Two Years and Counting

Wow, I’ve been blogging for two years now. Two on WordPress, and one cross-posting from PervertedImp.com. That also means that I’ve been part of my local community for three years. What a ride it has been. Honest poly relationships, real community, play parties, limits being found, crossed and offered. Learning from classes, from mentors, from friends and from experiences. Journals, blogs, emails, chats, stories, tweets and threads.

I have posted about scenes, relationships, love, polyamory, social networking, wish lists, family, failures, and successes. I have had a couple flash fiction pieces published, and posts reblogged on other sites and did one meme for silly fun. I created an informational section on clothing care, and started a group about it on FetLife.com. I started out completely anonymous, and then sharing it with loved ones, my kinky family, and then friends.

I have an amazing life, a wonderful husband, and awesome boyfriend and a incredible toy. I have tons of people surrounding me, caring about me, teaching me and supporting me. I am part of groups that meet weekly, sometimes more than once a week, and have more opportunities for play parties and learning experiences than I even begin to have time for.

I made a silly post once about the numbers on my blog and the top posts and all that. Today I wanted to see how people were getting to my blog. Some are coming from Twitter, some from Fetlife, some from email subscriptions. But the part that amuses me the most is the search terms that land people on my blog. So I looked at the top terms. Both sites, of course, have Perverted Imp and other permutations in the top of the list. Over at WordPress, we the other top three terms are Shibari (Complete Shibari, or Shibari blog), Resistance Play, and various permutations of Straitjacket. PervertedImp.com is a little more varied, though with (Complete) Shibari still in a lot of the upper slots. The next two amuse me more, though: Consensual Feminization and Masochist Turn Ons. I am definitely becoming more and more a girl in this community, and my masochist turn ons have increased by leaps and bounds. Painslut also features heavily in my most searched terms.

This is a pretty bland post, without much substance. For substance, see the earlier post this week and I promise more fun next week, too. But today, my head is full of vampires and LARPing. For now, Thank You to everyone who contributes to this absolutely amazing life I lead.

Day Thirty – Free Write

Whatever BDSM/kink related thing you want to write about.

I do this every week, so check out my blog in general for whatever I wanted to write about. Click a tag that interests you, or one of my vague categories. Enjoy your stay, comment on something, or just take a look around.

My 30 Days of Kink

30 Posts in 3 Days, or Why am I doing the 30 Days of Kink meme?

The Everest Answer: Because it’s there.
The Ego-maniacal Answer: Because I can.
The Inner Child Answer: Because it’s fun.
The Social Networking Answer: Because a few others are doing it.
The Google Analytics Answer: Because more posts = more traffic.

My Answer:
I was looking for ways to connect with other bloggers and to drive more traffic to my blog. As a writer, I want to reach as many people as I can with my writing. When I noticed a call for guest posts on the topic of Defining Your Kinky Self, I jumped at it. I had fun writing that post, and I noticed it was for a meme of 30 questions. I glanced briefly over that meme, generally having no patience for such things, and noticed that some of the questions looked interesting and some of them looked fun. The turn of the year was coming up, and New Year’s resolutions being what they are, I figured one that would last me through January would be easy enough to stick to. Also, I had most of the first week of the month off from work and would need something besides cleaning to keep me entertained.

So, Saturday I reposted the guest post on my own blog, having only previously linked to it. Then Sunday I started writing. Answering the questions in order. I knew that some days I would be too busy to blog, so I figured I’d get a head start. The first six days were all very interesting questions to me. Where did my kinky self come from? Monday, I kept plugging away, figuring I might as well just get them all done as quickly as possible and then move on to bigger and better things. I had conversations with several people, both positive and negative, and come Tuesday, I finished up all the posts. By that evening, I had them done and scheduled to post over the course of the month.

So, what have I learned from this? I was planning on posting a reflections post on the 31st, but that’s a long way away and I finished writing them yesterday. A lot of the questions, I realized, I had already answered, and so I simply linked back to those answers, occasionally with a comment or two. Some of the questions were of no interest to me, so I gave a short and simple response or linked off site. Some of them were things I had not thought of in a long time, and so I enjoyed the reflection. I even got back in contact with an old friend, for at least a moment. While answering the questions, I came up with four other topics I wish to delve into more deeply on my own. All in all, I enjoyed poking around both in my memory and in my old blog posts.

So, I hope you enjoy this exercise as much as I did, and if not, well, most of the posts are very short, and I will be posting my usual weekly content, as well, possibly more than normal if I end up turning those four topics into four distinct posts. My New Year’s Resolution being to blog more often.

Guest Blog Post

I wrote a guest blog post for Insatiable Desire’s 30 Days of Kink. You can see what I had to say about how I define my kink, by checking out her blog: http://www.insatiabledesire.com/2010/12/13/30-days-of-kink-define-your-kinky-self-by-perverted-imp/. I may be doing the 30 Days of Kink myself in January, I have not yet decided.

