Overcoming Lazy

If I had to choose one trait of mine that stands most in the way of becoming the boy I want to be, it would be my laziness. When I'm given the option, I naturally tend to slack off, to watch TV, or go online, or play games, anything other than the tasks I am meant to do.

And this isn't a new realisation, either. Daddy has spent a lot of time and effort trying to train me, to make me a good, conscientious boy who gets his chores done, but no matter what he tries, nothing seems to stick. Worse, while I am well aware that I need a harsh taskmaster to keep me in line, pushing me out of my lazing activities makes me grumpy and unhappy, so the taskmaster role is a thankless task around me. Even if I tell my taskmaster that this is what I need, I balk at being told what to do. And this is a problem for my Daddy, who, like many Daddies, is a kind soul at heart. He has no problem being harsh to his charges, but he's not a cruel man, and gets nothing out of being harsh if the charge gets nothing out of it. In short, he'll be the kind of taskmaster we like.

And this is a problem with me. Because the taskmaster I want is the taskmaster I dislike.

And Daddy doesn't really get this. He's not used to dealing with someone who actively fights their own development, like me. It's not that I want to fight, but the behaviours I want to discard are so ingrained that I fight them purely out of habit. I dislike anything that's not familiar, it feels like a threat, which you can understand makes me my own worst enemy when it comes to self-improvement, even when I know that it's necessary. To Daddy, it seems like I'm telling him one thing and then acting completely contrary, which to be honest is completely accurate. It's just that I am genuinely acting contrary - I am acting out against the things that I know are good for me, purely because the things that are good for me are not things I do by default.

This week me and Daddy looked at the issue again, because this situation is just completely out of Daddy's ken. Daddy takes self-improvement in his stride, because when he identifies an issue, he can devote himself to rectifying the issue, as opposed to me who's always having to fight the desire for familiarity. To him, word and action match, and when they don't match, it's usually because the word is inaccurate. So, he works to my actions, which is great for my comfort levels, but terrible for my self-development. I had to describe it to him as "I want to want to do things - I aspire to be the kind of sub who does things without prompting, but I block myself every time".

So, once I'd gotten that out, we came upon a possible way of making sure we both get what we need. Daddy will work at being harsh with me, by reminding me at each step that this is what I want. In short, to try and break the comfortable familiarity by directly appealing to my aspirations. And in return, I will make sure that Daddy is always reminded by me that I'm grateful for Daddy taking this thankless task, and thanking him for it whenever I can.

I really hope this works.

Things noone thinks to tell you about tattoos...

Just a quick one for this week.

So, the last week or so I've been recovering from my tattoo, which means that I haven't been able to lie on my back. It's not been painful,  but the stuff I'm using to promote healing (called bepanthen), is a really greasy,  sticky substance (by design), so sticking my back on things is a terrible idea.

Which means that I can't lie on my bed on my back.

Which means it is really awkward to jerk off.

I haven't beem this horny since the first couple of weeks into the Year of Chastity. It's amazing how touch-happy you start getting when you can't get off...

Up from Scratch

Almost exactly a year ago, me and Daddy made a committment, that the leathers that I had bought and had been bought for me before I'd come onto this leather journey would be taken away from me, so that I could have the chance to earn them properly. So that instead of forever fretting as to whether I was right to wear my leathers when Daddy wore his, I decided that he would get to make that decision.

Yesterday, just before I got my tattoo done, Daddy called me into his room, and sat me down. He told me that over the past year, I had been improving greatly as a Leather boy, and that he was so pleased with my progression, that he felt that I had earned the leathers that he had been keeping from me. So, he took my leather pants, my harness, and my belts, laid them in front of me, and with as little ceremony as that, told me that my leathers were once again mine to do as I wished.

I don't think I can convey how proud I was of myself at that moment. It came as a complete surprise, and suddenly it gave my tattoo another meaning, well separate of anything that I would have imbued in it. Because now, this tattoo also marks the day that I made my Daddy proud, the day I had improved enough to prove myself to him.

I don't claim this is the end of the journey, just a milestone within it. I have so much more to improve on, an I plan to improve as much as I can for him. I will push myself, strive to be the best boy that I can be. Now everytime I get a glimpse of my tattoo, I will have it in my mind that memory, that feeling of pride.

Marked

So, yesterday I finally bit the bullet and got myself tattooed. I've had plans to do it for the last 5 years, but until now I've never had the courage to go ahead and do it. However, since I'm on leave for another half-week, I decided to bite the bullet and get it done.

