I hope everyone had a happy holiday season and that you’ll ring in the new year responsibly yet enjoyably. 2019 was definitely a difficult year for me, but it was also a weirdly nice one in terms of my writing. A lot of progress was made on The Good, The Bad and the Molly, and it’ll be finished shortly into 2019, meaning new stories will be coming in at almost the same time as the new year. This was the year a decent number of people started reading these blogs, that was nice. I made a lot of choices and ultimately came out of 2019 a better-adjusted person than going in, believe it or not, and tried to be as transparent with you all about that journey as possible. Thank you all so much for your support, your comments and emails, and your time. I am forever grateful for that.

The end of the year always makes us think about time and how finite it makes things. At least, it does for me. I got an email a decent bit ago that posed an interesting question – when am I going to stop writing?

I’ve often said in moments of a swelled heart that I’ll never stop writing for you all. It’s chilling to think that in my moments of not thinking clearly, it’s possible I could have done something very stupid and then… I wouldn’t be here now to write this blog. I would have stopped writing that day. So there is a day I’ll stop. There’s a day everyone will stop, no one is going to live forever. The question is, when? And luckily, I’ll never know the answer, because if I did, I think it would have driven me mad.

So let’s suppose I don’t die prematurely, by any cause. Let’s say I live until I’m 92, then I get a stroke, then, oh no, he’s dead. Is my erotica at 91 going to be very good? Honestly, probably not. A lot of artists, particularly writers, don’t really get better as they age past a certain point. Even now my stories are noticeably stuck in the early 2010s and the longer time goes on the more apparent that will be. One of these days my stories are going to have more function as a time capsule, when using ‘dick’ for ‘penis’ will have been seen as ‘so 2010s.’ If anyone is reading this from the far-off future, it was the slang of my time, sue me.

So if my erotica I wrote in the nursing home isn’t going to be very good, should I stop writing at 91? 90? 89? What’s the expiration date for my writing? When should be the day I pack it up? The day my Patreon stops working? The day I publish a story and it gets less than 10 views on day 1? When I’ve written my best work ever and nothing else will come close, no matter how hard I try? Ha, joke’s on you – I already wrote Being More Social.

Much like death, I think we’d all be driven insane if we knew the day we stopped practicing our passions. When I say, “I won’t stop writing,” I’m not signing a contract saying that I’ll be writing stories for the next 70 years. I’m instead saying that I feel as though my purpose in life is to tell stories. To live, to me, is to tell stories. If I wasn’t telling stories… I may as well not be here. Decades down the line, the internet could shut down or climate change could kill us all or maybe everyone including me decided Bashful Scribe has had a good run but it’s time to retire the fighter. Most importantly, I don’t think I’ll ever announce I’m stopping my writing to the shock of my viewers. I think it’ll have been a decision my readers and I came to all at once.

But again, that’s the future. Don’t make yourself go insane, live in the now. I’m still telling stories. I’ll still be telling stories for a while. How long exactly? Stick around and find out. 😉 I’ll talk to you all next year.