— My Customary Holiday Cheeriness Turned to Production Volume

I’ve always tended to produce more posts during the Holidays than at other times. Part of the reason is that customarily, it was always family time, combined with down time, and so writing and publishing posts was sort of an outlet for my natural exuberance and enthusiasm during a most positive period of the year.

I like to think others are similarly situated, so I offer them something, in-part, to dive into and enjoy during those periods of extra discretionary time.

Here’s The Gig

What makes “Free The Animal,” my blog, somewhat unique is that it has been around for 20 years as of last month. I believe it was November 3 when I celebrated this milestone. Consistency has been key; there has never been a significant period, beyond maybe a week or two, without new content. That amounts to quite a consistent record over 20 years, with 5,500 posts, which comes out to about one post every day and three-quarters, totaling around 5 million words. To give you some perspective on that scale, the Bible is 750,000 words, so it’s amazing what you can accomplish if you give it enough time. Additionally, there are about 110,000 comments from readers. Perhaps this all is not so unique, but what is distinctive is that, as you might guess, if you do it for that long, it’s near impossible to be what I call a “single issue blogger,” or even to focus on just a set of issues.

I blog about anything I like, which is true overall, but I tend to get fixated on certain topics. These fixations can last for weeks, months, and even, in some cases, a few years. The Paleo diet and everything involved, including workouts and various offshoots, lasted several years. That’s pretty much where I built the following that still exists to this day.

So, with that part out of the way, here’s what I’m going to do: starting tomorrow, as I sit here overlooking Pattaya Bay and Beach, Thailand, from my perch on the 15th floor of Sky Residences on Pratumnak Hill. Today is Saturday, December 16th, at 10:30 in the morning, which would be Friday night for you in the USA. I’m announcing this about a day ahead of time. Starting tomorrow, Sunday, December 17th, USA time—I’m probably going to go by New York City time, because as it stands, I believe it’s 12 hours behind me. This makes it easy to look at the clock and know what time it is half a day behind me. So everything will be based off of that…

… So, starting tomorrow morning, New York City time, I will begin somewhat of a blogging marathon. My commitment is to post twice per day until the end of the year. That’s 15 days from the 17th, through to when the ball drops in Times Square on December 31st at midnight. Just shortly before then, I will publish the last of what will be 30 posts. I may even do more, but I won’t do less; that’s the promise. Generally, New York City time, you can expect a post in the morning and another in the evening, approximately 12 hours apart.

Right below here is the list of all the categories I blog about, from general to one other that’s called “Member Archive.” Those are posts I haven’t actually formally categorized yet, but it’s in the works. There are about 4,000 of them left to go. I’m curating, and that’s going to be part of the rollout over these 15 days.

Here’s The Catch

This is a member blog, and it has been since about April 2021. So, it’s going on two and a half years, or almost three years now. It’s worked out well for me. Of course, it’s never the case that anything works out as well as you would hope or wish for, but that’s what keeps you going. I had already been blogging for so long, I knew I wasn’t going to stop, so why not just introduce the membership aspect and see if it was worth keeping as a membership blog? And it has been.

The blog is growing now at a faster rate than it has since the first few months, which is good. I’m doing the same promotion that I did last year, but there’s a difference. Last year, I offered essentially the same thing, but I didn’t have a quarterly option then; I had monthly, annual, and lifetime. This year, the deal is that you can sign up for monthly, which is six dollars a month, and you’ll get two free months. This means that you’ll be charged for your first month, and then months two and three are free, totaling $60 for the year.

For the quarterly option, you get three free months. So you’re charged $15 for the first quarter, your second quarter is free, and then you pay for quarters three and four, which comes out to $45 for the year. Or you can opt for the annual membership, which is a year for $40, that’s $10 off the regular $50, so you’re paying under four dollars per month. It might cost you the price of one Starbucks drink to have access for a year.

The option I want to emphasize the most is the lifetime deal. I sold a few dozen of these last year during this promotion, and I have yet to hear anyone regret spending the money. The price of the lifetime membership is $500, but with the promotion, you get it for $150 off, so it’s $350, and you never pay again. You don’t have to worry about renewals or additional fees. With lifetime membership, you have unparalleled access to me. You’re invited to email me anytime, or if you want to jump on a phone call, I’m available. These are the special perks for lifetime members. Currently, we’re in the dozens, but once I get to over a hundred, I intend to create some sort of online presence where everyone can get to know each other. These members, whom I call lifers, are unique. They’re not concerned with conforming or agreeing with everything I say. They’re independent thinkers who respect other independent thinkers and believe that over time, they will gain valuable insights, as they have in the past, from the blog.

