I have a tendency to start things without a clear vision of where I want them to get to; or, sometimes, without any vision at all. This characteristic makes me a risk taker in business and, on holiday, makes me dangerous to ski behind!
In that vein, I guess you could say I sleep-walked into blogging.
A couple of years ago, after a particularly demanding session with a Mistress in America, one that had included an extended caning, I wrote down some thoughts about the intensity of the experience and the sensation of riding a “wave” of pain. Over a month or so I kicked them around. Every time I opened the file and re-read what I’d written, adding a word or tweaking a sentence, I was taken back to the session, feeling little echos of the pain, fear and eroticism with which it had been imbued. It felt good to do that.
I don’t know where the need to share those thoughts originated from; perhaps I thought the writing had some merit and the needy child that is part of my make-up wanted a pat on the head. Girl on the Net duly patted my head and published the post as a guest blog. That too felt good: the creative process of writing, the sharing of the physical and emotional intensity of the experience, and of course the praise that followed.
A month or two later PainAsPleasure was born.
Apart from a brief period when I took the blog down, it seems to have been going well. I’ve used it as a way to prolong the experience of a session, working through the extreme emotions it might trigger; I’ve explored the contradictions and challenges of leading a life where my kinks are hidden; I’ve even experimented with fiction, having never previously attempted any form of creative writing.
In March, I passed 5,000 page reads in a month.
That means nothing to me though. Is it good? Is it a lot for a blog barely a year old? I don’t want to ask other bloggers how many reads is ‘normal’. Sure, 5,000 feels like quite a few for a blog about about being tied up and hit, surely a minority interest. I do know, and the chart shows, that it is more reads than the previous month which saw more than the month before that. Does it even matter? Is the blog truly a bit of self indulgence, a chance to let my kinky side out and examine how it feels to do the things I do, or has it become something else?: competitive, like a business searching all the time for more customers; or like an entertainment show constantly chasing ratings?
If the stats truly didn’t matter to me, then this next picture would be an irrelevance.
It shows that readers in the last few weeks are way down and April is bound to show the first month to month decline for a while. Seeing this, my first instinct was to think up new posts, dig up images for Sinful Sunday, and book a rush of new and more inventive sessions, in order to generate the material that would reinstate the forward march of my site stats. That inclination brought me up short. I have always been uncomfortable when catching myself thinking “that would make a good post” as I fantasised about future sessions. It seems a dangerous alley to go down, potentially letting myself become the servant of the blog, booking sessions only to generate content rather than in response to my particular needs and desires at the time.
The blog works best for me when it is an entirely selfish activity, satisfying my own self-indulgent need to communicate. Strangely, the blog also seems to work best for the people who read it when I write that way; readers responding to the rawness and emotion in writing that’s blurted out while my head is still full of a session.
My sex drive, my libido (do we use that word any more?) and, yes, my kinks are not constant things. Sometimes they dominate my thoughts and I will write a post after post to let them out, promoting the posts all over twitter so that I can interface with other like minded (i.e. sex-mad), kinky people. Just now though, following holiday time when I’ve been immersed in family life and periods where I’ve been forced to concentrate on work, I haven’t been feeling particularly kinky or even sexual. It has seemed strange recently that BibulousOne and PainAsPleasure should exist at all.
So I have decided not to “sweat the stats” and will let April’s numbers be what they will be. I may even allow myself to miss a Sinful Sunday.
Mind you, I did get a record number of comments ever on the last one, a picture of Lilly’s delicate hands softly touching fresh cane marks on my bottom. Nineteen comments! Nineteen! I wonder what kind of picture I should work on to get to twenty! That would be something, right?
Hmmm.
Thank you for blogging. For me it is an inspiration and an education.
Interesting post. I often find myself thinking ‘Ooh, that would make a good post/photo’ and it’s one of the things that I really value about my blog. It’s definitely got me out and about with friends doing far more cool things. Next week for example a naked body positivity comedy show!! Who knew such things existed. But of course my blog is more about arty farty or silly body positivity photographs with friends and partners and I rarely talk about or photograph the sex I have. I can see why letting the blog drive your sessions might feel uncomfortable. I hope you come back soon though. I love the way you write and I learn a lot from your posts. Xx
It’s actually really common for new sex bloggers to go through a phase of changing their sex lives to increase their blogging opportunities. That is, changing up their sex lives or making decisions about their sex lives because of the blogging potential or the blog-growth potential of ‘doing a thing’. The obsession with stats in the early stages makes it an almost tangible thing.
I’m surprised there’s not a term for it (yet).
You are wise not to give in to it though, because it’s a fast track to badness and burnout.
My advice: Do your own thing. Readers who are interested will turn up and stick around. And if you feel like you are sidetracked by numbers, examine WHY you are writing and get back to that.
Ferns
I am contributing to your aim to get 20 comments. Another misnomer, a person may read a blog and really enjoy it and never comment but may visit your blog 20 times more than one who makes a comment. Yes comments are nice but does it quantify your writing? Does it place your blog above another who may only have 1 comment or 1000 comments on a blog when I think by heck I don’t enjoy readings this. It is subjective peoples kinks, likes, etc. I try always to be polite and on Sinful Sunday if I have contributed will comment on the other bloggers, I want to acknowledge the hard work that some of the wonderful photographs have taken. Paradoxically it doesn’t matter if they don’t comment on my, because I myself laugh and chuckle and think blinking heck you have taken a photograph in a matter of seconds, generally a crap unedited photograph but it gives ME pleasure which is the most important reason for posting.
The answer lies in What DO YOU want from the blog? If you are doing it to gain readers (for what gain I do not know, as there are only a couple of successful bloggers) then sweat the figures. If you are doing it for a record of your experiences and how you feel and you enjoy expressing it, then don’t sweat the figures. I write as my personal memoirs available to read. If one person reads it, it is as excellent as if a thousand people read it. It is pleasure for me. I never look at the stats it is immaterial to my motive for writing. I complete Sinful Sunday when I want too for pleasure but due to the limitations of photography and ideas I do not do it religiously every week. I don’t seek validation I suppose as I am happy with my OWN validation. It is the same for twitter, locked to control the voyeurs which I don’t mind in essence, after all are we not all voyeurs by blogging and sinful sunday but if I have one follower fine, if I have a hundred or a thousand still fine, as it my opinions NOT my life. I enjoy wicked wednesday when I want too which is when I have an idea and can knock out the story in 15 minutes. Carry on writing because you want to because of experiences you are experiencing and never never think I am doing this for good content for the blog, that takes away the pleasure and put the onus on making a successful entity which you may not want. A successful entity means continuous working and tweaking and taking away from everyday pleasures. Maybe there is a subliminal reason to compartmentalise your feelings and kinks. Keep away from cliches, don’t get involved in competing, remain true to yourself and above all have fun doing so.