Security

Recently there have been revelations about the Canadian government monitoring what I'm doing as I read and talk and chat and browse in non-Canadian space.

They probably match the kinds of info the American government has been collecting.

The Canadians claim it's just the metadata.

Metadata on what?

Any international phone calls, any international emails, chat, etc. Umm. Yikes. I do that EVERY DAY. And have for the past 9 years or so.

And I'm not really surprised.

9/11 changed our world, didn't it? Made us all more aware of security, and made most of us willing to sacrifice a little privacy for a bit more security. Right?

Okay some of you who read this may disagree, and feel free to jump in here and tell me I'm an idiot if you like. I've always associated my online security here with my privacy, assuming that they went together, not that they could be in opposition to each other. And I like being secure, though I'm not crazy about someone reading my email.

And this particular mail is so trashy, so dirty. Would I have written it if I knew someone else was going to read it?

Umm...

Well I suppose I write this blog, which contains lots of the same things and I know you guys are going to read it. I'm a bit of an exhibitionist. Though I bet you knew that.

They're supposed to be looking for conspiracies, not looking for trash. I hope they are. 

Those national security guys aren't getting off on our chats and emails are they? Or my phone calls? Are they jacking off to me? 

Is that appalling or appealing or just sort of funny? 

To Everything There is a Season

I heard yesterday that a colleague from work, from years ago, is dying.

He has cancer of the pancreas.

Which I don't think is something you recover from?

Though I'd be happy to be told I'm wrong about this. Maybe there have been changes? I haven't researched this.

Years ago, a family friend, a nurse, who was losing her second husband to cancer, told me, in no uncertain terms, that no one gets better from pancreatic cancer. That stuck in my memory, as a dark diagnosis and prognosis.

So this man from work was a boss. He was powerful in our office, smart, charismatic, and really mentored and took care of his people.

He wasn't my boss and he pissed me off because he wasn't my boss, so he didn't mentor me, or promote me or ... gosh it was soooo long ago, but my career would almost certainly have been different if I had started with him, rather than starting off fighting him and his people. Not really fighting him, but fighting for recognition against him and his gang.

And honestly, he was great at mentoring his people, offering advice, training, editing, and just promoting them to everyone else. It's what we all want to be as we get older I think, a mentor... 

Ok, I also have a specific example of somewhere he hurt my career, but it just makes me look petty to include it. It wasn't on purpose from him, but careless damage nonetheless. 

Does it sound like I still resent what happened with this guy, who didn't help me a long time ago, who is dying? Actually, I'd say it's really just background about my relationship with him.

But now, honestly, I just feel sad for him. It's a sad horrible thing to have. And not much time to prepare for what comes next. I know his family. And there are other horrible things happening to his family, because often crappy things come in multiples. And I feel bad for them.

 My work wife was one of his people, that he mentored and promoted and nurtured. When I found out about his illness, I sent her a message about it, and she phoned me, crying. I'm sad for her. He has done a ton for her.

And he's been a good parent, a good husband, a good friend. And he was good for my institution.

I guess I don't have a resolution here, or any big moral message, but just that I'm sad for them. I guess I just needed to write it down.

Readability?

You might have noticed some blog changes here lately.

I wanted phone booths. Something different. I think I just wanted a change. 

I had one reader tell me they couldn't read my blog because the pages over the phone booths kept turning transparent and the text was competing with the picture. 

I'm not sure if anyone else was having problems. No one said anything. Maybe none of you could see it. Maybe it was just one guy.

But I changed it back. Briefly back to orange swirls, which I like, but ... I do like my coastline of Cornwall better than most anything else. 

And here's the thing...

if you ever have trouble reading my blog, please let me know. Just a quick comment to say "Hey, Sin, wtf? I hate your new theme, can't read it, please change it!"

Please?

Because I'm not going to leave my blog in a format that someone can't read.

I'm not interested enough in anyone's blog to read something that's hard on the eyes. I just don't do it.

And I want you to read mine, so I want to make it nice and easy for you.

So ... just tell me. Okay?

A Kiss

The decision to kiss for the first time is the most crucial in any love story. It changes the relationship of two people much more strongly than even the final surrender; because this kiss already has within it that surrender. - Emil Ludwig

Don't you love that? It's true, isn't it?

Remember first kisses? And who they were with?

Thinking about it... overthinking it, thinking it to death. Chickening out. And then finally, finally it happened, one of you leaned in, and found the others lips. 

Mmmm. 

That was awesome wasn't it? 

And no looking back. Because after that first kiss, anything could happen, anything DID happen. You could kiss them again and again and again. 

The first kiss moved you from "off" to "on" and opens the door to all kinds of possibilities. 

So thank you Emil Ludwig for that quote. And where did I read it and in what context? I have NO idea.

Connection

One of the changes that has happened between us, between Big Bad and I, is that there is NO contact on weekends. So from Friday at about lunch time, til Monday morning there is essentially nothing or sometimes, often there is really nothing. Not an email, not a phone call, not an offline, not a text.

And I miss it. The little touches.

I think of him, think of telling him things.

But also I was in the habit of checking.

And it's hard to get out of the habit.

And I want to BE out of the habit.

He wants me to "compartmentalize". Umm, yeah. I want it too. I want to be in the moment when he's there, and be able to submit sweetly, like he'd been there all along, and not even think about him the rest of the time. 