Now, regarding the money, yes, $350 is a one-time charge. In six months, you probably won’t even remember you spent it, but you’ll enjoy never having to pay again. However, just like last year, the price of everything will double on December 31st. When the ball drops in New York City, the monthly fee will go up to $12, quarterly to $30, annual to $100…and lifetime to a whopping $1000. From that perspective, I’ll be able to offer more frequent sales and deals. But I guarantee you, the lifetime membership will never be available for $350 again, ever. I doubt it will ever be offered for less than $500 again, either. And as I get more lifetime members, the price will continue to rise. I envision a time when lifetime membership could cost five to ten thousand dollars, just like an entrance to an exclusive club.

Especially as I begin to receive testimonials from lifetime members saying how much they value this special deal—this forum or a club where we can all interact and even do business deals with each other. As these testimonials come in and the value becomes common knowledge, the price will inevitably go up. Imagine being one of those who got in for $350, and in two, three, or five years down the road, it could be worth even hundreds of thousands of dollars to you, particularly if you’re a younger person with aspirations for your future.

BLACKTO24 is the Discount Code.

Here’s The Skinny

Okay, so what will these 15 days and 30 posts cover? As you can see, there are roughly 30-odd categories up there. No, I’m not going to do one post per category; that would be the stupidest thing to do. But I am going to hit, most likely, a small handful of them multiple times. So, what am I interested in right now? Let’s get into that.

Here’s What I Think

Here’s What I Think is a recent addition to the categories: just an idea that I had one day. It’s like I’m constantly fighting with myself, wondering…do I make this public, or should I make it members-only? And if I do make it members-only, how much of an introduction do I include? Then there’s the email list and all these questions that come up.

So, I have this routine where about once a week, or thereabouts, I’ll focus on something that’s typically part of whatever The Current Thing is—or one of the current things. I’ll write something on the order of 500 to 1000 words on it. It will be for members-only on the blog, but I will send it out in its entirety via email. This is to encourage people—people who want like 5% of my content as long as it’s free, and forget about the other 95% which is far better content. Whatever floats your boat, but I’ll send it out that way, so it encourages people to stick on the email list. Maybe it will entice someone to think, “What the hell, here’s your bucks, Richard” or something like that.

But, I actually enjoy doing them, and I particularly enjoy the short format because I don’t want them to be over 1000 words. Sometimes, it’s really a good exercise to see how much content I can pack into that, how much I can integrate and synthesize. It’s a good exercise. I like doing them, so it’s no worries if that’s all you’re interested in. There will be a few of those, at least.

Physical Culture Gym Diet

Not much is new here; it’s reformatted, re-emphasized, re-energized, and reconstituted—re-everything, really. Back on July 1, I got this wild idea. I’d heard about a program that was a 30-day gym routine—30 consecutive days in the gym. I was just crazy enough to say, “I’ll do it.” So I did. It was around June 28 or something, and I thought, “Well, July 1 will be a great time to start.” And I did. By God, I made it through, and it profoundly changed my life.

For all the talk of “it’s 80% diet” if you want to reconfigure yourself, ultimately, what you look like is going to heavily relate to what you put in your mouth—and what you don’t. This is true, but it’s not quite that simple because we’re complete organisms. We have a body, a mind, a personality, baggage, problems, hopes, dreams, and fears. We have insecurities, and insecurities, in particular, can be greatly ameliorated by hitting the gym. If you can get your mind into it and just get over the hump, you’ll never be the same. It will be driven by the value of your own psyche, your own persona, and your self-confidence. The aura you carry around is intoxicating. I use that word because, in this day and age, “toxic” is part of the narrative.

So, when you think of all the things that are labeled “toxic”—toxic masculinity, toxic this, toxic that—what that really is, is people using it as an excuse for why they’re inferior, why they’re not succeeding, why they feel worthless. The good thing about it is, once you become that “toxic” person, you laugh. See, that word “toxic” isn’t meant to belittle you or make less of you. It’s to scare other people away from becoming toxic. Because once you are labeled as toxic, you get to tell the rest of the world to go fuck themselves.

Thailand Confidential

So I’ve arrived at my newest, most salacious, and lascivious category: Thailand Confidential. I like to think of it as the McDonald’s category. I say this because I’ve always laughed at how McDonald’s is the most successful restaurant in the world that everybody hates. Everyone criticizes it, and nobody ever eats there—you get what I mean? It’s kind of like the old person, could be a man or a woman, the prudish type, who, while watching a pornographic film, exclaims, “Oh, look how awful that is! Did you see that? Look how bad that is! Look at what they just did right there!” You’re not fooling anyone with your faux prudishness.