I had planned to get it done as part of a coming of age ceremony, but of course I could never figure out what the rest of the ceremony would be, or even how I'd know that I'd reached the time where I'd earned a coming of age. Eventually I came to the shocking conclusion that as a boy I probably didn't need a coming of age ceremony, but more about that another time, I think.

The design itself is a two-dimensional  orthogonal tesseract,  an image that I've often used for meditation. It's meaning is a kind of personal one, related to the meditation. To me, it represents complexity in simplicity,  as all the squares and cubes resolve themselves the more you look into the image.

I was more than a little afraid going in - this was my first tattoo,  and my imagination went wild with thoughts of how painful it was going to be. But the pain was tolerable, and I was able to push right through it, and I think the results speak for themselves.

A very special day, all up!

Boy Improvement

I recently posted about how I'm trying to treat my submission as a challenge,  to engage my competitiveness to become a better Boy. I'm starting to take small steps in that direction, and one step that's seemed pressing recently is my attention span.

In a lot of ways it's been a major obstacle to me being better, not least of which because of how often I "drop" orders. For a lot of people, the problem isn't so pressing, because if they haven't paid attention to orders, it's easy to tell. But because of my job as a call centre worker, and because of my family and romantic history,  I've become extremely good at making acknowledgement cues, even if my brain hasn't actually processed the request. Worse, it's nearly automatic - I often don't realised I'm doing it until someone (often Daddy) knocks me out of whatever thought process I was on.

It's been incredibly frustrating for Daddy, and I'll freely admit I haven't been doing a lot of work on fixing the problem on my end. So, this morning, I decided to work on improving my mental workspace,  and I found a website called Lumosity. It's a website that engages you with games that practice specific mental skills - including attention and global perception,  two skills that I really need to improve more on.

I know this isn't a cure all - there's still plenty to be done with working to stay in the present, which is a big component of my lack of attention. But, improving my mental skills can only help, I think.

New Pain

A few weeks ago, me and Daddy had a big long talk about our BDSM relationship.

Calm down readers, it's not quite as bad as all that.

Put simply, we've come to the realisation that our BDSM life has seriously stagnated - we rarely play, and in a lot of ways we were almost avoiding play, because of a number of issues, one of which being my legendary inability to communicate. Because, and here's the thing that's been dogging us for a while, Daddy just has no idea what I want out of BDSM, and if I had to be honest, I'm not sure I really did for a long time either.

But I've been talking with my psych, who had the audacity to point out to me my insane competitive streak. It's really one of the few healthy ways in which I channel my competitve streak. And it occured to me that while the joy of sensation has been fun, it's not something that helped my grow as a Sub, a Boy, or a Person. Part of the reason I'm in this relationship with Daddy is to improve myself, to be better than I am.

But for the most part, Daddy has been reluctant to challenge me - we've known each other for a long time, and the fact is, I tend to get grumpy at challenge. It's hard, he points out, to keep pushing me when he doesn't see anything out of it. So, all we do is a bit of electrical play, some occaisional other sensation play, and that's it. Nothing that Daddy really gets off on, and nothing that really pushes me.

During our heart-to-heart I finally connected these things all together. The reason I'm not connecting to BDSM is purely because I haven't been treating it as a challenge. I've been treating it as a diverson, which hasn't been good for Daddy. And I realised an easy way to fix that was to just change my mindset about it.

And so, yesterday, Daddy bought himself a new cane, and my masochistic streak came out in full force. I started seriously poking at him and the cane, and bought myself a caning. Daddy started slowly, we played around, and at the same time, I got to tell him how mean he was for doing things like drawing the cane away for a second or two and not coming down hard afterwards. He told me to relax, but relaxing just made everything hurt more, so there was a "nope nope nope!" moment for me. And, best of all, he challenged me to take 5 hard canings. And I took them. They hurt like hell, and I was swearing by the last one, but by god I did it.

I gotta be honest, it's the first time in a while that I felt like I'd really connected with Daddy. Well besides the pride at getting through all of it, I could feel that Daddy was pleased with the play as well. We were actually playing with each other, rather than Daddy doing things to me and me just enjoying them. And it's a feeling I really, really enoyed, even if the play was short.

I really hope that this is the beginning of something good. Taking it all felt good, feeling the welts after felt good. I think I'm turning into an honest-to-god masochist, and even better, It's helping me connect better to Daddy. And all it took was me realising there was a challenge here that I hadn't taken on.

You're getting... Relaxed!

