Whew

Ok, last week was kind of a heavy posting week. I’ve thrown myself into writing since that’s how I process things. Revisiting those posts that I wrote so long ago and had been holding onto, was both freeing and incredibly difficult. I should be able to share the experiences I want to, but looking back at the memories made me both smile and cry in equal measure. I have also been focused on some upcoming travel. I will be traveling to Europe alone for the first time ever in a few weeks for a (scene!) friend’s birthday. I tagged on two days before, in Amsterdam, and two days after, staying in Haarlem. I am looking forward to the alone time, frankly.

I also managed to snag tickets to see the Backstreet Boys with my two oldest vanilla friends in January, for my birthday. We got a package with hotel and I am really looking forward to it. I’ve never planned a vanilla girls trip, let alone a vanilla trip to Las Vegas, so this should be interesting! A lot of brain space has been taken up by coordinating that, booking flights, hotels, and thinking about outfits and accessories.

I am having such an identity crisis lately. I’ve been spanked once since Oasis and all the other stuff combined, being ghosted, it’s just making me feel rather expendable and unimportant. It’s fueling and heightening every insecurity I have. So it’s just a lot for me to reckon with – I absolutely cannot stand toxic positivity so I am trying to find ways of keeping me head up that also honor the very valid feelings I am having right now without dismissing them or covering them up.

My first QOTW post got 53 votes! A few people voted twice, but I don’t have the wherewithal to parse it out (nor do I understand why the feature allows it!) but it was only 2 or 3 so it’s ok. The voting breakdown was as follows: 35.85% for the hairbrush, 24.53% for the hand, 20.75% for the belt/strap, 9.43% for the cane, and 9.43% for the paddle! Interestingly, 30 of the 53 votes were from US based IP addresses but the paddle received the least votes along with the cane. That said, 3 of the 5 votes for the paddle came from Americans. There is definitely this idea that paddles lean American and canes lean British, and tend to be cultural favorites – but not quite amongst my readers. 2 of the 5 votes for the cane came from Brits and the other 3 were from Spain, Belgium, and Switzerland. The hairbrush seems to be rather unifying. I wonder if it’s because of how domestic it is and how institutional both the paddle and cane feel? Especially amongst the demographic I probably attract, given my own proclivities.

I won’t do a QOTW every week, but I’ll try and sprinkle them throughout other posts, particularly if I can host them with a different option than the crowd signal one that didn’t save answers by IP address and thus allowed double voting.

I have a massage booked tomorrow so I hope I get some relief from my back pain with that, and a quiet brain break. Thanks for sticking around and reading – I really hope you all enjoy the micro short stories (and some just very short stories) that I will start posting on Tuesday to usher in October!

-M