Your Post Might Not Be As Self-Indulgent As You Think

It becomes a recurring question as to what it is I am doing here ?  Not just regarding what I post, but what it is I enjoy reading from other people.

The latest incarnation of this question came from a conversation with someone who was surprised that I enjoyed some of their recent writing because they wondered if they were veering towards self-indulgence.  Actually, I know that feeling rather well, myself.

I’ve found myself on the edge of the sex blogging community.  There’s some lovely people involved and their broad inclusivity means that I am happy to be associated with them and that broadness of subject matter has expanded my reading material enormously as I’ve come to know bloggers who write well, tackle interesting subjects and can challenge my own concepts with new perspectives without being dogmatic.  I find this especially true regarding the larger numbers of female bloggers in my reading list.

The reason I wonder about my own self-indulgence and relevance is that I do not write about sex.  As quite strongly asexual there’s nothing in my activities that involves sex and orgasm.  These have little relevance to me, whether that is in my own life or when reading posts.  Of course, there are semantic arguments to be had as to what exactly is sex.  I have D/s and BDSM interests that give me some small veracity to be part of this community.

So I ask myself, what is it that I find interesting in writings from ostensibly sex bloggers ?

Sometimes it is writing style.  Sometimes it’s a clever twist in an otherwise sex based story.  These are the sorts of things to pique my interest.

What really seems to draw my interest is getting to know people through their writings.  These could be think pieces, they could be relationship pieces and often they could be what you might call diary pieces.  It should be obvious, but just because someone writes around the many topics of sex, it is unlikely they do so to the exclusion of everything else.  They are real people, with real and full lives with their own interests and skills.  From such diverse pieces you build up a picture of someone you don’t know and will probably never meet, yet find yourself invested in that person to a degree.

In many ways, what I enjoy reading is not so much an immediate story and post, it is the longer story built up over weeks and months as a blogger reveals themselves.  The things they might write without the careful construction of narrative for a story.

My expanded reading list now includes some great insights in to other people’s experiences and questions from both D/s roles.  They give me clues and insights in to my own psyche and relationships.

My own writings are mostly about telling my ongoing story.  Perhaps because I don’t have an audience with expectations I don’t write at or for anyone, so I get surprised when people show an interest.  I write for my own satisfaction in a place that’s become something more than just a convenient spot to dump things.  The idea of having a public window in to parts of me that no family, friends or coworkers knows about is a very strange one that I’ve grown in to.  I do rather love it and recognise that it’s a manifestation of melody rather than the male.

Whether other bloggers mean to do the same or not, it’s when they do drop in to this mode that I tend to find them most fascinating.

So don’t worry about feeling self-indulgent, irrelevant or fraudulent that you’re writing off topic for your blog.  It’s still likely to resonate with someone when you write for catharsis.