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.