So, it’s been two years, give or take. Two years since I crash landed in the industry, broadly beaming like someone who’s fallen through the ground into a big ol’ pile of treasure. Every day I’m thankful to work around stuff that’s so fun and eminently interesting.
However, I’ve realized lately that working with this sort of thing – copy writing for sex toys and their smutty kin, to be exact – carries with it certain social restrictions that previously wouldn’t have occured to yours truly. Mind you, I catapulted straight from the mundane (vanilla? muggle?) world of temping at a supplemental insurance cube farm straight into figuring out a dizzying array of new ways to say “stick this in your vagina and buy lube while you’re at it”.
Here are some tips for surviving the jump from work to NSFW.
1.) A cover story for the “norms”.
Okay, this is one I sort of expected, going into it. Inevitably, there’s gonna be someone – relative, straight laced friend, your local preacher/rabbi/kid’s teacher – who isn’t going to instantly respond with “omigod SWEET” when you explain what exactly it is that pulls in the paychecks. My fiance’s grandmother, for example, fully believes I monitor USB ports for a living. My own grandmother is under the impression I sell women’s clothing for a living. Now, I DO look at the usb port when I plug in my mouse to start working (writing sex toy copy), and I DO sell women’s clothing (that would get one arrested under exposure laws almost immediately). It’s truth-by-omission, really. For those peers that are old enough to know that USB ports are fairly self-reliant, and whose wives (or selves) may be interested in women’s clothes, I throw out some technical jargon about SEO and web search spiders without being item-specific. If you have the misfortune of hanging out with devout christian techwriting couples, you have two options: feign contagious disease frequently to ward off social interaction, or get new friends. Seriously, how’d you even get into this line of work?
2.) The “Starbucks Office” model does NOT work as well for you.
The office as a concept is a pain in the ass…there are co-workers that piss you off, idiot bosses constantly interrupting your train of thought (or that game of flash tetris you found on a site the work filters neglected to block), not to mention getting up early and getting dressed in uncomfortable clothing.
However, this is a problem I’ve recently discovered. While working from home is awesome, you start to get a sallow complexion and eyes like Steve Busemi from the constant monitor-staring. Some human interaction is necessary to not go bonkers, and inviting strangers into your house, especially when working in this industry, is a recipe for either disaster or social awkwardness at the least. So, do like the other work-from-homers do, right? Have laptop, will travel?
You know how you go to Starbucks, and all you ever seem to see are disinterested people your age and up, partitioned off into groups and only aware of each other? Try opening a laptop and working on a description of a realistic vagina masturbator. Every priest, rabbi, teen mentor, and toddler in a five mile radius will suddenly get a demanding craving for an unpronouncable five dollar drink and will, for some reason, find it absolutely fascinating to sit/look/walk in your direction.
As soon as you get in, set yourself up in a corner near an outlet so you don’t have to move if you need to recharge. Face your screen towards the wall and into an unoccupied corner if possible, but be aware you’ll have to be alert enough to close your laptop or pull up a tab of lolcats if a kid starts waddling in your direction. If you’re going to be working at Starbucks in particular often, spring for a Starbucks Gold membership…it’s $25 a year, which sucks, but you’ll get 2 hours of free wifi every day. At $4 per 2 hour block, it will pay for itself if you’re going there several times a week. Buy the card in the store itself to save yourself the “customization fee” on the website. You also get 10% off your purchases, which adds up if you grab a java each time you settle in to work.
3.) Bringing work home can be problematic.
I’m without children (for the time being), so I don’t have to worry about curious little eyes seeking out the most inappropriate thing in any given room to shove into a recently-teething mouth. Hilarious as it may be, the therapy bills later on will not be, nor will the humorless call from child welfare services RE: your twitpic account.
Try to centralize any paperwork or adult paraphernalia that you have on your desk, and keep a towel or sheet handy on the back of your desk chair for quick coverups if the landlord or UPS shows up unexpectedly. And take batteries out of ANYthing, as murphy’s law dictates it must turn itself on when someone unpornish is in the house and the television is turned off.
4.) Have fun.
Celebrate the fact you work with a pretty awesome group of people, and that a lot of the industry (not all, mind you) isn’t as bad as people make it out to be. Make an effort to be social, make yourself a memorable “handle” (name), and join up on social sites like fetlife and find other adult industry folks on twitter.
Hope this helps, and feel free to write me if you have any questions or other survival tips. 
-TTC
