Three hundred and sixty-five

I've been keeping this diary for a year now. Seems like a good enough time to say "Happy Birthday" to my peccadilloes and take stock. The question is how. Part of me is amused by the idea of representing the places I've seen and the people I've done in graph format, but I'm not especially sure what purpose that would serve apart from my own personal satisfaction (not that this is a bad reason for doing anything).

I'm not about to launch into a paean on the subject of BDSM, if I wasn't enjoying it, I doubt if I'd have continued past the first week or so. No need to glorify or justify what I'm doing - I've always tried to dodge the politics of the situation, partly because others are doing it better and certainly funnier partly because this is a personal account of my own experiences and considerations, not a polemic.

I suppose that a better way is to turn my favourite question around and point it back at myself. How do I feel? Well I'm happy, for a start. Certainly more sexually satisfied, which is both a positive thing and also a learning point about myself: I can have vanilla sex, obviously. I just don't enjoy it as much. I've done a lot of new things - tried stuff that I've only previously fantasised about and (mostly) enjoyed the experiences, or at least found something out about myself, my body or my desires. I appear to have an endless capacity for self-analysis, which could potentially lead to navel-gazing but I like to think that it helps me explore new adventures in fucking with a certain amount of awareness. After all - if something is fun, it's worth finding out why it is fun to make it better next time. So I suppose that I use this space here to do some of that evaluation, both of my own reactions and of the situations themselves.

Some things have been surprising - reactions to pain, for example. Being told that you are a masochist when you had never thought of yourself as such makes you think. And then do. And then think again. Or it does to me, at any rate. Similarly, the switching and the couple play have added extra dimensions and taken me out of my comfortable one-on-one submissive role.

Then there is the people. I've got a fantastic partner in The Photographer who is both supportive and as keen to explore all things kinky as I am. I've made some great friends, new friends are always nice, new friends to tie you up and hold you down then chat to you afterwards are nicer.

Here's to another year...