So I started this blog as an experiment, but it's been over six months now. The experiment is over. I’m going to close this down and go back to the blog I started over ten years ago, The University of Abject Submission.
I thought I needed a new blog because there hasn’t been a lot of abject submission in my life since long covid. But I’m getting better, my kink is flickering in and out, and it is manifesting in that old familiar form! So the title of my old blog no longer feels wrong.
And I do sometimes have thoughts that aren't about kink at all. But it seems pretty clear that I don’t find them interesting enough to write up and share.
I still don’t have very much energy to spare, so my old blog may remain dormant. But I have had a lot of unchronicled thoughts about kink over the past ten years, so I do have hopes of sharing them here some day.
This blog will disappear within the month. But I will be porting over the one post I made here, so it won't disappear into the ether. And I'm still on Fedi at @yingtai@zirk.us.
You know there are people who say sadism and masochism are not about pain, they're about extreme sensation?
After long covid, I'm pretty sure which side of this debate I'm on.
On days when I have a little more energy, I want to feel my head wrenched back by my hair, I want to struggle with girth down my throat.
When I have lots more energy, I want to fight to hold a torturous stress position, I want to cry mindlessly under an unending rain of stinging blows.
I want it exactly the same way I want to run in the night and feel my heart eating up the road and the wind cooling me. That's extreme sensation. That's doing hard stuff until I'm limp and exhilarated.
I really don't want more headaches and ingrown toenails or those weird stabs in the night. That's pain. That is my nervous system telling me something's wrong.
Most of the time now I don't have much energy. So my kink sleeps. Which makes complete sense. Because I know what would happen if I tried doing anything hard. “Go straight to PAIN, do not pass GO, do not collect $200.”
I can't say if everyone's kink works like mine. But I do know that most masochists will tell you they like good pain but not bad pain. Everyone draws the line in different places, but I think it's always a difference between getting a rush and hearing plain old warning signals.
Kink is ultimately about feeling good, not bad. It's an odd kind of pleasure, yes. But if you've ever felt the thrill of roller coasters or horror movies or capsaicin, you know what it's like to get a kick out of something so intense that it blazes a path of light to your core.
At the time I was doing my very best to meet someone. So I poured my heart into that blog and gave it the finest feathers I could find.
Ten years later, kink is still at the core of my sexuality, but I've more or less worked out my user manual. Other shiny things get a lot of my attention nowadays.
Also, long covid. I don't have the energy to wrestle with WordPress plugins and photo captions every time I have an idea.
But I have recovered enough to have some new longform thoughts. So I'm testing out this new blog. I'm happy that you've joined me here.
I'm checking this platform out because it doesn't feel right to go back to my old blog, the University of Abject Submission.
I still love the old thing. I made it to delight my eyes and it does just that. The tags and 404 page still make me smile. And I love my younger self who was just beginning to discover the kink community and wanted to share what she had learnt.
But it's definitely dated now. The design doesn't matter so much, but the advice does. It's not wrong exactly, but it doesn't speak for me any more.
For a long time it didn't matter, because I didn't have the spoons to blog. Posting on Mastodon was enough. But now I'm starting to have new longform thoughts again!
I thought about starting afresh at my old blog, but even the domain name feels wrong for some of the things I want to say now. And life is very different now that I'm ten years older and have long covid. I don't want to keep updating WordPress plugins and fighting with photo captions every time I have an idea.
So, a new blog. Just as an experiment, to start with.