Woo!!!
I was playing Dota 2 last night with my friends Edu and Sanchez and I received an email. Emails late on a Sunday night are rare and they usually mean crap.
It wasn’t crap.
I got a new Patron!
I just checked my Patreon managing site and he isn’t even new! He was one of the original patrons when I started it as a trial back in 2019. Thank you JAlonzo!
Holy shit did I take a while to activate my Patreon…
This is how it went down.
Back in 2019, I was posting the Tijuana Adventure Book as blog entries on my other website (which is a mess). There I wrote, “if you like what you read, support me on Patreon.” To my surprise, there were a few patrons supporting the blog. Instead of activating my Patreon, I fuhgettaboutit, decided to delete the blog entries and turn the blog entries into an actual book. My Patreon was never activated despite receiving a few patrons.
Now, two years later, I finally activated it and I’m getting some patrons! Eight of them to be precise. And $65 a month. Though I’m not sure how long those eight will be there or if I’ll get more.
Either or, I’m very thankful and it makes me think that my dream is possible.
Support me on Patreon for $10 a month to my goal of $1000 and then I can fuck off on an adventure for everyone with all the previews available only for my patrons. That’s the idea.
And I don’t know if my patrons care, but I’ll be uploading stories that I submit for publishing to actual magazines there. That will be another incentive for my tier.
$10 tier = access to my photo files for personal use, printing, wallpaper, screensaver, whatever the fuck you want (but for personal use only, please). It will also get access to stories I’ll be posting before they get officially published.
That’s the idea… for now.
Once I make it to 1k… Things will change.
I really can’t even believe I have some patrons, but you are an inspiration and I am really thankful.
Speaking of inspirations…
I just spent 28 minutes on the phone with a friend I haven’t seen in years. I called him “Master” in my book because he is a master in photography (I used to work with him). The other book. The paparazzi book.
He saw a story of a picture I posted of the lovely Valencia.No on Instagram. He thought she was cute and he really liked the picture.
And from there we just started talking about photography. And how I should charge more. And how semi-naked women don’t really pay much just in likes. And I agree. It’s fun and easy to do, but it’s not where I want to go. It’s someone else’s dream. He also liked the drone shots but didn’t seem to really care much about that.
That inspired me to do more work. But at the same time, Valencia.No is sending me messages about how I suck at editing! And that I should use different filters (I don’t use filters).
Photography is a weird thing…
I have a total of three gigs in the upcoming short future.
One is for sensei master Chad and his upcoming new book and it’s a drone gig. He has a vision for a book advertisement and he is paying me to go hike with him and take some drone footage. That should be nice and smooth. That’s tomorrow.
The other two are for the Magazine. One is a really sad story of a guy that drowned on a trial in San Diego… I don’t have to deal with the sad part though. Just take pictures of the trail.
The other I’m not even sure what it is, but it is the classic meet with three people mentioned in the story and figure it out. Almost all of March for the magazine is covered and the month hasn’t even begun.
New Drinking Beer with Matingas:
I was tired and you can tell. But goddamn I said every Friday and I’m going to do it every fucking Friday.
Aztec Brewery was more than decent but with so much competition around San Diego, it’s rough. Definitely, that specialty IPA was the best and the more I drank it, the more I liked it.
It feels like I did nothing all week and at the same time, it feels like I did a shit ton of work. On Tuesday, the only thing I did was ask for money the Magazine owes me. Like always, they paid me on time. On Wednesday, I broke my rule of no day drinking because a friend wanted to buy me some beers by Playas de Tijuana. He asked me to bring all my gear. I should have only brought my drone.
It resulted in this picture:
That’s the closest I dare to fly by the border.
Here it is on Instagram:
Drone shots get more love than sexy girl shots.
Took this one as well:
The sky was pretty bland so I did some magic Luminar bs to make it more interesting. I do want to wake up one morning before dawn and get the exact same shot but with an amazing sunrise. Except I’m lazy as fuck, it’s almost 1:30 pm right now and I haven’t had breakfast…
Amazingly enough (for me) the ones that got the most likes were shots around the city:
I didn’t even have this plan. I just grabbed my drone and started walking around town. Sunset looked great so I did my classic vertical shots. I could have waited longer for better sunset colors…
It still… great results.
Full files will be uploaded on my Patreon. If you want a shot that’s not on my Patreon, feel free to email me and I’ll send you the full size (must be a patron for that though).
That same Wednesday, after day-drinking a bunch, Valencia.No came over for a photoshoot. My other friend seriously loves to try to get me fucked up as quickly as possible). And with Valencia.No, we got more beers. She loved the pictures and I do as well, but they can still be better. Some of them were a bit too raunchy and she posted them on her private Instagram (I did not expect that). I thought that I had the sexiest photoshoot last month… this was even sexier.
I’ll take my time deciding what to post…
Right now… Right now I need breakfast.
Breakfast was a mariscos soup way too late to still be called breakfast. It was delicious. I sent some emails out and one gig will be this Friday afternoon, perfect. I need to make lists of things I need to accomplish in my week because then I end up doing nothing.
And speaking of nothing, some dude that I don’t even know just invited me to go out for some beers. I am trying to slow down on my beer drinking, but hey, if someone else is buying, then fuck yeah!
Last Thursday also involved day drinking. My fourth big print of the Tormenta en Tijuana sold for $150 to Mr. Maic (or Miguel). He paid me through Zelle and wanted me to bring the print over to Norte Brewery and chat with me. It was a great chat. I got invited to dinner after but never heard back. After so much day drinking, I went to grab food by myself at Winchester, one more pint, and headed home early.
I don’t remember Friday. That means it was a boring Friday.
Oh yeah… I had to check my Instagram memories because we are robots and our phones now know more than we do.
I went to Winchester to leave copies of my Tijuana Adventure book and to eat their pulled pork plate. It was a bit too sweet. The Bro Bartender recommended sriracha for it. It improved it tenfold. I had a pint and went back home to film Drinking Beer with Matingas. I was tired as fuck from two days straight from day drinking… and Saturday…
Saturday, a cute chick I met by accident the previous week invited me to… DAY DRINK!
And we did. It was cute and I had a great time. I took Chimba with me which always gets a shit ton of attention. Shortly after sunset, I was dropped off home and she went to hers to hike a hill early ass in the morning.
Sunday was a true nothing day. Laundry and cleaning type of day.
I craved pizza, beer, and videogames. Shitty pizza at that. Dominos Pizza has a discount of two large pizzas for $10 (one ingredient). I ate a whole pizza. The other is sitting in the fridge. I also got a six-pack of Insurgente’s Juan Cordero Pale Ale… it’s one of my favorite beers and the six-pack is only $12. That’s a steal.
Then played Dota with Sanchez and Edu and this blog post circles back to the beginning.
A week of Matingas. It didn’t feel productive but I wasn’t that depressed. It might have been the day drinking. I keep telling myself I’m going to clean the fuck out of my apartment and nothing changes… At least I have somewhat of a busy week.
Support me on my Patreon. Finance freedom means I would do way more interesting shit in a week of Matingas than this. More than anything, travel to new places, eat new food, drink more beers. The dream.
I have 6.5% of my dream covered.
Matingas 