1995 was a hell of a year for me. On almost the same day that my daughter finally met the father she'd never known, my mother had a stroke and was diagnosed with brain cancer. While my kid was building a relationship with her dad, I watched my beautiful mother lose her mind and eventually her life.
On top of all that, my kid's Dad was romancing me while neglecting to tell me he already had a pregnant girlfriend. It was excruciatingly difficult for me to maintain hope with both parents gone, a failed attempt at reconciliation and an aching fear that my kid would be taken away by her dad, new step mom and baby sister. In fact, the only thing that kept me from slitting my wrists (aside from my child) was a crappy little Packard Bell 486 he had given her for Christmas.
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"I see so many webmasters who feel no guilt when it comes to the race for the almighty dollar. They don't care that the higher the monkey climbs, the more he shows his ass." |
Instead of spending countless lonely hours wallowing in my misery, I obsessed over that goofy comp with it's 100 MGHZ overdrive chip. I gave it a modem. I added memory. I installed bad software and formatted it's poor hard drive so many times I lost count. I learned DOS commands. I hooked it up with printers and scanners and went through about a zillion keyboards. I discovered the Internet and chat rooms and email and taught myself HTML.
The more I worked with that computer, the more I realized I wanted to make my living from it. The more my back ached from bending over shampoo sinks and all day standing, the more I knew I had to make some drastic changes. I quit hairdressing, got a part-time job as a cashier and began to make porn pages at night. I knew if I stuck with it long enough, I would eventually find my way so I could quit the cashier bit and work from the safety of my sweet little home.
After years of trial, error, intensive study, and getting screwed over, I sent a small article to an adult webmaster resource site and everything fell into place. Now I work for Cozy Frog and Cozy Academy and that cashier job is a distant memory.
Ask any successful adult webmaster how they got into this business and I'll bet the majority of them have their own hard luck story. Some got laid off. Some have physical ailments that keep them from regular jobs. Some just found themselves in college with no money and a need to pay tuition.
They all took their desperations and desires and reconfigured them into free sites, paysites, design companies and host providers. They all did the work, asked the questions and stuck with the tasks until they found their plateau of profitability. Good for them. Good for
you.
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Now that you're all big boys and girls, does it ever occur to you there are legions of new members in this wacky world of online porn who are just as hungry as you once were? Now that you've gotten that big-ass sports car and put the down payment on that groovy beach house, can you look at your original plan and say you followed it? When you diss the newbie simply because they ask a question you already know the answer to, does it make you feel superior? Did your simple goal of "making enough money to quit my job" snowball into a mess of taxes, employees and unending workdays? Has your dream of self-sufficiency mutated into a race for more, more, and even more money? Are you a well-loved philanthropic hero or are you a selfish money-grubbing bastard?
Are you happy?
If you find your days filled with constant stress, flooded inboxes and the only fun you get is from attacking newbies, maybe it's time you took the time to remember where you came from.
True, some people thrive on pressure but are you really one of those people? If your relationships with family and friends have crumbled under the pressure of your enterprise, was it worth it? Will that new expensive toy really take the place of loved ones? Are you that starry-eyed dreamer you were just a few short years ago? Are you attacking the new kids because you fear their competition or are you jealous of their hope?
I see so many webmasters who feel no guilt when it comes to the race for the almighty dollar. They bulldoze their opinions, programs and superiority over others and laugh. I wonder sometimes if it has ever occurred to them that the earth was spinning long before they came along and with continue to do so long after they've gone.
They don't care that the higher the monkey climbs, the more he shows his ass. They honestly believe that their futures are set in stone and blind themselves to the realities of unseen forces. Any day something can come along to change everything. That ladder they climbed will be populated with those they encountered on the trip up. Those newbies they ignored might someday be future employers. Those bridges they burned might someday leave them stranded with nowhere to turn.
The next time you see a new adult webmaster ask a question you've heard a millions times, keep in mind you once were as clueless as they are. The time it takes to come up with a snide remark is probably far less than the time it would take to answer correctly and civilly. I'm not saying you should devote all your time to helping the new kids, but how much can it hurt to give a tich of your knowledge out to an appreciative soul?
Your life can totally fall apart in a moment or a day. If it does, who will you turn to?