Happy Birthday to Me
Walk Before You Run
I love to celebrate life and accomplishments and so my birthday has always been an occasion for both joy and reflection for me. This year, I have so much to reflect on! I started this business venture of mine around my birthday 2023 and here we are again.
Last year, I was starting this by myself with no idea where I wanted to go or how I wanted my business to look, simply trying to create art I was proud of on a brand new OnlyFans page as a novice boudoir model. I was so excited!
When I found a photographer to work with, we planned our first big photoshoot together: a monochromatic pink princess birthday shoot titled Birthday Bitch. It involved baking, ordering the right costume pieces, borrowing the right light fixtures, making some theatrical magic with set pieces, and more.
At the time I posted Birthday Bitch, I hadn't even done a full face reveal to the Internet. Since posting Birthday Bitch, not only have I done a public face reveal but I have joined performer-owned & -operated TreasureCams studio, been featured in a wall calendar, started a real fanpage at LoyalFans, attended Exxxotica NJ, filmed and sold my first videos, worked with a few different photographers, been interviewed twice, recorded and sold my first audio, been hired for a commercial, started blogs to document pieces of my sex work journey & research, and really took steps to understand how to support myself wholly in this life.
As I reflect on all these accomplishments, I’m reminded of what a fellow TreasureCams model, Seska, has to say about aging, sensually and purposefully: She tweeted about how age is NOT just a number because with age comes experiences and with experiences do we shape ourselves. I found this inspiring! As I get older, I find myself excited to collect more years, more experiences. I find myself growing into myself. My 30s are far more true to Jade than my 20s were. I feel that as we age, we shed some of what no longer serves us, and pick and choose much more carefully what to carry on with us and never stop learning.
Owner of TreasureCams studio Bella Vendetta often talks on Twitter about today's performers trying to run before they're sufficiently walking. I think I have a tendency to get excited and try to run before I've figured out walking confidently. I like to do too much and spread my focus too thin. So for this year I tried to make a return to Birthday Bitch with new twists and additions while making it bigger and badder than any project I had done before in the year, to celebrate how far I'd come in such a short amount of time. And boy, was it!!
The photographer looked at the moodboards I created and I designed the set and costumes I wanted. We gathered all the pieces we had accumulated over the past year, purchased what we needed, borrowed what was left, and got together to plan the flow of the day. It was the first time we sat down to create bullet points of specific poses we wanted to try to hit in which outfits and the first time we were working with so many props and set pieces. It honestly was too much but it was a blast.
When it came time to actually be on set, there were so many moving pieces, I ended up forgetting a few details that I wanted to include in the shoot (like adding a second collar with my third outfit change) and trying to capture everything we planned on paper probably interrupted our flow more than helped it.
A few days later, the photographer and I had a video call to go over our photos and I was just in awe of how the pieces came together.
All in all, I felt like I had done so much and come so far in just one measly year but looking back on it, I have barely started. I can't number the things I've learned from the community around me and the books I've delved into and the mentors I've found. And yet, I know that what I've learned so far is a fraction of an infinitesimally small sliver of all that I have left to learn, and that excites me!
I look to people like Bella Vendetta and Seska and more who have been in the industry for multiple decades and have created a space for themselves to live and work wholly.
All Photography in this post by Sebastian Gale Photography