T minus 30 days

30 days until danielle gets here. 30 days to get final preparations set. Only 30 days to get myself ready for her arrival. I’m excited it’s so close but I am also worried that it’s so close.

I feel like I have so much to do and yet, I don’t think I have that much. It’s just that the stuff I need to do take time, they are things I can just do and move on. I need to triple my efforts on my lifestyle practicing, I need to get at least one more section finished on her training manual and work on both losing weight and starting my Buddhist practice again. I know I’m not going to lose 30 pounds before she gets here but I do need to start. And really, that’s the biggest thing I need to do: just start.

I can talk all I want about doing something but if I don’t just start, then where does all that talking get me? So, it starts tomorrow. I will get up and begin my Buddhist practice again. I will pull out what I have of the manual so far and start moving forward. I will start walking again this week. I will begin practicing my flogging with more dilligence. I will just start.

Family

Sorry for not posting recently but things have been crazy. Seems my out of work life is getting better and my work life is getting worse. Hopefully it will get better soon, but not holding my breath.

Been thinking a bit about my family lately and not my blood relatives. I have always wanted to have a Lifestyle family, a big household of girls (and maybe boys too, ya never know). Working on danielle’s manual has made me think hard about what I want out of those I train and eventually collar and what I want from my family in general. Before, it was more general terms and had more of a fantasy aspect to it. But with dani’s coming down, I have worked hard to ground myself in reality.

Given my Southern background, letting myself have these feelings towards women and wanting to do the normal Lifestyle things to them has been hard. I have always been brought up and have a firm stance on respecting women, to protect them and never raise your hand to them. For a Southern gentleman, hitting a girl is a big no-no! But I’ve had to come to grips with this and it has been hard. It’s one thing to have a fantasy about it but when you are moving into reality, it’s something that hit me hard.

Another thing that made, and still makes, the process of finding out more about me and my family is people accepting my beliefs and methods. It’s one thinkg to show someone a story I’ve written and then not like it, it’s just fiction and something I made up. But when I show someone my manual, a piece of work that is entirely and purely me, my thoughts, my beliefs and my needs, it’s a scary undertaking. I am opening myself up to a lot of hurt if someone doesn’t like the way I do things and wants to berate me about it.

So I’ve had to do a few thing internally while working on the manual. I’ve had to figure out who I am in the Lifestyle and the kind of Dominant I want to be and I’ve also had to convince myself that my way of training is not everybody else’s and that’s okay. I may be just the kind of Dominant some special girl has been looking for all her life and will feel right at home in my family. I’ve had to develope the attitude of “you don’t like it? so what?” As long as I am not doing anything to cause harm to my girls or doing something illegal, then I shouldn’t care if someone else disagrees. This is how I do things, not them.

The manual is still evolving somewhat. I’m still writing to complete it so there will be times when things will become clearer for me and times when I have to rethink what I believe to make sure it follows the main tenants of my own philosophy and that of the family. I have to be honest with myself every step of the way because this isn’t a game. This is real life and these are real people who will be putting their trust and faith in me to lead them and not harm them.

I’ve had my first real test this week when it comes to my manual and my family. I let the Chef read the ntro and first stage of the manual (all I have written so far) and get his opinion on it. Even though I trust him, I was still nervous about doing this. He is not in a 24/7 relationship and I don’t want to come off looking like some fantasy Dominant (Cheff calls them AOL Doms lol) who has no idea what he’s doing. So far so good, though. He’s given me good feedback and doesn’t see me as an AOL Dom.

The second test came last night. I met a friend of dani’s who happens to live here in town now. She has been in the Lifestlye a little bit but had a very bad experience so she is caustious now. She is someone that dani hopes will be part of our family in some form or another. I agreed to meet her because she is a very good friend of dani’s and someone I’ll probably be seeing a lot of so best to get to know her. Happy to say she’s a very sweet girl and we had a very good time. She has many of the same vanilla interests as dani and I so I know she would at least be a good friend.