Let me be clear: what I’m not trying to do is be pornographic. I’m not aiming to be your next subscription to Penthouse Forum or anything like that. What I’m attempting to do is reveal personal details that have come about through a combination of factors. Number one: hitting the gym in July. Number two: getting rid of an awful, toxic relationship. I’m going to have some posts on that—what actually happened—and it will blow your mind.

I’ve come to some realizations about women in general. I hesitate to single out Thai women, or specifically Thai bar girls, because I don’t want to get too bogged down in the details here. You’ll want to subscribe to my posts because I’ve got some mind-blowing stuff to reveal about what I’ve learned, things that suddenly make everything with women really, really easy—I mean, remarkably easy. It makes you wonder why society makes it seem so difficult to relate to women.

I have a particular relationship I’d like to mention. I call her my number one out of 4 that I see. They all know about each other; each one is aware that I have three, two of whom are always together at the same time, in a so-called threesome, though there’s nothing lesbian or bisexual about it; they’re just friends, longtime friends. The one I call number one, I refer to her as ‘not my girlfriend yet,’ and she calls me ‘not my boyfriend yet.’ But I also call her my ‘sex boss.’ This touches on a little tidbit you’ve heard forever, and it’s true: women are the gatekeepers of sex. They get to say no because they are the ‘submissive’ element in the relationship due to the act of penetration. But what if you expand that and say, “Okay, you’re my sex boss,” but she’s the gatekeeper of all the sex you have? There are no lies. Everything is transparent; she can be a part of it or not, depending on her choice. I’ll just leave it at that and explain more later.

I’m not trying to be pornographic, and I’m not really trying to brag, but it’s going to sound like it because of the other elements. For instance, I started on testosterone replacement three months ago, which has been amazing. About two months ago, I began using human growth hormone. I don’t think that has anything necessarily to do with this aspect of it, but when you put it all together, it’s significant. I’m not one of those guys who just says, “Take this supplement, take that supplement.” No, you have to approach this as a life problem. You are an animal, and part of that is embracing your inherent animal-like sexuality. In those final moments before sexual climax, what goes through your mind is totally your own, deeply personal thing. You never have to tell anybody what it is, but I guarantee it’s not something you would share in your next church meeting when giving a testimonial.

The point is not to say that your church life is worthless; rather, it’s to acknowledge that we are complex individuals. But don’t discount your raw animal nature—embrace it, but don’t be an asshole, either. OK, a lot more on this later.

The Food

Here’s The Wrap

Of course, I only covered three of the things I know I’ll be blogging about over the next two weeks. Those are just highlights from my perspective. There will be a lt more.

Except for the 2-paragraph entry at the beginning, the rest, up to here, was done in my new and special AI-assisted way. Have a look.

There are a lot of pluses to doing at least some of my content like that. It’s 100% me verbatim, just polished. What it’s most like is if you took verbatim transcripts of my always-ad-lib videos and ran them through the same process.

I’m figuring that posts I do like this will be more conversational-sounding and thus, more accessible to more folks.

Let me know what you think.

… Again, give that lifetime deal the serious thought it merits. $350 now, done forever, and it kicks off with at least 30 posts in the next two weeks that will be yours for the browsing.

There’s one other part about it that I didn’t mention before, and that’s the situation when you get tired of me, or pissed off at me, or when life gets in the way. Perhaps your own thinking gets in the way, you have to process something, or whatever else. Let me say, based on my experience, very few people are done with me for good. I’ve had many cancellations of memberships, and people come back and resubscribe after whatever needed to happen, whether it’s my fault or their fault. It doesn’t matter.

The point is, there are times you might feel overwhelmed. You might have other issues in your life, or whatever. With the lifetime membership, you’re never going to feel like you’ve missed out, like you’re wasting your money—not so much on a monthly basis, but more like a quarterly or especially annually. If you go any significant period of time without accessing it, then you feel like you’re not getting your money’s worth, or you have a bunch of catch-up to do. With the lifetime membership, that’s just not going to be much of a factor. You take a break, it’s no big deal.

And you probably aren’t going to have to do much going back and seeing what you missed, because I’m repetitive enough, re-emphasizing enough, linking up enough that you’re going to get everything one way or another if you just stay here long enough. And again, for that price, which is never going to be offered again, you’re going to be glad you did. I can guarantee it. You’re going to be glad you did. I guarantee that if you asked every single lifetime subscriber—and there’s like three or four dozen something like that—if you asked every single one, “Are you glad you did it?” you’d get a 100% response, “Yes.” I mean, I’m in contact with a lot of them regularly. I know what they think.

Alright, so with that said, enjoy the two weeks.

BLACKTO24 is the Discount Code.