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.