Tag Archives: time

State of the blog

I started this blog with very little intention of continuing it for very long back in April of 2014.

At the end of every April, I get a yearly summary of my blog activity for the previous year.

It is always a little interesting to see how things change over time.

In my first few months, I got a couple of dozen hits a day if I was lucky, but I was cranking out original content.  (All of the content on this blog is my original work, by the way…) I was posting at least once a week, and most of my content was either rants about my personal experiences and how I felt like things were better in the “good ol’ days,” (even though most of those days were strikingly less good for me in reality) or educational pieces attempting to fill the knowledge gap that interest without reasonably accessible educational materials was causing.  However, the small bit of recognition that I received was enough to spur me on and do more with the blog and my community.

In the second year, things really started to sizzle.  I was getting hundreds of hits per day most days and thousands of hits per day on the busiest days.  I slowed down on content generation, but I was still getting a great deal of attention and I was getting emails from readers almost every day and responding to those took up a good deal of my free time and introduced me to some really interesting people from all over the world – several of whom remain my friends today.

In the third year, I slowed down on content creation even more, and the readership started to dwindle away.  My most frequently read post was An Imaginary Conversation With a New submissive and I was still getting emails from readers almost every day with comments or questions, but readership was starting to diminish as I started producing less new content and started revealing more about me personally as opposed to fielding questions about BDSM or writing informative pieces based on common questions that I often hear.

Now, coming out of my fourth year, and with even more sporadic writing, my readership has dropped back down to first-year levels.  I’m getting dozens of hits per day, up to a few hundred on the busiest of days, but nowhere near where I was at the height of things.  Yet… I kind of like it that way.

I still get emails and comments asking me questions, and I still try to answer all of these within a day or two at most, but it’s a much more sustainable pace for a part-time single parent and full-time tech startup employee and I don’t have to feel like I’m letting people down by not answering them in an expedient manner.  This has helped to reduce my stress level somewhat, especially since sometimes the questions that I get asked are intensely personal, time sensitive, and important.

‘An Imaginary Conversation…’ is no longer my most-read piece, being replaced by Finding subspace – which is, interestingly enough, one of the very first posts I wrote (as opposed to ‘An Imaginary Conversation…’ which was written almost at the height of my popularity.)

Most of my hits in the first year came from links from other people’s blogs – or from ‘likes’ on facebook (which continues to amuse me, since I’m not on facebook), or through some unclassified means of finding me, but now the majority of my hits come from google and bing.

And perhaps most amusingly – I think that most of the hits that I’m getting from google and bing for that particular page are not people who are coming here looking for information on BDSM themes, but math students looking for easy answers to their homework questions about linear algebra.

I have a degree in mathematics – and I can almost certainly answer your linear subspace questions as well – but I’ve only ever once actually been asked such a thing.

I suspect the person who did ask me this question was seriously confused, but I’m really much more amused by the imagined reactions that I suspect of people when they come to a site like this looking for answers to their math homework.

Today is May Day, and the start of Year Five.

I’m really curious what this year will bring… hopefully it will involve drastically fewer broken bones, but I suspect that it will still involve a broken heart – perhaps more often than once, as that seems to be the one thing that I am wholesale incapable of escaping.

Regardless – I remain…

  • Rant

Out of the woodwork

Since I posted the ‘Stasis‘ entry, I’ve been receiving an even greater number of emails than usual.

Many of these were queries as to my emotional state – and I appreciate the concern that I’ve been given.  Some were a little more pointed…

Since my latest entry (Expectations…) the number of requests to meet in person and offers for play, both online distance play and in-person local-to-me play have increased dramatically.

I’m grateful for the attention, but I would like to set the record straight on a few notes.

Firstly – though my former primary partner and I ended things, I was not monogamous with her at the time of our split, and I am still not ‘single’ in the traditional sense.  I’ve been free to pursue other relationships for some time, but I am actually not seeking that right now.  Now is a time for reflection and taking things slowly.

I posted that I was going to, over the course of the next year, rekindle relationships that I had left to wither, that I was going to forge new ones, and that I would work to strengthen the ones that I already have.  That remains a true statement, but it seems to have been interpreted by some to mean that I am immediately seeking that, and I am not.

I do not have a specific time frame for this, and I am currently working to simplify things until such a time as I feel that I am emotionally ready for more.  I do not know how long that might be.

It will be some time before I am ready to take on anyone new, or even to seriously rekindle relationships that have faltered.  I am always happy to hear from people from my past, or to provide guidance to people that I have not had contact with before, but I currently require a certain amount of distance for those relationships.

I have one partner with whom I am spending my time right now, and while I work on myself (which is a never-ending process,) together we are beginning the process of working on her and finding the path to what it is that she wants and how that fits in with my desires.

Working with a new submissive requires a significant amount of attention, patience, and time.

I have made the mistake in the past of engaging with other partners while attempting to mentor a new submissive, but it has not worked out as well as it should have, and this is not a mistake that I wish to repeat.

So, while I remain available for advice as always, I am not looking to take on any new trainees, long distance D/s relationships, or even to begin playing with any new partners right now.

I still firmly believe that access to more information, more styles of D/s, and more personalities is a good thing for anyone who is interested in this lifestyle, and to the degree that I have always been available to my readers for such things, I still am.

I just need some more time before I start anything new with anyone, from either my past or future, and I hope that does not offend anyone or turn anyone away from asking me for advice or an opinion.

You readers are the reason that I keep writing here, so please don’t stop the emails or comments (I do have anonymous comments disabled, so if you are afraid of outing yourself as kinky, email is still your best choice) but understand that it may be some time before I agree to more than passing emails back and forth.

I remain yours, and I remain Rant.