Me and Daddy have been talking about doing hypnosis for a while, and last night me and Daddy actually tried a little starter to see how I reacted to it. It wasn't very long, just a short induction and some simple relaxation, but it's more than we've done in quite some time.

And I think I'm really going to like it. While I'm not sure that I really got fully down to trance state, I really liked being in the suggestible, can't-do-anything state. I felt really nice afterwards!

It's really fascinating to me, thinking about hypnosis. While the fantasy screams all mind control, the honeIst reality is that the power of hypnosis is purely internal - I'm the only person who defines what I can be hypnotised to do. It's almost a distillation of BDSM - I'm the one who gives my power to Daddy, Daddy doesn't exert his power over me. It's given willingly, and sometimes irrevocably, but in the end, the power is always mine, regardless of who possesses it. Hypnosis is exactly the same - in the end, the only person who has a hold on my behaviour is me - it's just that Daddy is holding the reins, telling me where I'm going.

I'm looking very forward to the next step, myself!

Bad Feeling Checklist

Daddy has asked me for this week to write down a checklist for me to refer to if I'm feeling low.

• Have I eaten?
• Have I eaten enough healthy food?
• Have I had enough water?
• Have I missed my dose recently?
• Have I had enough sleep?
• Have I had too much sleep?
• Have I exercised recently?
• Have I had cuddle time?
• Have I read anything about sexual assault recently?
• Has my schedule been out of whack for several days in a row?
• Have I socialised with people recently?
• Have I had a bad last call at work?
• Have I been criticised by someone?

Talking about Hypnosis

For this week's blog, I figured I'd share some specific fantasies about hypnosis, for Daddy to get some ideas.

Giving Orders Teeth. I've always loved the idea of certain key words forcing a specific behaviour. Me and Daddy currently use "Would you kindly" as a way of telling me "This is a direct order, do this now". What if I didn't have a choice? Where no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't stop if he put "would you kindly" in front of a request.

Or maybe have a keyword that will immediately stop me at whatever I'm doing and pay complete attention to Daddy - no ifs or buts. Or maybe a keyword that will turn me into a real Lee-Pet. The sorts of things that forces the meaning of phrases.

Suggestibility Sensation Play. One of the really fascinating things to come out of me and Daddy going to Lee Harrington's workshop a few years ago was the idea of guided meditation being a kind of hypnosis. It got me wondering about the idea of using hypnosis as a way of making someone feel a sensation without the tool being needed. Being able to, with just a word, turn your finger into a wax candle, an ice-cube, silk, a TENS pad, etc. Making me feel things with nothing more than words.

Changing Perceptions. I've heard a few examples of hypnosis practitioners using hypnosis to change a person's very perception of reality. A fun one I've heard of is a dom who hypnotised their sub into perceiving every voice they heard as their dom's voice, but there's a lot of fun possibilities. Making everything taste like Nutella, perceiving every face as wearing a moustache, stopping me from seeing the colour blue... A lot of really evil, but really fun possibilities exist. I'd certainly find something like that pretty damn fun to try!

Just a few fantasy ideas I have for fun with hypnosis.

First Top

Yesterday I had my first topping session with Sis. I decided that I wanted to do a wax play scene, with a little ice play as well, and Daddy agreed, and asked if it was alright if he co-topped.

I have to admit, I'm a little disappointed with the scene. I'm glad that I had Daddy to help teach me things, because I am seriously out of practice with topping. Hell, I think I'm out of practice in general, to be perfectly honest. I didn't have more than a general plan going into the scene, and it turns out that I'm not as great at thinking on the fly as I used to, so I ended up just repeating moves to extend the scene. At a few points, I was just mirroring Daddy, because I didn't really have anything else in my mind to do. Worse, Apparently I'd not remembered a few important limits, which could have derailed the entire scene.

But on the plus side, it seems that Sis definitely enjoyed the scene, she was quite happy to have some messy, way fun, so I was quite happy at that outcome at least. As first scenes go, at least the bottom was happy and got what she wanted out of it, so in that sense it was a very successful scene.

In the spirit of trying to discard my perfectionism, I am merely going to say that yesterday's sessions showed simply that I'm at the beginning of my training as a Top. I think I've learned some very important things, not least of which is that I need to plan scenes in much more detail if I'm planning to go for long scenes. Also, I need to work a lot more on concentrating on my partner's limits - there's no excuse for forgetting about limits, they should be foremost in a Top's mind.

Documenting The House

Since I set up the wiki, me and Daddy have continued to talk about our plans for it.