At the end of the evening, she and I were able to sit down and talk a little about Lifestyle things and dani in particular. I was honest and up front about my feelings towards dani and the fact we want to start a Lifestyle family. I laid myself out and got a good reaction. I tend to say I am not a “typical Dom” because of my beliefs (a phrase I’ll probably get blasted for) and she agreed and was happy to hear about my philosophy on girls and training. Taking things slowly, she may become a bigger part of our family, even part of our nuclear family.

A short take on family structure and I’ll let ya go (if you haven’t already. I do tend to ramble, no?). Like a blood relative family, mine is going to hava core, nuclear family. dani and I will be the first of that and then we will bring more to the core. dani’s friend may be the first and from there we grow, bringing in girls and/or boys to be part of that core dynamic. These will be people collared to me and consist of my immediate household. I will also have those I consider family but are not collared to me and those will consist of other Dominants and their collared submissives, unattached girls who are friends with me and mine and, while in my house, girls trained by me and my household. Hopefully one day a big family and one that works towards the benefit of each other and all outside the family.

Identity

Recently I have been giving much thought to identity, or “who I am”. I have at least 4 names now that I go by depending on the situation: my real name, my scene name, my CD name and now my Buddhist name. Who is the “real me” and which are just parts of me? No one can really say. In fact, as some have said before, they are all the “real me.”

 

In Tibetan Buddhist thought, there is no “I,” no inherent self. This is a difficult concept and I won’t go into it in detail, but briefly, it is the idea that there isn’t a one thing that you can say is “you,” a independent, never changing self. In reality, we are always changing, from minute to minute, from second to second. Scientist say that the body’s skin completely dies and regrows over a period of years (3 I believe) so that literally, you are not the person you were a few years ago.

 

The other point about a “self” in my thinking is the person you see yourself as is not the person someone else sees. This has to do with situations you are in with the person, when they come into your life, the environment you see them in. The person my parents know is not the same person friends in the Lifestyle know. Your perception of me is in your own experiences of me and how you relate to other experiences you have and therefore different than anybody elses. 20 people can read my blog up to now but every one of them will relate differently to what I say and how they perceive me.

 

So what does this have to do with my names? Simply put, names are labels, nothing more. I am not each separate name but rather a combination of all. There’s no point in separating my thoughts based on a name. I have to realize that all thoughts are mine alone and stop trying to divide myself. Who I am as Samantha is who I am naturally, deep down. I put on the make-up, slip on the heels and try to act like a woman but in my mind and deep down in my heart, I am who I am. The outer appearance just helps bring out those thoughts and feelings.

 

And isn’t that what a name really does for anyone? It’s an identifier for who we are inside. Look around in your local Lifestyle community and see how many put sub or slave, Sir or Master in their names (which may not be their given name in the first place). These are put there to help them identify who they are inside because their given name needs help doing so or doesn’t do the job at all and they need stronger reinforcement. I am in this later category.

 

I am lucky to know many in the community who don’t need such titles. They are good people who know who they are and what they need. I look up to these people and several I call good friends. I’m not saying they are better than others. All I am saying is they have a better feel and a better understanding of their “self.” I hope to follow in their footsteps one day.

 

One quick note about changing the name you go by in certain communities. I am going by Roland now partially because it helps me feel more Dominant and more into that side of my personality but also because my extra-curricular activities in the Lifestyle could hurt me down the road in vanilla activites. I have plans to do non-profit work and start my own business and neither are necessarily kink-friendly. So I have to be careful now in who knows what about me. There are many in the same boat I am in the BDSM community at large. Sometimes the change can be a necessity for safety, a need mentally or both.

 

All of this boils down to “know thyself.” Study who you truely are inside instead of going through life simply reacting to things around you. Know what you want and what you need and put those feelings to use (as long as they are not destructive of you and others, of course). So many go about life unhappy because they feel they have to be someone they aren’t but don’t really know who they are in the first place. Once you discover that, life becomes a much happier experince because you stop wandering and move toward specific goals and activities.

 

Life is a journey with many paths. Knowing yourself is to know which path is right for you. The names you give yourself are simply the twists and turns of experiences on that path.

Note to self

Nair does NOT go on the chest.