My grandmother use to say that people don't value what they don't earn. As a child I chalked this up to another of the many things my grandmother just didn't understand about how the world worked. Then, quite regularly as an adult, I have seen it prove true.
Don't you hate that?
My top recently introduced a new punishment. I am feeling so bashful about sharing it. I had to write lines. I love writing. I love repetitive writing. Hello, have we met? Each time, the statements he made me write were similar to thoughts that often cross my mind and make me smile when they do. The first began with I am my owner’s_____, you don’t need to know the rest. The second time began with I belong to Master John.
I'm feeling bashful because even now, a week later, it caused such a profound feeling of submission. It was hypnotic to write over and over again, I belong to Master John. To contemplate, what does that mean? You know how if you repeat a thing over and over it comes to sound like meaningless collection of sounds? This was exactly the opposite.
The first time it was a three-part statement, written 250 times. The second was also a three-part statement, written 500 times. I'm pretty efficient. I can write a page, 25 lines, in about 12 minutes. When I pushed I trimmed it down to 8, but my hand actually cramped more, and legibility was greatly lost.
I think I am exceptionally good at managing my time, and I swear I did appreciate time before this punishment. But perhaps time management had become an auto-pilot sort of thing for me. I have one responsibility daily that is due at a specific, set-in-stone time. Every other thing on my agenda can be wiggled around however I see fit. And I wiggle it just a little bit. What, wait sorry dance party distraction. I do that too. For real.
It was important that my punishment not compromise my vanilla responsibilities, and my top would agree that's how it should be. It was also important to me that I meet my top's expectation. I spent the day calling out, Alexa set a timer for 10 minutes. Then I would sit and ink a page with 25 lines of I belong to Master John... while picturing what I had to accomplish during the 20 minutes of vanilla that would follow. Alexa set a timer for 20 minutes, and play Billy Joel Pressure. No wiggling today, focus. I did my promo posts on the socials, I did not get sucked into watching reels of this song will sync right up to the third video in your phone. I did workout, I did not scroll through 100s of 20-minute workouts before deciding which one I would do. I outlined this post in my head, I didn't make repetitive outlines to be thrown away because the spacing just isn't right. I decide what was for dinner and got that fucker in the oven. Not one minute was wasted on hmm, chicken or beef. I gave my attention 100% to what mattered, and not one millisecond to what did not.
I earned an ever-deeper appreciation for time, and for my top.