Introverted Social Networking

Blogging, writing, screaming to be noticed – silently. Watching the numbers on the stats graph rise and fall, seeing them fall more often than rise. What am I doing this for? Who and I doing this for? Why? Every Thursday I spend hours staring at the screen, wondering what to write about, wondering how it will be taken, if anyone will even read it, will even care. Last week someone asked to reblog a post I made and I was shocked, especially given the topic. Today I’m at a loss, after spending the afternoon rambling at him over a variety of topics, none of which is “fit to print,” as they say.

I wonder about this blog, this weekly posting on a random topic. A lot of the books I read on blogging suggested posting every day, at least a few times every day, if you really wanted to have a successful blog. I have a hard time getting one post written a week, I couldn’t imagine posting every few hours. Isn’t that what Twitter is for? Let’s not even go into how I don’t even begin to use Twitter correctly. I’m not a social person, an introvert trying to join the social network.

And I’ve got this blog in two different places, splitting my audience between a WordPress sponsored blog and my personal website. It isn’t much of a site really: the blog, a bio and a couple of pictures, but I like the theme better, and some day, maybe I’ll have a book to promote or I might review products in the sidebar. Technically, I’ll have a book to promote come November. The first of my flash fiction pieces is due out the first installment of a year long anthology on October 31^st if all goes as planned. They’re looking at publishing three months worth at a time, instead of it all at once.

So what do those social people talk about, those ones who blog all the time, or use twitter correctly? Their lives, details and stories taken directly every day from what they are doing currently or did last night. Sharing far more in depth than a shy anonymous blogger like me would consider safe. Safe? I share a lot of details, and while I say this is anonymous, people who know me could probably figure it out, and I have shared it with people I trust. But to share more, would feel like an invasion of privacy, and not just theirs, but mine as well. I don’t have enough to say to the public at large to fill a blog every day. I hardly ever update my non-kinky Facebook status more than once a week.

I’m not sure why I’m sharing this strange and non-kink related ramble with you, my dear readers, other than to say it’s been a scrambled kind of day. I want to share with you more often, but I don’t know if that’s possible. Though I feel that after this post, I owe you at least one over the weekend, if not a handful of tweets as well.

Let me leave you with these thoughts. Winter is coming, I need stockings and a warm coat. It’s hard being sexy when your teeth are chattering. And no one in his right mind is going to offer his cock to distract and warm you if it looks like you’re going to bite it off involuntarily.

Thanks for Everything

It is that time of year, here in this part of the world, to give thanks for, well, everything. Gratitude is an incredible force in my life. I have been given the opportunity to do, be and explore so much in my life, especially over the last year and a half. I often joke about thanking certain people for “getting me into this” or pointing me down this road or showing me just how good it feels. This week, however, I am making it a point to honestly thank those people who have enabled me to live this life. There are a lot of people who helped me get this far, and who constantly encourage me to keep going. There are also people that I am grateful to, who have no idea where their support and teaching has allowed me to go. I thank them too, though more quietly and tactfully.

I am grateful to my husband for taking this journey with me. I am grateful to the one who took us to our first demonstration. I am grateful to the one who invited us to our first poly meeting. I am grateful to the one who invited us to our first dungeon and hosted my first kinky birthday celebration. I am grateful to the one who took me to my first Practice. I am grateful to the one who taught me the love of rope and the joy of suspension. I am grateful to the one who showed me how beautiful I am. I am grateful to those who welcomed us into this community. I am grateful to those who have brought love into my family. I am grateful to those who have taught me about myself. I am grateful to those who have accepted who I am. I am grateful to those who have listened and those who have offered advice. I am grateful to live in a time and a place where I can live my life however I chose.

Thank you for reading my blog.

Coming Out

As the daughter and sister of ministers, you can imagine that being kinky and poly doesn’t come up at family dinners very often. When I was just kinky, I’d excuse it, because, really, Who talks to their family about their sex life? My bedroom is none of their business. But poly? Not sharing with my family the people that I love?  It keeps things safe, keeps things stable, but is it really truthful?  Am I being the true me by hiding from my family? I fear they will stop talking to me, I fear my brother will keep me away from his kids. I fear they won’t love me anymore, which I think is terribly unfair of me, even if I’m right about them not talking to me anymore. Heck, they’d probably pray for me more than they do now.

A lot of my friends know, though not all. I have a feeling a few more of them know now, after unguarded comments at a recent wedding, but people often dismiss things they don’t understand, so the comments may have not registered anyway. No one asked for clarification at least.  I hide at work, too, though I have been seen kissing my boyfriend, and once called him that. But people are afraid to question what they don’t understand and not everyone knows what my husband looks like, or that I’m married.

My friends also tend to know I’m kinky, but there, too, only those that ask about such things. I feel more comfortable sharing that part of me, honestly, with them. It’s become more “normal” lately. I can show them pictures of my suspensions, and they don’t generally run away scared or get offended. I think the joy on my face helps, too. But I tend to keep stuff like that out of the public eye, off Facebook, Livejournal and in an anonymous blog here so even my kinky friends cannot find me.

I wonder what it would be like to be truly me. To be open and honest with the world. I’m considering letting more people know about the blog, it wouldn’t remain anonymous in anything but name if I did. The descriptions of events are far too specific for anyone to mistake it if they know me. I must admit, part of me wants a bigger readership, too. That writerly need for attention and validation.