Now that we have Sis, the way the world sees us, and the way we see ourselves has begun to shift. We've now become more of a Leather House than the couple we used to. We're starting to look at now documenting our lives, so that new members can learn about our house.

A lot of the old Leather Houses used to have House Manuals, books that would document the way the house works. They'd write down all the rituals of the house, the hierarchy, everything the house was would be in that book. These days, of course, we've improved our technology. We have our own house network, including a perfectly functional server.

So, we've started to turn our little Wiki into  true House Manual. It's small now, because our House hasn't really had a great deal of rules and rituals. I wonder how much that will change now that we have a place to put them? I guess time will tell...

Like a Boss

I officially started off the next stage of my development as a Leather Boy last weekend.

I've been talking about forming a formal topping relationship with Sis, and this weekend me and Sis actually sat down, after she and Daddy had finished their negotiations, to negotiate how our relationship was going to work, with Daddy along side us to help us and to add his input.

It's actually been quite some time since I've been through a full negotiation, so I was really glad that Daddy was there to guide everything. When me and Sis first talked about a possible Sirship, we were a little vague since I hadn't really had much thought put into it, but I was much better prepared this time around. I made it clear that I wanted this relationship to sort of be a Dom internship - That I would start learning the skills of being a Dominant under the Tutelage of Daddy, and Sis would be my bottom during this tutelage. In return, Sis stated that she wanted to have the opportunity to have a more touchy relationship with me, since this is something that she's not getting a lot of with Daddy.

While Daddy and Sis's renegotiation didn't take that much time at all, Our negotiation took a lot longer, and that's probably because it was really a three-way negotiation - Sis is Daddy's pet, so anything we negotiated really had to go through him as well. But in the end, I'm really happy with the way it all shook out - I get to start taking a real and genuine step towards being a more skilled Leather boy, I get to be closer to my Daddy since he's now effectively taking me on as protégée, and I get to have a closer relationship with Sis.

Oh, and we decided on titles for each other. I'm Boss, Sis is Girl. So I'm in a new relationship LIKE A BOSS.

As serious as negotiation get, you can't take this stuff too seriously.

Geekiest Service Ever

It occured to me that Daddy's most common complaint of me is how I forget so much stuff. That his orders, or stuff he prefers, just doesn't seem to stick. My brain decides "You know, I should write all this down, make a book so I can remember everything"

My inner geek decides "Or, you could make a wiki for the house, and put everything on there." My inner geek won out, and our media box is now also running a house wiki over our network. I was setting this up while Daddy and Sis were doing their renegotiations (which I will talk about tomorrow), and Daddy suddenly pipes up "Is that a wiki for the house? That's a great idea".

Geekiest. Service. Ever.

Enemy of the Good

One of my biggest challenges has been about overcoming fear. My life in a lot of ways is ruled by fears of one sort or another.

With the New Year, me and Daddy took a trip to Torquay beach, and as often happens at beaches, the two of us ended up reflecting on the previous year, and began thinking about where we want the new year to take us.

It's always a conversation that's full of challenges, mostly because of my nearly legendary ability to avoid thinking about the future, but today I change up with a resolution that I think I can work with.

In short, I want to be braver this year.

I want to stop being afraid of failure. I wasn't to stop being afraid of other people. I want to stop being afraid of everything I don't know about. And I know that bravery is as much about overcoming fear as not feeling fear, but dammit,  I would like to stop at least some of the fear, as it's not exactly a fun sensation.

Or maybe that's not the resolution that I should be aiming for. Because it's not like I haven't already made some fantastic strides. Last weekend I but the bullet and got many scrotum pierced, twice! That's bravery! I'm getting better and better at being open,  I'm taking on challenges I'd never considered a couple of years ago.

So why so I feel so afraid? I think it's because I keep seeing all the stuff I can't do. I see where fear stops me, and forget that I don't have to be brave all the time.

Perhaps my resolution should be about breaking my perfectionism streak, and learn for real that perfect is the enemy out the good

Sharing Sirship

So, Sister has been integrating more and more into our household the last couple of months, enough now that I've had to do some real thinking about where I want to fit into the hierarchy.

I mean, I've gotten past my previous issues. I'm feeling a lot more confident in my standing, but now that I'm getting more comfortable with Sister being around, and feeling more confident in being above her in the hierarchy, there's a new decision to me made - Am I just an adjunct to Daddy and Sis's relationship, or do I want to fully participate? In short, am I just Daddy's Boy, or am I also Sister's Master?

