Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Checking-In

I am checking in to let all of you know that we are still here, but MW and I do have some problems that have put a lot of things on hold.

I want to thank those of you who left encouraging comments. I appreciate your interest and support. Depending on how things work out, I may resume writing, but not just yet.

I still maintain that the true measure of the success of a blog is the number of comments and their contents. Stat-counters with their statistics can be misleading. My guess is that most of the visitors to this site arrive via word search interested in narrow subjects, such as chastity, orgasm, spanking, etc. Once they see that the blog is not pornographic, they move on. The rest of the folks may be interested in reading, but either don’t care or are hesitant to comment for fear of involvement. It is easier to read an interesting free story, than to pay for it by leaving a comment.

It is true that writing my experiences is fun, and perhaps I should do it even if nobody stops to comment. For that reason maybe I will continue. But it is sad when I read excellent postings on many blogs, and nobody comments. Lately I have not been reading much, and commenting even less, so I am one of the lurkers mostly.

I also find it interesting that shortly after I started my blog many others popped up, as if we all experienced the same stimulus to publish. The effect is similar to musrooms appearing overnight after a rain.

Looking at those blogs over the last two or three months I see another trend: fewer posts, no posts, and blogs having gone away. I am sure it is not the lack of interest in our theme that causes this. My guess is that there is only so much one can say before it becomes repetitious as far as the writing goes. I am not suggesting that, say, having sex daily is repetitious and boring, just that depicting such may be superfluous. Same thing with FLR. So, the writing slows down or stops because either nothing is happening, or the same things are happening repeatedly.

Some writers are so talented that this is not a problem for them. See, for example, http://vanillaedge.wordpress.com/. He has been posting for a long time, and remains interesting regardless of the subject. I suspect, though, that he is spending a bit more time at it than most of us with defunct or about to be defunct sites.

4 comments:

Tom Allen said...

SP - I imagine that it must be difficult to keep posting when you dont' feel like things are moving forward. You start a blog with the aim to journal your steps to an FLR, and when that stalls, it seems pointless to keep maintaining that journal.

Worse, sometimes outside pressures pile up and derail not just the FLR part, but the entire relationship as the both of you feel stressed by whatever is happening. You find less and less time to talk and to re-connect, and eventually drift apart, and are left not only needed to start over, but to try without the energy that you once had.

You might consider writing about the things that are derailing the relationship. Believe me, I don't have a witty post every week, and over the last two years, Mrs. Edge and I have had some issues crop up, both personal and work-related, and family. The important thing, though, is to make a point to re-connect periodically, no matter how bad things get.

Interestingly, in our dyad, I'm the one who has to make that effort. Mrs. Edge seems to lack that womanly stereotype of maintaining the emotional intimacy, so I've discovered that I can either get upset or I can work at keeping things afloat. You maybe find that you're in a similar position.

Whatever happens, it's important that you stop to re-examine your goals and priorities, and to discuss them with your wife. Then you need to make sure that you get her perspective - and I don't mean on just the FLR stuff.

Good luck with all that.

Anonymous said...

Glad to see that hope is not lost. I have to say that your last post, "Oblivion", really inspired me to make more comments in the blogs I read. Even if it's just one sentence I want to let people know I'm there, I'm checking in, I'm reading.
I'd hate to lose another blog that I love to read! Do it for me! LOL.

Susan's Pet said...

Tom,

You are correct in your assessment of my situation and comparison to your experiences. You suggest that I write about things that derail my relationship, and I would have done that, except I have limits of what I am allowed to post.

This blog was set up by my wife in our behalf, and I am supposed to maintain it. In a way I am like an employee who is working for her, and she has final approval or disapproval of what I post.

As you can imagine, my range of input and response are somewhat limited by this. You can read back on my blogs, and conclude that there is no evidence of this censorship. In a way that is true. Yet, I know that my postings would have been somewhat different, and have more daring topics and discussions had I been on my own site entirely.

I don't hold a grudge, because this whole experience has been, and felt as if I were serving my wife all along. I suppose that I could start another blog in which I would not ask permission from her or anyone about what I say. At the moment I don't feel compelled to do so.

About communication between us, well, we do a lot. The problem is that it may be helpful, but it is not solving the problems that trouble us. These problems are more deep-seated personal issues which neither of us are capable of handling when they get in the way of love and togetherness. During those times FLR is one of low priority.

We go through cycles. The good times are excellent.

Thank you for your encouraging remarks.

All for her ...

Good idea about comments. The least we can do is say, "we like what we read, keep writing."

Anonymous said...

Sometimes when I write something that I think is just great and there are no comments all I can think is Bugger! But there are so many great posts and only a few souls brave enough to leave comments. We are a very special type of person.