It’s interesting that “februation” means a ceremonial purging or cleansing. February itself comes from the Latin februarius mensis, the “month of purification.” Every once in a while when I’m dissatisfied with what’s happening on social media, I run through and check who I’m following that isn’t following me and when they last posted, and I reassess why I’m following them.

I mean, everyone does this on Facebook, when we discover which of our relatives and high school friends have grown up into proudly nescient bigots. I just also do it on other platforms for different reasons.

Not this time, though. I’m looking back on other things going on so far in this new year. There have been so many changes, in fact, since I rejoined Twitter last April and started pushing my wares upon an unwary population. This is important, because in April I committed to one full year of giving my best effort to Twitter, no quitting halfway through, just constantly hammering away at stories and engagement and personal development. After one year, you’ll know whether it’s worth sticking around, or you can legitimately say you tried and just cut your losses and walk away.

After all that crap with Google, knuckling under to the feds and cracking down on adult sites, I successfully started again with WordPress and I’m still teaching myself more and more about how to work effectively here. Everything I publish gets pushed out to various other social media outlets, the largest response coming from Tumblr, of all places. From April to November I mustered 3,000 visitors, then in two months I doubled that. Modest progress, but still progress.

I’ve written a metric fuck-ton. I’ve added stories and chapters to series on Giantess World, but also I’ve created new series on my blog. Why would I do this? Why would I make more work for myself? And yet it feels right.

All the people I’ve met have made all the difference, too. First there was Giantess Tina, who came bounding over the horizon and scooped me up before I knew what was happening. She encouraged me to take up writing again, challenged me to return to drawing my vision, and she enthusiastically supported everything I did; more, she drove me to shatter my conventional thought and pushed me to explore deeper, more fiery creative expression.

Then Undersquid returned from her cyclical torpor, just as real giantesses do in our world. Having long enthused over her broad and dynamic library of shrink-fantasy essays and literature, I had to ingratiate myself to her, and this motivated my story-a-day project: she had a remarkable blog, and I wanted a remarkable blog. It seems we share an identical vision of the world in which tiny people roam, reflected in our work and our reviews of each other’s work. To make this world more real (and at her urging), I practiced illustration—in the style and with the tools of a tiny little being—and expanded into recording audiobooks of my stories. With more to come. You have her to thank for this.

We haven’t done anything together, directly, but I consider Nyx a kind of writing partner. She has labored so hard over her craft, answering to her merciless internal critic, producing lyrical, sensual fiction yet always demanding more and better from herself. Her genre is a little out of my comfort zone, we all know this, but I can’t not read such beautifully crafted stories. On this tip, we generated the idea for Cruel January and I wrote a Cruel story; she will challenge herself to compose a Gentle story this April, and she anticipates joining in the ensuing contests, to diversify her literary toolbox and develop herself as a writer. I have tremendous respect and admiration for her, because of her aspirations, and I seek to emulate this attitude.

Many other people, too. I’m honored to have traded notes with Grildrig, one of my long-time heroes in the field. The talented artist Starkadhr reached out to me for advice on English grammar, and he shares his authentic Italian recipes with me. And in this grim political regime of deception and bigotry, when I question my worth and my priorities, Layne reminded me that I’m a transgressive, subversive artist in a time when it’s needed most. This speaks to me louder than “do what you love” and now it’s my daily mantra. So many people have enhanced both my writing/creative career and my personal life, and I wouldn’t have met them if I hadn’t come out with my pervy little fixation and committed to decades of writing this stuff. What’s the reward for this? I’m never going to win a publisher’s award, I’m never going to go on a book tour and sign hardcopies of giantess novels, I’m certainly never going to retire on my dividends or royalties.

All I have is a comfortably awesome life and the company of a cadre of skilled, talented visionaries from around the world. That’s all.

[Model: “Tooth Fairy Door” by HollyAnna]