Mrs. Lion and I don’t make much fuss for the holidays. I suspect she would like to do more than we do. I’m all in favor of accommodating her desire. A change would be nice.
Speaking of change, I’m starting to question what I am doing here. Every day for four years (give or take), Mrs. Lion and I have faithfully shared our thoughts and experiences. In over 2,600 posts our readers have shared each and every sexual moments of our marriage. I’ve spent substantial amounts of money keeping this blog available. Why would we do it? More specifically, why would I use valuable time and money for this pursuit?
I know we have a lot of readers. I use tools to let me know how many people read and what they look at. It’s good that we are one of the most popular sexually-oriented blogs in the world. But it’s not that good a feeling; at least for me. Lots of anonymous people find us every day. They read our words and then fade back into the mist. A tiny percentage of our readers let us know they like what they read (they click the “like” button). Another minute fraction leave comments.
Of course, we aren’t alone in this. The vast majority of people consider the Web the same way they think of TV: they read some and then change the channel. I’m not ungrateful for your attention. I like it. But do I like it enough to work as hard as I do to put something new in front of you every day?
I suppose every writer gets to this point. I own my own printing press (this blog), so anything I want to say is immediately published. That’s cool. Based on blog popularity polls (not readership), we don’t even make the list most of the time. Of course, like blogs, the polls are the product of a single mind. So it doesn’t represent a real measure of the writers who are rated.
I have my own favorites. On top of my list (not surprisingly) is “Strict Julie Spanks“. It’s well written, sexy, and has given real help to us. I’ve grown to love it’s writer. She leaves regular comments here that provide insight we can use to enrich our activities. I like others as well. Some stand out because the writing is verbal fireworks that provide fleeting-but-beautiful images in my mind. Others are gritty and poorly written, but spark me at some level. A few sadden me. I read them because I hope that their writers will wake up and realize the futility of their searches.
The glorious anonymity of blogging allows some people to expose realities they would never share if they had to sign their names. They get a chance to expose hidden places with no real risk.
All of us have some expectations that drive our hours spent writing. Some are using their blogs as a giant personal ad. They seek the ideal “sub”. Sadly, their search is confined to guys who are younger, fit, and instantly submissive. From what I’ve read, these bloggers rarely find what they seek. Some read blogs and decide that they want to share too. These blogs rarely have a point of view. They are descriptions of sexual events in their lives or imaginations. These can be great reads.
Ours started because I thought it would be cool to journal my entry into enforced chastity. My inspiration was the movie “Julie and Julia”. It was about a woman who decided to cook every recipe in a Julia Childs cookbook and write a post every day about her adventures in cooking. I figured it would be fun to do the same thing with our try at enforced chastity.
After a while, the blog became a daily part of our lives. I don’t think either of us gave much though to why we were putting in the work to write a post every day. We used each other’s posts as a form of long form email. Our posts became a thoughtful conversation we share with you. We could just as easily do this as email or a private blog.
The lack of feedback (comments) kept our conversation feeling almost as private as email. The knowledge that we have thousands of silent readers who we would never meet didn’t detract from the sense of privacy. The only comments I ever get about missing a post come from Mrs. Lion. A few times a week we get email (private feedback) from people who generally want chastity device fitting advice. Based on their writing, they never read a word we wrote. They just googled “male chastity” and then clicked “Contact Us”. I don’t answer them.
From the perspective of a web site professional, we are successful. We rank very high on the search engines. Lots of people visit and click on a variety of pages. From my personal perspective I don’t feel that positive. I was hoping that the blog would be more interactive. I wanted to feel a sense of community with other writers. That community doesn’t exist. I suppose I wanted praise too. I know that I am a good writer. I’m not so sure that I have all that much to say.
I can fade into the sunset. If I leave the blog accessible, I doubt our reader count will go down much if I never write another word. Sure, some people will lose a daily read. But if they go back to 2014 and start over, it will be a long time before they’ll notice I’m gone. I have no illusions about this. Yesterday’s post ends up lining the bottom of the figurative bird cage. The static pages on enforced chastity and discipline remain popular.
In the Facebook, Instagram, Twitter world the blog is a dusty relic. Maybe the weight of all that dust is going to sink me. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. But it’s possible you won’t find out from me.
Hey, thanks for keeping it going for as long as you did! I fully understand the feeling that you’re writing to /dev/null at times.
