Mindlevel Zero

I have been spending a lot of time on my hypnokink in the last few months.

I’ve been very fortunate to have no fewer than 3 frequent playmates in that time, and we talk a lot. Plus, I joined Twitter, and it’s a fun way to interact with other people in this little community.

So, I spend a lot of time looking at Discord and Twitter. I wouldn’t want to use my phone’s capabilities to add up how much.

Because sometimes I get worried about “wasting time”.

Spending lots of time exploring my kink on the internet is not a new thing for me. I’ve been at it since like 1995, when I had to access the EMCSA on a dial-up connection in a text-based web browser, good thing it didn’t have pictures anyway.

And a lot of that time, like, probably hundreds and hundreds of hours of it over the last 25 years, was not quality time. It wasn’t spent forming meaningful relationships. It was mostly spent jerking off interminably to porn of one kind or another...

And I’m going to classify certain types of interaction with other human beings as porn.

You meet someone in a chat room—or whatever the equivalent is, there have been a million of them—you don’t tell each other anything true about yourselves, and you talk dirty. It’s fun, in the same way that scrolling endlessly through fetishy pictures is fun, with the added zing of unpredictable human responses.

Actually, that zing is why I’ve expended so much life this way: because it’s addictive, even more so than the pics; that little spark of human interaction keeps you coming back for hours and hours, days and days, for years.

But in the end, do you know any of these people? No. Do you care about each other? Sometimes, but... mostly not.

Before you yell at me on the internet about I MADE LOTS OF FRIENDS BY CHATTING SEXILY WITH RANDOS ON DALNET HOW DARE YOU JUDGE ME, stop projecting—I don’t even know who you are.

I’m about to get to making real connections online. First, I need to talk about how many real connections I didn’t make, and how that reduced those human interactions to basically just one more form of pornography.

I like porn, I support the people who make it ethically. But consuming it still takes away some of your life that you could have used to create, instead, in the same way a totally SFW Netflix binge does. So be careful.

That’s a message to myself, that’s why I’m writing this.

Be Careful.

Playmates, though. As I’ve gotten into kink relationships, I’ve started defining some terms for myself (your definitions of these terms may differ):

• “Partner”: Someone I’m in a committed (not necessarily monogamous, but that’s how I tend to roll) emotional relationship with, I would expect in person.
• “Playmate”: Someone, either in person or online, that I engage in kinky play with, but probably not exclusively.

I started talking (to myself, anyway) about “playmates” when I needed to describe a relationship more meaningful than the chat-porn I outlined above. The folks I’m playing with now—one of whom I’ve known for a few years, the others I’ve met in the past six months—well, we know each other outside the bounds of “here’s what gets me off”—which, don’t get me wrong, we spend plenty of time on.

That’s the point of this piece: spending time. All relationships take time, so the question is, are you spending your limited time on the right relationships?

Maybe it’s that simple, actually: right now, my relationships with these playmates feel right. I wish they lived down the block instead of halfway across the world so I could squeeze ‘em, sure, but I still get so much out of these interactions I don’t want to leave them be.

I’m looking for an in-person partner, but, unlike in the past, I reckon I need to find someone who understands the playmate thing, who can be down with it. Because I don’t want to disappear on these relationships just because I’m getting some for reals.

Feeling Subby

I don’t know how other people’s mileage varies in this regard, but I get way more addicted to being a sub than a top.

Don’t get me wrong, I love being a top, and I need my share of it, but those subby feelings are what really get their hooks in.

That’s where I can spend hours being teased, tranced, tormented; and then I’ll just keep doing it to myself—fuck, I’ve even recorded a mantra-loop file for myself to listen to while I touch, just so I can condition myself more thoroughly for the person I’m submitting to.

That’s powerful stuff... but it does take time. Lots of time.

And the thing is... I have a playmate to whom I’m submissive, but they don’t run my life for me; it’s not like being a sub is my full-time job. I still have an actual full-time job to do, and, on the side, I have lots of other things I’d like to accomplish other than playing at¹ brainwashing myself.

But this feels so very good. It’s easy to let it dominate—pun totally intended—your free time. Is this the life I want to live, though?

Do I have to choose? I want it both ways, all the ways: I want my career, my side projects, my in-person relationships, my online playmates, and so much of my kinky fantasies, played out.

I’m gonna have to get way better at time management, though.

Connection & Discernment

Like I said before, I’ve gotten guilty or uncomfortable about how much time I spent on kink in the past. But that was when it felt like this separate part of my life I had to disavow.

I don’t feel so much that way, anymore; not when I have real people I can play with, real relationships I can cultivate.

Sexy feelings aside, it’s that connection that matters. That really, really matters. That connection is all of it.

I mean, I didn’t make self-brainwashing recordings for me, even though I’m the one who listens to them while I get horny. I had two decades to do that, but I only started when there was someone else to do it for; it’s only because I want the intimacy, the intense connection with others, that I go to all this trouble.

A couple years ago I wrote a post called Discernment. I was once again concerned with how much time I was spending riding the kink train. I think this post is a follow-up, to say that it still concerns me... but, as long as my focus is on being with other people, it concerns me a lot less than before.