10 Years

 

It's kind of a big deal.  Updated 11/29/2020

Hello, and welcome to Caitlyn's Masks.

I've decided to go ahead start working my own corner of the internet. 

I will mainly use this blog to post my Forced Fem Captions...

On November 28, 2010 those are the first words to my first post on this blog.  And if you'd have told me that I'd be writing about a decade working my own corner of the internet, I'd have laughed in disbelief.  I mean, this was obviously just a fad.  Something I'd do and enjoy for awhile, then mothball it with so many other things I've done online. But here we are.  10 years.  

I think if I'd have just made and posted caps here for all that time, I really would have burned out.  Way back then I still considered myself a regular 'ol guy with an artistic itch and a sexual fetish.  Now?  Well now I'm queer with far more to say about myself.  I now maintain two blogs because this one was getting a little to personal.  Heh... I remember wanting to keep the other blog private so it was behind a privacy wall, but now its as open to the public as this one is.  

How many masks have I worn for this all this time?  Too many to count.  The nervous guy just making a name for himself?  The guy knowing he's more than 'heterosexual' but too nervous to even talk about it.  The guy accepting there's a gal part of him.  The guy trying to get the gal part to come out.  The guy afraid that the gal part is taking over.  The guy walking away from this blog.  The guy returning and leaving again.  The guy coming back and staying.  The person accepting a new definition of his/her sexuality, orientation, and gender.  So many masks.  

According to Google Analytics, there have been  9,278,940 pageviews as of this morning.  I don't know about you, but that seems a little high to me.  But then again, in the early days I was hitting over 250,000 pageviews a month and have never dipped below 16,000.  

So, what's my favorite cap?  That's hard to say as the last cap I made is almost always my favorite.  There are some that stand out though... in no particular order:

First cap ever:

First blog exclusive cap:

Latest cap as of this post:

My personal most emotional cap (14 individual panels on page):

My last Haven Trade (there was one after, but it sucks):

My favorite cap for a very long time:

My favorite writing (early):

One that still makes me laugh:

Capping as therapy:

First Kinetic Text (18 panels!):

My favorite writing (late):

Best use of a single image (5 panels from one image!):

Animated cap:

Best homage:

More writing therapy:

My latest story up on fictionmania:

There's dozens, hundreds, more to put here.  As I said above, I don't have favorites beyond what I last did.  

It's impossible to encapsulate 10 years into a single post.  I just wanted something to mark the occasion, and right now I'm not feeling really up to it.  I might edit this later and add more, but for now I hope you've enjoyed your time here whether it's been 10 years or 10 minutes.  

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Update a day later

Okay, now I'm in a little more free mood.  More writing and musefull.  I guess first, lets look at differences between 10 years ago and now. 

Then:  I didn't know it, but I was majorly depressed.  If you look at emotions as a range going from 10 (extatically happy) to 1 (suicidal) I was likely at a 2 or a 3.  My father had passed away just a few years earlier, I had given up my career as a Photographer, and in my mid 30s was back in school to be a nurse.  

Now:  On that same scale I generally hover between 6 and 7.  I'm happy.  With 'Rona taking down the world, I'm slipping back to a 4, but it's a situational depression.  This change came about because I both became gainfully employed and started taking medication.  Seriously kids, if you're depressed go get some help.  The help helps and it's not a knock on your personality or mentality.  

Then:  I had a two year head start on caps and was publishing them nearly every single day.  It was a mix between old and new for the first few months.  I think that period is why I still get so many pageviews as it established an audience that lasts now even when I don't post for days or weeks at a time.  

Now:  My average this year is just under four posts a month.  A lot of that has to do with what I want to write and how I come up with caps, but a lot of that too is my acknowledgement of my own sexuality.  It was easy to be 'sexy' when I looked at this as a fetish.  A lot of those scenarios now turn me away.  I don't blame anybody for writing them... I did it too!... but I can't go down those same creative paths any longer. 

Then:  I made caps.  They were varying from a normal sized single panel cap to fairly long multi panel caps.  On the spectrum from short to long, I was definitely on the longer side.

Now:  I still make caps but more often than not they fit into one panel.  Occasionally I move up to two.  Longer efforts now go into my Obscurra art form which is just a deconstructed cap.  An image (most often a single image) and a story.  Those let me write more freely as I'm not worrying about how to fit it into a single page or find more images to make it a multi panel cap.    I now also write full on short stories.  I only have two that didn't start out as a cap or an obscurra, but it's something I plan on continuing to explore.  

Then:  I got a lot more interaction.  I never got a lot of comments, but I felt like I got a lot of questions that would spur on posts.  

Now:  I get the occasional comment and cherish them dearly.  I don't interact as much as there aren't many questions thrown my way.  

Then:  I had a LOT of time to put toward this whole capping thing.  School didn't take up much time and I only worked a couple hours on a couple days a week (Saturday and Sunday Mornings).  

Now:  Most of the time I have very little time to put toward this side of my life.  After I get home and eat dinner, I'm generally in bed within a couple hours.  My morning sometimes goes fast enough that I can work on something, but it's so rare to have the time to finish something that I just generally go into work early instead.  My weekends are booked in advance and I just don't have more than a couple hours a week to devote to capping/writing/exploring.  

Then:  I had a robust collection of forced femme related activities (all virtual!) that would get or keep me inspired.  I traded caps and spent a lot of time at Rachel's Haven, I role played both there and at D+X, I visited a lot of different cap blogs.  

Now:  I'm lucky when I check my own blog once a day to see if there are new comments (or spam comments that need cleaning up).  I don't play at D+X except for one small role for my alt character.  

Then:  I was a lot less confident in my work and constantly seeking approval.  Approval from my fellow cap artists and approval from the audience.  When I made something I considered new I would find it devastating if people didn't notice or didn't react well to it.  

Now:  Saying I don't care about approval sounds bad, but it's probably close to the truth.  I put out things that I enjoyed making and/or like.  If no one else likes it, then so be it.  My only creative drive now is to make myself happy.  

I might come back and add more to this post.  I know this isn't much, but time is my enemy and my enemy always wins.