Got another long message that I’ll chop up as best I can. I do tend to ramble.

> I know we’re usually discussing work together but it’s more like, this
> dialogue is not a "chore" unlike a lot of other emailing...

I’m glad to hear that. It’s sometimes hard to tell when things are dragging on and the other person is responding more out of a feeling of duty instead of a real desire to carry on a correspondence. You strike me as the kind of sweet person who would keep writing to fans even though you know you should be doing something else out of some feeling of obligation. Occasionally, I’ve gotten a few responses that seem rushed and I’ve wondered if that point has been hit or if things have just gotten so hectic that you’re doing everything you can to simply keep up. You must be great at keeping schedules to do all that even though I sense that you’re not naturally a very orderly person as much as someone who enforces a degree of order because you know that there’s no other way to manage your life.

I’ve mostly talked "work" with you because you really are doing something that’s incredibly fascinating. What you’re doing as a living is something that you could only dream about when you were younger. To a degree, I’m kind of jealous that you can do something you enjoy. It probably isn’t always fun, but you at least get a chance once a month to direct something that you like (even if the bulk of plots are kind of boring to you). Sometimes I wonder if doing this for a living kind of takes the fun out of looking at a typical bondage video or magazine for recreation.

One of the reasons that I pursued a technical career for a living instead of the arts is that I always wondered if drawing or writing for a living would start becoming work instead of fun. I also went where the steady money was. The arts are a tough place to make a living in. I’ve always had an interest in science as a kid and a kind of natural curiosity about the world that encouraged me to seek answers to why things work, so it’s not as if pursuing an engineering degree was an unusual choice for me.  

My one great disappointment about the way technical and other courses are taught in school is that teachers tend to like to teach things that are easy to grade. In science courses, they stress equations. In history, they stress names, dates, and places. That’s because facts lend themselves to unambiguous questions on a test. When did Columbus sail to America? 1494--Wrong! Schools rarely get into concepts. To me, that’s what’s important. If you know why Columbus came to America and what impact it had on Europe’s history, then you are showing an understanding of an important event in history. If you know that it happened in the 1490s, that’s close enough to place it on a timeline. Whether it’s 1492 or 1494 doesn’t matter all that greatly. A person with a good memory can memorize every date of interest in our history and still not have the foggiest notion of how this country was birthed.

A lot of my enjoyment of the sciences went away when I graduated college. I have a hard time working with raw facts and numbers and am more comfortable at grasping concepts. What I got taught was equations and math, not science. It’s not the worst field to get into. It has offered me a steady job at a decent pay. I’ll never get rich on the job. I won’t get rich. The job is basically a paid cog in a larger machine.  

I don’t hate my job, but I also don’t love it. At times, it can be incredibly frustrating because of the number of decisions that are made for solely political reasons. Details and facts that result in a good design often take a back seat to whose ego needs to be stroked this day because it was some bigwig’s idea and it doesn’t matter if it’s dumb because orders are being followed. Occasionally, I have my days when I think I’ve accomplished something and that feels good. Most of the time, it’s just a job. It’s a paycheck that allows me to enjoy my off hours.

In a lot of ways, I don’t consider myself a technician. That’s my occupation, but I wanted to work in comics for the longest time. I enjoy writing (surprise!) and I’m a fairly decent artist. I’ve long had an interest in comics and having the two skills gave me some reason to think I could eventually do it. In spite of having some artistic flair, I’ve always had a very practical side and I couldn’t risk my life on a dream. Besides, I’d read enough behind the scenes interviews to recognize that comics, like what you do, is a business first and an entertainment form second. The one thing I hadn’t expected was the way that most of my artistic ambitions went out the door by the time I started working for a while. Jobs have a way of draining the creativity out of a person.

Do you find your day job fun? I think you like the days when you get to make videos. I’m not sure if the rest of the job is all that engaging.

I’m basically an odd mix of artist and technician. It gives me a strong mix of logic and emotions in both life and work. The artistic side helps at work because I’m often able to leap beyond logic to creative solutions that aren’t obvious to most people. I’m one of the rare technicians that can write reasonably well. Most others pen things rather dryly. One of my coworkers writes trip reports in the third tense. I try to tell him that it’s his report. He’s reporting from his perspective. Trip reports aren’t official records. Yet, he still refers to himself as the traveler. When I write one, I try to keep it conversational like this so that even material that isn’t especially interesting at least is leavened with a little style.

I’ve got to start kicking myself more to try to do some more creative work. I’m 40 and that means that life is half over. Bummer. It’d be nice to leave something behind that says I was here. While I’d like to do work in the bondage field, I don’t consider that as the mark that I want to be remembered for. I’m not sure how you feel about your work. It certainly brings entertainment to a lot of people.  

Do you ever hope to do something other than bondage videos? I’m not asking from a standpoint of denigrating what you do. You’re helping a lot of people satisfy their erotic fantasies and there’s nothing wrong with that. But you reach such a small audience that I’d almost imagine that you’d like to have your works appreciated by the greater masses.