Leaving eurOut

When I joined eurOut as a writer in September of 2008, it was one of my most exciting experiences ever.

For the past year I had been writing this blog, as well as for various informational sites (Oh the joys of writing about things like The best way to clean your DVD player!). I was enjoying writing immensely and I had been dreaming of ways to write for other blogs and websites I liked to read.

In those days I was a huge fan of AfterEllen, and I read their website every single day, loving all the content, the Vlogs, the "coolness of being gay", which was sort of new to me. Besides a great pass time, AfterEllen also really helped me embrace my lesbianism completely.

The greatest thing I could imagine was writing for AfterEllen myself. I thought this was something way out of reach, until I was asked to write for eurOut. It wasn't exactly the same, but it was the next best thing and, thus, I was really excited.

After a few months of just writing for eurOut, I also became the entertainment editor. That first year of starting the website and making it work, was an amazing and exciting time. Most of the time I was living and breathing eurOut and lesbian entertainment, and loving every second of it.

It's not easy taking a picture of oneself in the mirror

Sandra, Maxime and I spent every day emailing back and forth about the website, about the latest European lesBian news we either got excited or outraged about, or just about daily personal stuff as well. We tried to write as much as we could, as well as we could, and as fast as we could.

It was such a pleasure seeing my articles in print, having people not only read it, but also enjoy it, making lesbian European news available to everyone and also showing them how much is out there and how cool it is to be gay. We were getting bigger, better and more popular and I was loving it. I thought I'd be doing it forever, or at least for a very long time to come.

But things change. When you have been doing the same thing for a while, it starts to become less exciting, and you have to think of new ways to keep it interesting. At least, that's how it works for me. I managed to do that for a while, because with a website like eurOut, there's many different things you can do, different topics to cover etc. etc.

As much as I loved the writing, and have always loved writing and will probably enjoy writing forever, the other stuff started to be less fun. You have to realize I have always combined my work for eurOut with a fulltime job as an assistant professor at university, and half way through my eurOut time I also started a serious relationship.

eurOut meet up with eurOut staff and band Greymatter (I'm on the right)

Needless to say, it wasn't always easy to combine a busy work and private life with eurOut. I didn't mind so much at the beginning, but after 2 years of editing recaps in between grading papers, and having to write an entertainment news column every single Friday night/Saturday morning, you get a little tired of it.

I think one can only live and breath lesbian entertainment news for so long, without getting totally sick of it. I'm not at that point yet, but lately it has been less exciting, and I felt I should stop and pursue other things, before I really stop enjoying it.

I'm not giving up eurOut completely though, as I will still continue to write two of my columns. I also won't turn my back on lesbian content. As I said, I love writing and I am looking forward to lots of new and exciting blogs and articles I will be creating. I'm also very excited at the prospect of being able to sleep in again on Saturday mornings.

Being part of the eurOut team was one of the coolest things I've ever done and I will always think back of it fondly.