As the one year marker of this blog and The Poly Experiment™ rolls around, I have found myself reflecting a lot on the past and how far we have come in all of this. I am quite pleased that I started this blog, and kept at it, because it’s been very useful in recording the journey thus far. I have no plans of shutting this place down anytime soon. In fact I am hoping that it will continue to grow and get better and better.
Lately I have been feeling…off. I find myself withdrawing from my social life and I have effectively cut all my romantic ties, Jack being the exception of course. K and I broke up, LD and I have decided to just be friends. Speaking of him I know that I haven’t written really anything about our involvement. At first it was because he asked that I respect his privacy, and I chose to extend him that consideration. He has since decided it’s OK for me to write about him, but now that the relationship is platonic I might give you guys a quick rundown of how it all went. Today is not the day for that, but what is important boils down to we were seeing each other and now we are not.
He and I had a long talk the other night and he teased that perhaps the local ‘Queen of Poly’ will finally go legit and return to monogamy. In the moment I laughed it off but I’ve considered it more since then. I don’t totally agree, since I don’t think the current state of unrest is really poly related. I am sure it would appear so on the surface, but I suspect that it has a lot more to do with the reshuffling of priorities in life.
Working has become a more primary focus. Since I started my weekend job I have been forced to sacrifice that entire block of time to working, sleeping, or spending time with Jack and the kiddos. I have other commitments during the week that narrow my social openings to Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights. I am highly protective of my narrow social time, and I have been devoting more and more of it to things other than extra-curricular romantic pursuits.
I doubt that this ‘lull’ will last forever. I think that finding a new rhythm of life will take me some time before I can create a reasonable system of getting things organised. We are still in the phase of upheaval, and I don’t expect it to end until sometime early in the New Year. I suppose the simplest way to put it is I am highly overwhelmed just now.
This is typical for me actually. If you were reading me last year in November you would have noted a considerable lack of posts for November and December. Christmas is an event of extreme proportions around here, and the sheer number of things that need to be done often make me want to crawl under a rock and hide until spring.
There is also New Years.
People who know me understand that New Years is my favorite holiday of all time because it’s the beginning of a brand new year. This means a clean slate just waiting to be filled with fun and accomplishments. I get a sense of renewal, but I also get very nostalgic and reflective. This normally causes me all kinds of interesting emotional turbulence. Not to mention I have been known to suffer mild seasonal depression, and I hate the winter because I can’t tolerate the cold. It all adds up to a very up and down SG. Happy because of Christmas one moment, down in the dumps because I feel like hibernating the next. The stress and the excitement exhaust me.
This year I am taking a few measures to assure that things go more smoothly. I am officially declaring a hiatus from my social life. I love my friends, all of you, and it’s not that I don’t want to spend time with you. It’s just that time is something I have very little of and I am sad to say you aren’t going to get any of it just now. Please understand that come January and February, things will get back to ‘normal’. Don’t despair, you will see me again, I promise.
Not to say that I will refuse to leave the house for the next two months. I just don’t intend to pack my schedule full to bursting. I need a rest, going a breakneck speed for months and months has gotten old. I plan to spend time with V and Jack and occasionally perhaps other people, but it will be when I am inclined to do so, which probably won’t be often.
I am also taking advantage of some free tanning that has been made available to me. I have not been a huge fan of the Fake n Bake, but once a week 10 minutes under the lights will help with my hatred of the cold weather and lack of sunlight. It will also help me feel better about myself, which is not usually an issue except for winter it seems.
I intend to do my best to keep the blog from getting dull or withering from lack of updates. I can’t make any promises, but even if it seems that there isn’t a lot of meaty goodness here over the next couple of months, I have awesome stuff in store for January and February! Please stick it out with me until then.
Speaking of which, you might notice a few new additions on the sidebar. I have added some more buttons to make it easy to subscribe to this blog via different RSS services. Please let me know if any of them aren’t working. Same goes for any links on my sidebar, drop me a note or a comment if anything is broken.
There is also a new feature I just added today. You can now subscribe to a monthly newsletter from Stiletto Diaries. I know that might sound lame, I mean what sort of things could I possibly put in a newsletter? Well for one thing I will be including previews of toys and products that will be featured that month. I generally pick out items for review a month prior to actually getting them posted on here. I will not be publicly releasing any information about said products until I actually post about them, but people who subscribe to the newsletter get to find out beforehand. The letter will also include anything of interest coming up on the blog in that month. Birthdays, unusual topics, anything like that. In addition any changes/add ons to the blog like new features/buttons/links/etc. Subscribers will also get chances to get in on any contests (yes, I said contests, more on that to come) or other interactive blog stuff before it goes public. This is NOT intended to create an elitist group, but to promote a sense of community, and to encourage more people to visit the blog regularly. It’s in a testing phase, we shall see how it goes for the first three months and then I will reevaluate how necessary and effective it is. I promise that I will never spam you nor bombard your inbox with updates. Honestly I will be lucky to send out something monthly.
I am also mulling over doing another weekly feature besides just HNT. It’s getting a little out of hand on other blogs though and I don’t really want to add to the ‘hype’. I was thinking of devoting one day of the week or maybe once every two weeks to posting a piece of written erotica on my blog. You see, I want to write more of that sort of thing but I will never do it if I can keep putting it off. I thought that making it a weekly/biweekly feature would act as a sort of deadline and therefore help with the motivation part. I don’t yet know if that will come about, still in the concept stages.
Bravo to anyone still reading this
I think I have gone on long enough for this moment. I hope that everyone is enjoying their week! Tomorrow is Hump Day, hurray!