It Has Been Awhile

We've been writing in this Blogger format since December, 2004.  For nearly six years, we've shared pretty regularly, the ups and downs of our lives together.  Sometimes, what we've written has been funny, and sometimes sad.  Sometimes our lives are interesting, or sexy, or chaotic.  Occasionally, things around us even rise to the level of high drama.  Whatever, we've poured out probably millions of words about it all by now. 

Blogging, as we do, about our personal lives and beliefs and struggles and triumphs, is an interesting exercise.  It is, by definition, public in that it appears here, online, open for anyone who is interested to see.  On the other hand, it is intensely personal.  We have always held ourselves to that standard -- that what we write will be the truth as best as we can understand it about our lives in the moment.  There is, honestly, an aspect of blogging that seeks out the audience.  If no one were reading, it would be less affirming to write this.  The obverse of that audience awareness is that we understand that we write for ourselves -- we work to not get wrapped up in "writing for the traffic."  It is a balancing act, and one that we are conscious of. 

There are very few readers here who have been around from the beginning, and it seems unlikely that those arriving now, after all these years, would delve back into those earliest days and try to read it all -- a nearly impossible and dreadfully boring undertaking.  Too, as a recent commenter pointed out, there are those who read here casually, or sporadically, or situationally -- pulled in be the topic of the moment.  We have good friends, the greatest gift of the blogging endeavor, who have stayed with us throughout all of our various moods and dustups, and we have committed critics who seem to obsess over their need to correct and refute our every word.  As blogging is a form of this age's "social media," so this place has come to be a small society with its own set of interesting and unique denizens. 

It will be no surprise to our long term readers that the bunch of us routinely go against the grain, defy the norms, and reject the common view.  We do not simply claim to be practitioners of alternative lifestyles.  We actually hold and endorse alternative beliefs and alternative ideas, and we are not shy about saying so.  That is, perhaps, part of the appeal -- and part of what so frosts our detractors. 

It is easy, as an author of a "sex" and "BDSM" blog, to understand what draws some people to us.  We are proud to be counted among the community of spankos and perverts and kinky folk who populate our blog roll and who have been our companions in the life for so many years.  We don't always see eye to eye with all of those folks, and they don't always agree with us, but we all know that we share a unique and special gift, and we honor one another with acceptance and tolerance -- even when we may not understand or agree or even approve. 

It is also easy to account for the appearance of the occasional "lost soul" who stumbles into this place by accident, and is surprised and appalled by what they find here.  Those folks almost never stick around.  They walk right in, look startled for an instant, and beat a hasty retreat.  I always have a bit of regret for their discomfort, and hope they have no lasting trauma from their encounter with us. 

What is harder for me to comprehend, as a writer, are those few mean-spirited ones who seem hell-bent on coming here to be nasty.  Why?  It takes an active choice to arrive here, for the most part.  What is it that drives some people to come here, day after day, sometimes more than once a day, when clearly they find us and everything about us to be repellent?  I.  Do.  Not.  Understand.  Those people have an uncanny similarity to one another.  They are rude.  They insist that we have no right to take offense to their obnoxious behavior because this place is "public."  They seem to believe that we are somehow obliged to give credence to their views, no matter that our own are in complete opposition.  Somehow these crazy fools seem to be convinced that if they beat at our doors long enough we will wake up suddenly one day and be "redeemed" -- whatever that would look like to them.  How very odd...

Anyway, I started out here thinking that I'd write some sort of "Everything You Need to Know About Hanging Out With Us" post, and that isn't the way this is shaping up.  It is just too complicated.  Or maybe it is just too simple.  Why complicate it?  We are who we are.  We live the life we have chosen to live.  It isn't LIKE most of the rest of the world.  We tend to not believe what "everyone" believes, or to do what "everyone" is doing.  We are not ashamed.  We are not afraid.  We are not easy to get along with or to like.  The ones who find us interesting and true and reliable, put up with our quirks and love us anyway.  Those others, who cannot accept that there are people like us -- find us completely irritating and annoying.  We do what we can to protect ourselves from their attacks and rude behavior. 

And, whatever comes, we keep writing... 

swan