(He's not going to like that I've written this. I'm supposed to just be fine with it. It's that compartmentalizing.)

Especially weekends. And ... okay, other times when he's busy.

And while there was never tons of him on weekends, there was always something and somehow it centred me. Or focused my day. Or something.

I can steel myself to it. I get through it. I'm not going to die or anything. But I'm lonely. I miss my Dom, and I miss my lover. 

I need another focus.

No, not more books or cooking or crafts or ...

I'm lonely. 

I need people. Connection. Want to be my friend?

Books Again

The average person reads less than 100 books in their lifetime

That's what the booksellers say at least. So how many have you read? How many do you think you'll read?

100 books; I find that kind of shocking.

I get that not everyone reads. Some people don't like it. Some people just don't find time for it. There was this woman who used to live across the street from me. She didn't work, and she found about 80 hours a week to garden. I did work and didn't garden. But we'd chat sometimes, and she told me she admired that I read, but she really didn't have time for it. And I thought about how I didn't have time to garden. Though I do read books on gardening.

There are different life stages - and that applies to reading as much as to anything else.

I was dying to read as a little kid. I always knew that reading would be magical for me, and it was. 

I'm a reader and I always read. I read from the time I was a kid, I was a quiet kid, but was always sneaking off to finish a book. Narnia and Shakespeare and anything else with princesses.

I read as a teen, and I was a fairly popular teen, but I always had time for books. Science fiction and historical fiction.

I didn't really read in college. I think I was always aware that there was something else I was supposed to be doing instead, so I read over breaks like Christmas and summer vacation, but not much during the year. Hmmm, except for that one binge of Nine Princes of Amber while I was really supposed to be studying and writing a paper.

 I remember one time, my favourite time was shopping for books, a combination of the academic world I was living in and the stories I loved escaping to.

And then I read happily as a young adult. I was working. I had a job that required 9 to 5 and I'd read on the bus, read at night, read at lunch. Okay, a fair amount of carousing in there too, but I read voraciously. And tried to read some "important works" too. Although really I kept reverting to my real reading.

And then I had kids. And my reading scaled back. Because babies don't take all your time, but they take about 5 minutes out of every 10 and so it had to be books I could put down. Romances, cookbooks, self help, easy books.

And then as the kids got older, best sellers and biographies and an eclectic mix. But then...

...the internet came along. And I gave up books for online. For quite some time. Porn and blogs and chat and news. Not necessarily in that order.

But eventually I got to the end of the internet and went back to books. And now I read a lot again. A fairly eclectic mix, still dominated by romance and beach books, but with some other stuff mixed in. There's a list of recent reads down the side of the blog. I wish I remembered when I started the list. I could look it up,though apparently I'm not. But it's probably about a year. Give or take.

(Edit - Okay I went and checked, I ordered the first book on the list in mid September a year ago, so about 30 books in 9 months. I guess that would make it 45 books a year - wow, I need to pick up the pace don't I? If I'm going to live another 40 years -I can read another 1800 books. I need to start choosing more wisely and stop wasting my time on some of these!)

I guess my point is that I read a lot. Way more than 100 books in my lifetime.

So talk to me about how much you think you read.

Especially you people who think you'll fit nicely under that 100 books in a lifetime number. Tell me why and what you do instead and what you think of people like me who rattle on about books. Tell me!

Spontaneous?

I hate uncertainty. I really do. In life I hate, hate, HATE uncertainty. I hate not knowing, not knowing what to expect, not knowing how to plan. It makes me crazy and I stew. If I'm honest, I sometimes fret over the little things too, dithering about what to buy or where to go, but the big things... 

So there are big things changing in my life. Jobs and and money and stuff.  And it makes me crazy.

You'd think that someone submissive would be amenable to whatever came along, right? A free spirit. Spontaneous. One of those people who can just go with the flow.

I'm not.

Well, I sort of am.

I'm not going to make that joke about how I can be spontaneous as long as I plan for it, though ... now that I think of it, maybe that's true?

Normally I'm pretty lazy. I don't really plan things, I fuck, I read, I surf the net, I hang out with friends and family. I don't schedule things. I don't usually need to, because I have the big stuff done, organized, and it's flowing along, and I'm good with it.

I'm pretty accepting of everything as long as it's basically okay. I don't need everything done exactly right. 

And I think it's part of my submission to The Man, to be accepting of and submit to what he gives me, and that's exciting right? The not knowing. But it's a "not knowing, not controlling" in smaller things. That don't affect my job, home, and kids. Because those things need to be planned, settled, certain.

So he chooses for a session, for a week, for a month, whether there is pain or pleasure or humiliation or whatever. He orders and I accept and follow. He chooses what games to play with my body and my mind and my heart. But he doesn't pay my bills or decide on my career or make decisions about school for my kids and those things have to be certain for me. Or they're better if they're certain at least.

But there are those big changes happening in my life, job changes, security changes, and it might just make me crazy. I need to just relax and accept, right? Except too much relaxing and accepting may make things really bad.

Yeah, cryptic I know. Sorry, sometimes it's hard to know what to share and what not to share here, for the sake of my own personal privacy/security.

Anyway, The Man and I are good. And he totally gets that the big uncertainty stresses me. It's actually one of the places where Dom and sub are in sync for us. Thanks for being understanding Sir, for the advice you offered. You might have to help me to remember that in the days to follow, but I'll try, okay?