In the end, I think a blog has to have value to the writer, maybe in clarifying thoughts, or as a journal to come back to. If it then also has value to some people reading it, that’s a great bonus.
To write a blog and expect feedback on a regular basis is to set yourself up for disappointment, unless you’re someone like Thumper, that is :).
Hi I read your blog with great pleasure. Keep up the good work
Thank you.
Hi Lion,
We are at the other end, just starting out blogging. I have read your blog from time to time. At the end of the day, I guess that all of our blogs are just a small “Big Brother” experience for 99% of our readers. We hope to have some interaction with readers. Time will tell. I can’t imagine how 2,600 entries would feel like.
Why not dial back the frequency and just post when you feel like it. I think the compulsion not to miss a day will grind anyone down in the end.
Thanks for posting all this time. Every different perspective on FLR is enlightening for me.
Hanna
Thank you for your kind comment. I may just be a little tired.
If you choose to stop, I wish you all the best. As one of your infrequent commenters, I have enjoyed reading your posts. The different viewpoints between you and Mrs Lion are what captivated me. Still I somehow think you’ll be back!
Yeah, I will.
I’ve been reading you for a couple of years. You are a serious help and great inspiration. If you cease writing, I will certainly miss you. My Missy doesn’t read the blog, but being able to tell her what Mr and Mrs Lion are up to, and telling her of your daily struggles has informed and encouraged her as well.
Thank you. Looks like I’ll be around for a while.
Hi there,
I always enjoy reading your blog, and have gained lots of valuable information and advice. I don’t think the chastity/discipline relationship that my wife and I have now would be quite as good as it seems to be without the insight from your blog.
It certainly helps too when sometimes I just don’t “feel” the whole FLR thing and can see from your posts that I’m not alone. There is an ebb and flow, and one just has to go with it.
The biggest thing I’ve got from your blog is learning to understand that for an FLR to really work I have to try and let go a little of the “fantasy” element and really accept that my wife is in charge and that by giving real authority to her, I have to accept that she gets to decide how the FLR works in a way that she is happy with. Don’t think I would have got there without you two, so “thanks”.
If you do decide to stop, and I can see your reasoning, then I for one will miss you, but will always appreciate your hard work and help.
And, yes, you are a good writer.
All the best for the future.
Flash
Thanks, Flash. Your words mean a lot to me.
For me, a lot of the novelty is gone, and when you come down to it, there’s nothing revolutionary happening in the chastity world. There’s a lot of inexpensive Chinese devices, and now we’re seeing some 3D printed devices, but 99% of them are still trapped ball style, and there’s nothing else on the horizon.
Bloggers get tired, bored, or busy with other things. When I started, male chastity was still fairly novel, and there weren’t many resources available for those less inclined toward BDSM. Or those that weren’t overrun with wank fodder. I was fairly new at it, myself, and enjoyed keeping things updated.
Now, there are plenty of other people to write on the subject. Frankly, I’d wondered how long you’d be able to keep up the near daily grind, but maybe if you cut back to once or twice a week, it would not seem like so much of a strain on you.
I wondered when we would get tired of writing this blog and just fade away. I figured it would have happened years ago. You’re right that innovation in the chastity device world is minimal. Though I would argue that trends seem to be changing. For example, the old idea that a device had to match the length of your flaccid penis is starting to go away in favor of a device just long enough to contain the head.
I am one of the earlier adopters of this fashion. I’ve noticed that device makers, most recently Holy Trainer with their Nano, are seeing the trend too. There’s still stuff to write about on the chastity device front.
We’ve managed to write daily posts for four years now. After some discussion, we agreed to keep going. Writing a daily “column” begins to take on a life of its own. I think I would miss the chance to speak to our readers every day if we slowed down.
The strain for me isn’t really the effort of finding topics and writing. It’s lack of recognition and opportunities to share more interactively. Bloggers, I’ve learned, seem to hate acknowledging what others say. We don’t seem to want to debate or discuss in our posts. I don’t know why this is true. We have lots of readers and I’m pretty sure they won’t go read somewhere else if we mention another blog.
I was much more generous about this a couple of years ago. The lack of reciprocation, even listing us in their blogrolls, turned me off. Some checking on alexa.com revealed that we are way up in the popularity of similar blogs. So, apparently lack of cross pollination hasn’t hurt us. But I still get a bad feeling when I see how isolated we are in terms of our peers. Yes, search engines are kind to us; but not other blogs.
It shouldn’t matter to me. After all, our success is measured by our readership. But still…