And let's be honest here, it's not a decision I can take lightly. I already worry about not meeting Daddy's expectations as a Boy, there's a lot of times where I feel inadequate, where I feel I'm not reaching his high expectations. But making the choice to take an active role in his Slave's development is an entirely new level, one that I'll admit I'm a little scared of taking on.

Part of that is just a fear of change, and I have a handle on that. But I'm also not all that confident in being a Sir, it's not something I've really considered for a lot of my relationship with Daddy. I like where our relationship stands at the moment, it really does feel like a brother/sister relationship.

Then again, I guess at some point this Boy has to take on grownup responsibilities, and frankly I think I'd be failing Daddy a lot more if I refused to grow as a person simply because I was afraid of a little extra responsibility. I need to accept that part of being a Leather boy is to embrace that feeling of responsibility, to give back and be willing to guide. This really feels like a path that I need to take, for my own development if for nothing else.

I'm going to continue this tomorrow, because I did promise Daddy I'd talk about what this responsibility all means, but I think tonight I needed to take the opportunity to really commit to this.

Jealousy

It can be surprising how easily you fall back on insecurity.

Recently, I've been noticing that I've been getting very... resentful of Sis. Not because anything she did annoyed me, or that she was being malicious or anything. Hell, Sis has been the very model of a good slave since Daddy had taken her in. She does all her chores without prompting, she picks up on Daddy's desires and remembers them, she's been entirely respectful...

In fact, that's kind of the problem. I compare her performance to mine on the service front and I tend to find myself lacking. I've never had another sub to directly compare performance against, and suddenly, all my childhood insecurities flared right back up again. What if I'm not good enough? What if Daddy decides that Sis is a better sub than me? WHAT IF SHE GETS PROMOTED OVER ME?!?!?!

I'd talked with Daddy a little about this, and he pointed out the obvious - that Sis has a completely different role to me, has a completely different life path to me, and more importantly, that we are skilled in completely different ways - Yes, she does a much better job on the housework, but the fact I've been around for almost 6 years now means I do have a much better handle on how to handle Daddy. As Daddy points out, "You're stuck with me, whether you like it or not!", so the insecurity is completely unfounded.

It also made me admit something that I've been loathe to admit to myself for quite some time - that I'm actually intensely competitive. I like being the best at things, even if I'm not exactly driven to improve myself in the normal sense. It's why I enjoy my job so much - I'm very good at what I do, everyone know it and asks me for advice. I feel safe and secure when I'm "Rocking my KPIs", as my psych called it. But all of a sudden, I'm being reminded that no, I'm actually not the best at chores and housework. I just have to remind myself that that's okay. And who knows, maybe channel that competitiveness to become a better person.

Being crochetty

My most recent discussion with my psych has helped me narrow down the reason for so much of my strange, avoidant behaviour, although the revelation is nothing particularly new - my biggest problem is a constant, all pervading fear, not all that uncommon for people who've experienced my history. I'm constantly checking out to avoid feeling that fear, because its better, in many cases, to feel nothing than it is to be afraid.

I say it's not surprising because I have often noted being afraid to do plenty of things, and when I am afraid, there's usually two ways I go - I either punch through the fear, or check out from it. I've written before about not being willing to participate in communities, I said then it was because I preferred to be an outsider, but to be honest I think a lot of it came down to not wanting to become vulnerable, because I was afraid that my me would be hurt.

Identifying the cause has meant that my psych has thrown a whole lot of activities at me to help clear out that fear. I'm working as hard as I can, but one of the more surprising acts he's ordered me to do is find a craft. The idea is that the constant monotonous action of most crafts helps to calm the mind down. I attempted knitting and failed, but a friend helped me learn crochet, and I have to say I'm getting well into it.

Of course, the whole attempt to find a craft is in and of itself another enlightening moment. I've mentioned before that I generally don't continue with things that I can't get in the first few attempts. I think it goes back to my days as a gifted kid - I only got kudos from people when I was good at stuff, so if I wasn't immediately good at it, I just wouldn't bother. This obviously means that I'm not actually so good at the process of going from sucking to getting better. Daddy doesn't really get this himself - he's internalised that drive to get good at things, to deal with the immediate frustrations of sucking at something and to persevere until he gets it. This is a skill I completely lack.

In this case, I couldn't get the basics of knitting down first time, even with instruction, so naturally I just gave up. Instead, I found that crochet was much easier for me to pick up, so I ended up going with the crochet instead. Another opportunity for growth wasted I guess, but then again, this is clearly a very well entrenched pattern. I cannot expect to just drop the pattern first time.

