First, I’d like to thank all of you for your kind comments, direct messages, and emails.  It’s gratifying to know that people care and appreciated all the work I’ve put in to this site.  So, thank you.  However, to all the people who’ve offered solutions to the technical issues the site’s facing, I appreciate that you want to help, but I’ve made my choice.  I just can’t afford to keep the site going (financially, emotionally, or from a time investment perspective).  So, thank you for the offers, but I have to decline.  Now, to answer a few questions:

1. When I say that the site is going to go dark, I mean that it will cease to exist.  I intend to pay the next hosting payment (at the end of this month) but by the beginning of May, this site will no longer be accessible.
2. I will investigate ways of making the content available, but I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.  It takes a lot of time to upload thousands of photos, and I’m not sure I can afford that kind of time investment right now.
3. I don’t know if I’m going to continue writing books.  Maybe.  Maybe not.  But if I do, it probably won’t be soon.  Like I said, I’ve had to go back to my old job, which doesn’t leave me much free time for what amounts to a hobby.

So, again – thanks for all your support.  I’ll try to post a few more times over the next month, but my communication will almost assuredly be sporadic.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been forced to do some soul searching regarding the future of this site.  As many of you know, I’ve been doing this (in some form or another) for more than a decade.  In that time, I’ve been forced to constantly adapt to censorship and a host of technical issues (that I have neither the time nor expertise to combat).  I’ve had numerous health scares as well, each one taking their toll on me (both mentally and physically).  This last issue is just one in a long line of problems (some stemming from my own shortcomings, but others completely outside of my control).  Through it all, I’ve tried to keep putting out content because I know that, for some, the work means something (even if that something was just a way to access a very specific kink).  However, this latest problem has been the last straw.  I don’t think I can do this anymore.

The reasons are simple:

1. This latest issue presents a very tricky problem that would require me to spend quite a bit of time to fix it.  Most of the solutions are temporary in nature, and would only buy me a little time before I had to readdress the problem on a larger scale sometime in the future.  It would also represent an increase in the cost of keeping this site going (which isn’t cheap in the first place).  That also leads into the next problem.
2. Costs have gotten out of control, making it increasingly less profitable for me to keep it going.  On top of that, a few years ago (curiously coinciding with people pirating my work), I saw a marked drop-off in recurring subscriptions.  That, in turn, decreased the site’s revenue, making it that much more difficult to keep it going.  I’m aware that some people don’t view piracy as theft, and that’s fine. I won’t moralize about it. But I will say that it does have consequences, especially for small sites like this that operate on a fairly small budget.  Me reaching the point where the site is no long financially viable is one of those consequences.  Is it piracy’s fault?  No.  But the data I have suggests that it was a major contributing factor in this site’s eventual failure.
3. Because of this drop in revenue, I had to start working another job (in addition to the full-time job that producing content for this site always has been), which caused a decrease in my production.  I just can’t keep up anymore.  Not if I want to keep my bills paid.
4. Many of you already know about my health issues, which are another contributing factor in my decision.

I’m aware that many of you will probably be angry about this.  Or resentful, at the very least.  Believe me, if I saw a way to keep this going, I would.  If this was only one issue, I would work to solve it, but it’s more than that.  It’s multiple issues all coming together to hit me at the same time, and I just don’t see a path forward.

So, what comes next?  Well, I’ve already paid the hosting fees through April, so the site will remain online for the next month.  But after that, it’s going to go dark.  If you all want to keep access to the content that’s there for now, feel free to maintain your subscription until then.  If not, you’re going to want to cancel it.  I’ll try to remember to do cancel everything on my end, but I’m not sure if I have the ability to do that easily (which means I probably won’t have time to do a deep dive into the membership plug-in and cancel everything manually).  After that, I’ll try to look into hosting the content elsewhere, but I won’t make any promises.  I will try to let you all know if there are any developments on that front.

I guess the last thing I wanted to say was that I’m sorry I couldn’t keep this going.  I wish I could.  But there are too many factors working against me, and I just don’t see how that would be possible.  So, thank you to everyone who’s supported my work all this time, and, once again, I apologize that I have neither the skill nor the fortitude to keep it going.

Okay – so I’ve mentioned a few times over the past couple of weeks that I’ve reached the maximum storage capacity of the server I have with Godaddy.  Easy fix, right?  Just upgrade.  Well, not really.  I’ve already got the biggest plan they offer for shared hosting, and the only way to get bigger is to upgrade to my own server.  From a financial standpoint, that’s not a huge deal.  I could probably make it work.  The problem is that I’d have to manage that server myself, which is something I have no idea how to do.  So, lately, I’ve been trying to delete files from the server to allow me to continue posting captions.  This has been met with minimal success, and it feels like no matter how many files I delete (we’re talking hundreds), I’m always at the limit of the server’s capacity.  So, I’m kind of at my wit’s end on this one.  I can’t upload single captions, much less full stories right now.

I’m exploring other options (a different host, doing something off-site and just linking back to it, etc.), but it’s taking time for me to sort through everything (because, again, my technical ability is minimal).  I’m doing my best to figure everything out, though, and I hope to have a solution soon.  In the meantime, I hope you’ll all bear with me.  Though the next caption story will probably be uploaded to a different site (kind of like how I used to do it when I was on Patreon).  I’ll keep you all informed.