Throwing My Hands Up

Over the past few weeks I have thought about just throwing my hands up and saying I’m done with blogging. I even stopped the billing on my hosting account and did not renew my expired SSL certificate. Life has been so overwhelming for both Mike and I. I determined I did not have anything left to give anyone else. This is certainly a position I never thought I would find myself contemplating. I made the decision to just be…DONE.

Another One Bites The Dust

Almost four years ago…wow, it’s really been that long…I wrote a blog asking What Happened to All the Nudist Bloggers, and I had asked myself the questions “why are there so few of us? Why is everyone just throwing their hands up too? Why just stop once you have established a following of sorts? After the past few years, I can understand why people choose to give it up. It takes a lot of work and without a stream of income, and it can become expensive if you’re not truly passionate about it.

Many readers will be able to comment on the number of posts I have over the last two years. I don’t think I averaged one a month, or even one every two months. Life had truly began to take over and pushed anything that wasn’t a true necessity out of my life. My blog included. I feel like it’s disservice and waste of time when I can’t truly engage with readers and leave emails unanswered for weeks or even months for some of you. For this I am truly sorry.

Even as recently as last month I still tried to tell myself a lie that I would continue writing, but would expand to other items outside of the naked life and naturism. I didn’t know what I was going to be writing about, but whatever it was would have given me a breath of fresh air and help give me motivation to keep blogging. I even worked on developing a new site to help me transition away from Sensual Nudist. Sadly, that didn’t give me any fulfillment and I felt like I was betraying myself in some way.

Seeking Counsel

Mike and I have the ‘luxury’ of getting every other weekend off from the kids. These long weekends give us the opportunity to relax with some wine while being clothes free for about 2-3 days. Needless to say we take this very important time to recharge and reconnect with each other.

Mike and I are both introverted, so having a lot of chaos and excitement from four kids drains us to the point that we have very little left for us. I work full-time and taking two graduate classes a semester. Mike works full-time and he teaches at local community colleges 2-3 evenings a week. We’re busy to say the least.

Is It Possible To Keep Going

Anyway…last weekend we were kid free and after we had listened to a church sermon on the internet, I turned to Mike and wanted to talk him about something. I’ve been wanting to do something with him for a while now, but we never could figure out what we wanted to do. We even started making our own blog but never finished putting it together. So I talked to him about everything I had worked on with my blog, social media accounts I had created, and that I don’t have much in me left to keep working on it.

I didn’t want to just let everything I had accomplished to just disappear like other bloggers. This blog, the people who read, messages I receive, and the overall support I have gotten means a lot to me. I didn’t want to just toss it away.

Mike, being Mike, looked at me and said “I know this means a lot to you, and if you don’t want to give it up, then don’t”. Admittedly, I don’t want to give it up, but I don’t see any other options available to me right now. He and I just have too many irons in the fire and it’s hard to juggle.

Let’s Do It Together

As we were talking, Mike told me that I have a lot of readers and followers on social media, and that what I write seems to reach a lot of people. He had never looked but was surprised that I have 74,000 Twitter (X) followers now. I told him at one time I almost broke 100,000, which was surprising for us both!

Mike thought for a moment and said why don’t I help you with it? Maybe we can make this our project and not just your project. We can work on it together so it’s not so overwhelming on me to do everything. Hearing this made me very happy. I knew if he was there to motivate and support me like he always does, then I might just be able to juggle this and keep up with life…maybe.

I’d be lying if I didn’t say I have my doubts about maintaining my motivation going forward. We truly have a lot going on, but I am hopeful he and I will make this work! Everything else we do as a team has come out with success. I’m willing to give it a shot without throwing my hands up and quitting.

Making Things Personal

Many of you know how adamant I am about my privacy. I’m probably too extreme at times and I’m sure some of you have questioned that. I mean, I would. A few weeks ago I realized how bad it was when Mike tried to add me to an account. It was an online savings bank and they couldn’t verify me. Maybe I’ve taken things too far over the years.

We talked about this last Sunday and Mike reassured me that I was safe. He felt like we needed to make things more personal and actually put ourselves out there more. At first this caused me some anxiety because I have some tattoos and I don’t want to be identified. I wouldn’t even let the TSA and customs agents take my picture for verification. I made them manually verify when we returned from Jamaica. Because Mike is so good at making me feel safe and actually keeping me safe, I agreed.

Last weekend I took a huge step and posted a nice side boob picture of from last year. This was a picture Mike took of me while I was laying in the sun last March. This was the same week Mike proposed to me. It made me very excited to Welcome Mike to Sensual Nudist with a personalized blog post to start. He encouraged me to do this so I the blog will feel more like mine and give me ‘ownership’. It didn’t hurt when he said that he’ll help with pictures too.

Owning Social Media

Every blogger and content creator out there basically says you have to be a social media connoisseur to grow. I can’t say I disagree with this. Since my post last week and resurrecting old social media accounts, my traffic has gone up. This does give me some motivation to keep going regardless of what life brings me. Writing and getting feedback from all of you has helped me get through the last four plus years.

I have fallen off Twitter quite a bit and I never really liked Instagram since it was all pictures. Why use an account if I am not going to post pics? Plus they have a ridiculous anti-nudity policy that makes it difficult for nudist accounts. However, many have made it work with well-placed coverings or blurring spots. With Mike’s help we can split up the social media responsibilities to be fair.

Also, I have recently created a Reddit account and gotten back into my Pinterest account. I don’t have much on these accounts right now, sadly. However, I have noticed Reddit has a large group of naturists, and they allow nudity. Pinterest allows nudity too but not the degree of Reddit and Twitter. Regardless, I encourage you to go follow so you don’t miss anything from me. Oh, I almost forgot, I made a Tumblr account too, where my blogs are sent there automatically.

What’s To Come

I haven’t quite figured out what’s to come in the future. We are still working on that given the time we have. I am not going to over-commit to saying I will write 2-3 times a week. That’s simply not possible right now. However, I will commit to writing twice a month on a regular basis and using social media more. I have downloaded all the social media apps on my phone, so I have easier access to interact.

We talked about a number of things we could do to keep things interesting for you and to keep us motivated. Mike had a lot of good ideas and I am excited to work on these with him. I’m unsure of the outcome of said endeavors, but I’m up for the challenge.

I know I have been all over the place with what to do regarding my blog. I’ve never had any real clear direction myself and just let it go where it went. For the first time ever I finally have some sense of direction. He and I just have to navigate this journey of self exploration together…naked.

Also, if you enjoy the content I create and I have helped you in someway, please consider a small donation to help cover the cost of hosting, new equipment, and new trips to create content for you!

Header image of Alexis from an afternoon shower photo shoot