Running away

So, why do I keep checking out?

Dissociative behaviour typically occurs due to events that you don't want to experience. Now, it's true that I've had a lot of bad experiences, I'm a rape survivor, and before that my family life wasn't exactly all roses. But I'm not living a terrible life at the moment - My life with Daddy is frankly one of the best periods of my life, and I don't say this lightly. Why am I still so keen to leave reality?

My first response is that I've had a lot of practice dissociating. I'm pretty sure I've been doing it since age 4 at least. That makes 23 years of dissociating whenever bad stuff happens, so it's clearly a pretty heavyset habit. But that doesn't fix the question of why I keep thinking bad stuff happens all the time.

My psych tells me that I have an extremely heightened sense of threat - a lot of things that are not really threatening at all press my danger buttons, and have me running for cover. This probably explains at least a little why I tend to hide so vigorously when watching awkward moments on television - just watching someone being embarrassed, even when I know that person is fictional, is enough to press my danger buttons.

So... I spend a lot of time feeling threatened by life in general. This probably means that even mostly neutral interactions with people tend to set off alarm bells in general. It's worse when it looks like I'm agitating people or making them upset, because that really sets me off.

Perhaps the constant dissociating is me trying to get rid of that sense of threat? Easy way not to feel threatened - don't feel anything at all. But that's not a viable way of living - people are not going to have happy feelings all the time. It also probably explains why I tend to need time alone after very small amounts of time with other people - all that constant vigilance wears you out. The trick, clearly, is that I need to reduce the threat perception in my head, and theoretically that's something that I'm supposed to be working on (indeed, that's the whole point of "dropping the coin", ie unclenching. But I've discovered that I'm not doing it right - needs to be done for longer periods, not when stuff happens. We'll have to see how me unclenching while meditating helps. Either way, really need to tone down my danger signals.

Psych Propwash

My recent visit to the psych has stirred up a few feelings, today I'm writing them down for posterity, and to commit them to mind for next visit.

I talked about how I'm trying to become more present by cutting out activities that I use to dissociate, the current one I'm on is computer games. He brought up an interesting point that I've had this conversation with him plenty of times, and everytime it's been on a different activity. There's no use restricting a behaviour if I'm just going to find another one to dissociate.

What I need to do is identify the reasons behind the dissociation, but somewhat ironically, my constant search for Time Out keeps interfering with me delving deeper into my motivations. I check out so often and so constantly that I never give myself time to think at all.

I even suspect part of service to Daddy is me trying to keep myself busy, not giving myself a moment to just sit down and be alone with my thoughts. Even when I am sitting doing nothing, I often suppress thought - I try not to think at all, just stare into space.

The plan is to try and dedicate 10 minutes a day to sitting down, meditating, and actually engaging with my thoughts. I'm also going to try and use blogging to think through some of these issues, mostly because I think I'm much better at thinking when there's a springboard, and I suspect reading my own words might be springboard enough, and I'm terrible at talking to Daddy about these sorts of things. For what reason? Still not sure. Perhaps something to talk about tomorrow?

Learning to boot.

Today, we had a boot blacker named Alex come over to our house to teach me and Sis about boot blacking. I gotta admit, it's a beautiful thing watching Alex black boots, and watching just how much effort and love he puts into his boots.

I was quite glad to get instructed because while my father taught me basic boot blacking, and I knew the basic principles behind making shoes look pretty, my skills were, sadly, not really all that up to scratch.

For those who might be reading, the basic steps:

1) Using a toothbrush or a finger, rub the boot polish over the shoe, making sure to get into every little crevice.
2) Let the polish sit for a few minutes.
3) Use a boot brush and spit to buff the polish to a reasonable shine.
4) Use a fine cloth (or some nylon pantyhose), lightly but vigorously rub the shoe all over to get a truly decent shine.

While I knew enough about the first 3 steps, I hadn't really realised the benefits of step 4 until I saw the results Alex got. Also, I've always been a bit weird about using spit as polish (I usually tried to use water instead), but I gotta admit, it gives superior results. I feel like I know a whole lot more about how to take proper care of boots

Although I do think I'm going to need to replace my boots shortly - They've served me well, but sadly I haven't been so good with giving them the love back, and it shows. But at least I know I can make Daddy's shoes last as long as possible, and I plan to make sure those skills are put into action.

All in all, a very productive lesson, and I'm very grateful for Alex's tutelage.