

I sold my soul for barely a blip. Sure the graph keeps going up and more new people are visiting. But the traffic figures, the playing field has changed, its larger, more vast. And the reasons I started it all for are drifting away.

I had the best night in London ever on Saturday at HDIF. I was on my own, grinning like a madman at the memory of last time I was there, standing outside a year ago, but now safe in the knowledge that I'd know people.

But even then it was kind of unexpected how it turned out. Karl in the same position as me, on his own safe in the knowledge other people he'd know would be there. Then The Just Joans arrived from Glasgow with other ex-pats. And everything started accelerating as the alcohol flowed. We made new friends, we chatted to old friends, old animosities vanished. There was hugging and drinking and dancing and crazed conversations. The people at the bar friendly and chatty and nothing to be scared of.

I staggered out when I had drunk my fill, leaving behind those I loved without a word, to get the usual late bus home.

But I'm back behind the pen, grasping, gasping.

On the final straight, only ten days left.

Why ten days? Why not just call it quits.

The tearing the page out of the phonebook, Terminator-style, has fallen apart with drinking and losing and winning. The rules have changed even in this last month.

I'll be glad when its over. I want to drink with friends.

Will you come for a drink with me?