Wondering about a new direction for this blog

The little boy that I was and have been for most of my life is becoming a big girl. Her voice is not the same, her needs are not the same, her story is yet to be written.

I love blogging. Through this medium, I have been blessed with getting to bare my soul in ways that I might have never had the courage to do in any other form. The beauty of anonymity is freedom.

When I look at the stats of who reads what, it seems a rather curious thing when I look at what I write about and the kind of engagement that is there.

The limitations of the format of confessional blog, however, are real.  Being efficient in life is one of the main threads of my life.  That means trying to kill as many birds with one stone as possible.  In the case of this blog, the parallel thread has been self-help.  An upgrade on that might be as an outlet for broader writing projects.  Take, for example, recipes.  I’d love to put more food related posting on here, but there doesn’t seem to be much interest in my cakes or other culinary goodies.

I am interested in continuing this blog but making it more broadly relevant and interesting to readers. That still means a mix of the erotic, sexuality, politics, and most likely food and exercise, but how and what those look like may change.  It might also mean being more “safe for work” or at least being less personal and confessional, at least about those aspects of my life which are NSFW.  But I suspect that most readers are here for that.  I’d love to hear from readers I don’t often hear from about what they would find of value here.

As I look back at what I have written, some 500 posts in the last 2 years since I began, there is a general theme of wellness. That has been mental health, it has been coming out, it has been taking care of the body, the spirit, the mind…being true and present for the self. I am committed to that as a path. I am also committed to the issues of equality, particular gender and sex equality, and more particularly issues that affect women. In my vanilla life, this is becoming and will become a core purpose of the rest of my life.

When my therapist asked me to become a slave to myself and to become my own perfect Mistress, you might guess that this would trigger plenty of thinking about intention.  

Separately, the wall which separates my identity on this blog and my real life has become very thin…and that is both good and bad.  In my professional life, this blog would be career ending.  But my career may be ending anyway—part of me wishes it would, but another part is addicted to the lifestyle, the airport loungers, the fancy restaurants, flying first class…but another part of me wants to stay home and potter in the garden.  

The trans woman I am becoming is just as complex and messy as the man I leave behind.  Too many interests, too many projects.  I have been thinking of hiring an editor to help me clean this blog up, remove the inherent egotism in self-posting, and make it something which I would be happy for anyone to read.  I know just the person.

I am also interested in bringing my erotica onto this platform, in all of its filthy glory, but putting it behind a paywall, as it is a nice source of money to pay for my daily coffee.  When I first began dabbling in the world of kink and femdom, I budgeted myself all of my historic money from my sex writing towards my explorations.  A good deal of it went towards catfish, and I must have been a great client for many of them.  But when I switched over to IRL interactions, my sex writing simply couldn’t keep up.

I am very aware of what a luxury it is to see a sex worker, especially the ones I have had the privilege to get to know.  Absolute bliss.  But I cannot really “afford” it.  And in truth, it only makes sense to afford it in the context of it taking you someplace special.  My days of playing with sex workers are coming to a close.  It has been a hugely beneficial and life-changing experience for me.  One of the two people who has been a part of that transformation is sadly lost to me forever.  The other has become a friend, and in that sense, I no longer see her as a sex worker, but as a friend, even though I continue to be her client, and will remain so as long as she keeps me.

She has gracefully enabled the switch.  In fact, she opened that door the day we first met.  As she said, “why wouldn’t I want to be friends with my clients?”  It is an enlightened attitude that has similarly brought out the best in me…which is all I ever wanted in the first place.  If you can give from a place of strength and healing, it is easy to give without motive, without strings attached, and to trust.  It is a totally different feeling.

It also enables mutual exploration.  I am not just someone who buys a service off of a menu, but a human who has complexity and value just as she does.  Being the kind of person who can truly give back to her, for she gives mightily to me, is very much worth working on.

There is a timelessness to friendship.  It is not a constant project.  It is something which comes and goes, but is underpinned by good will.  There is an investment of sorts, which is a giving of the self towards understanding and feeling each other.  Friendship is a pillar of a successful life.

What I am saying is that the absence of friendship is the opposite.  Life is too short to waste time with people who aren’t friends.  It seems like a strange conclusion given the title of this post.  And yet, it is very much one of the main themes of my life, and one which this blog has always been about.  Befriending the self.  How being true to the self allows for friendship to flourish.  How friendship is the ultimate nourishment of our souls.

Over the past two years this blog has been witness to many transformations.  My body of course.  My place in the world.  My intention.  My beliefs and connection with the divine.  For me, it has been beautiful, and it has been a tremendous honour to share those things with you, and to find so many people willing to read these words.  I am particularly touched when someone finds something in them which helps them or touches them in their own lives.

This blog is and will continue to be a confessional space that runs parallel to my life.  But my life has changed and is changing beyond recognition.  I am not a man anymore.  I am not the person who I was when this began.  I see him behind me as a little boy.  I love him.  I found a photo of him the other day when he was perhaps 6, with a smile on his face that carried so much of what I have talked about here—I can see it all, the dysphoria, the need for love, the abuse, the joy, the sense of self, the atomisation of self—I cried like a baby when I found it, but now it is framed and on my dresser.

Yesterday, as I ran a distance that I have only run a few times in my life, I reached the point of hypnotic delirium, a kind of runner’s bliss, and in that moment I contemplated that my oroborous is the little boy who has become a big girl—brother and sister in one person.

I’ve thrown out or given away all of my men’s clothes, but I found myself wistful for some of them, wanting them back, because post op, when my body finally conforms to the way I have needed it to be, I will want to put on men’s clothes again…isn’t that funny?  I think I can “be a man” as a woman, but I can’t be a man as a man.

So, dear readers, if you feel so moved, please let me know what you value in what you read here so I can write more of it.