"cus the best is yet to come"

The really nice DJ is playing Def Leppard's "Armageddon It" at J2D while I'm blogging this.  We're dancing around having a great time; I've just taken some beautiful pictures; I've got some learnings to record; and it's a good day so far.  I've even had lunch.

OK learnings:  I've met people.  I've been talking to people.  It's been enlightening.  My own attitudes and fantasies have shifted considerably since I first began this journal.  I have discovered the difference between a lifestyle and a world of fantasy; between the intensity of a scene and the normalcy of quotidian motions (and the beauty of both).  And that is something subtle but significant to point out.  The scening and the normalcy; the performance and the reality; the act and the genuine.  I have given my all, in my time; I have thrown my heart, soul, blood, and spirit into some phenomenal roleplay.  It is exhausting.  It alters the mind.  It changes the world.  It transforms the body (physically, really, it does!  chemical reactions and oh that sweet look of satisfaction on the face...) and it is its own metamorphosis in toto.  It is exhausting.  A person can't keep up that level of intensity 24/7.  

There is beauty, too, in the day-to-day act of living.  Even in a D/s lifestyle, there is a simple kind of beauty.  It means that the intensity, the honesty, the vulnerability, the whole transformative change from the night before's scene may be now in the past and relegated to the realm of imagination and memory... but now everything that happens subsequently (the brushing of the teeth...  the making of the breakfast... the wandering to the window and looking out at the day with a cup of coffee... the choosing what to wear... the going back to work for the day and the going through motions of basic needs for survival...) everything that happens subsequently is coloured a shade more vibrantly.  Everything smells a little better.  It makes the days of normalcy that much more enjoyable.  Not every day needs to be a scene:  and not ever day needs to be leading up to a scene.  My own identity, my own submission, my own needs and my own fantasies, they still exist and they are still as real to me as anything... even during a peaceful cuppa on the porch.

I have been reading a new book: "50 Shades of Grey" recommended to me by Sir RB.  There's a lot to like about this book but the thing that strikes me most poignantly is during the making of breakfast.  That happens a few times.  (Also happens in the movie "Nine and a Half Weeks" which I enjoyed for similar reasons... the mundane act of breakfast, a calm time, representing the AFTER.)  Breakfast means there was something before it.  Breakfast is symbolic of the beautiful after-ness ("aftermath" has a negative connotation... "after-ness" works here, even though it isn't elegant).  Aftercare can be in the form of breakfast.  Why not.

What do these pictures have to do with this post?  These are shots of the sim J2D (where I'm engrossed in my mentorship).  You wouldn't think this is a D/s lifestyle sim by looking at these pictures.  Dancing around to Ozzy and Linkin Park with DJ Stormy doesn't have anything to do with scening, or with exploring pain boundaries, or with courting a collar, or with negotiating hard limits... Instead, this sim fosters a comfortable, elegant, cozy space to learn and grow and have some fun.  Meet people.  Move slowly.  Get to know each other.  Eventually move into the realm of discussing fantasy.  Eventually move into the realm of exploring those fantasies....