Who do you think you are?

And other assorted nineties anthems...

Emma Jane recently posted an interesting blog about Balance. This is a topic that is very close to my heart, as someone who often has to choose between three or four vanilla engagements on a Saturday night before you even start to factor in kinky happenings. One of the things that I find difficult about 'the scene' is the difficulty in not becoming so drawn in that I abandon other friends who mean a lot to me. The challenge is that with kinky friends often being in closer proximity it's easy to fold to concerns about 'feeling left out' and skip occasions that are further afield. It's bad but 'being left out' has always been a great fear of mine so sometimes it's hard to stand my ground. It's equally important that I do, because although part of me needs to be sweet and mewling and abused, part of me needs to be alumni president, or a competitive sporty type or whatever other hat might appear on any given day.

As a lot of my vanilla gatherings with uni friends are scheduled a good six months in advance I tend to make myself stick to existing commitments, this becomes difficult when a couple of months later kinky friends make plans on the same weekend and I manage to factor both in, only to find more friends come up with something a month later. The problem is I don't want to let anyone down but have yet to obtain a time turner (anyone who has any ideas on this let me know!). As geographically my kinky friends are more together it can be hard to hear people planning things that I'll miss but to bail out on vanilla events with friends I only see once or twice a year would actually be worse. As I won't see them a week later to hear the gossip - it could be months but it can still feel hard at the time.

Then you have issues of balancing your 'subself' with the girl competing with people a decade older in the workplace or having a burning need to fight it out on the sports field. I found out yesterday that I have to pull out of the half marathon due to problems with my knee (bloody physio was like 'just because you're fit enough to ramp up your mileage that quickly doesn't mean your joints will follow suit') and am really gutted. There's a short race I'd like to do a week later but I'm supposed to be visiting the boy interest (also important as he's lovely) so what I can I do?

It's even a case of balancing my 'playself' between my 'good girl' headset that genuinely wants to please her Dom and playmates and make them proud and my 'bad girl' headset that wants to protest as she's punished or abused and to struggle against this (and actually gets off on this). The 'good girl' bit is the part of me that sweetly bares my thighs for playmates to smack in public and quietly gets off on doing what she's told and the knowledge that people are watching, or the bit of me that wants to sit quietly with my head on the boy interest's lap but the 'bad girl' takes three Doms to pin her down as part of a scene even when she's not really fighting or gives poor reformatory officers verbal hell.

I don't think it's schizophrenia - it's not as if I have separate people in my head - these mindsets are all parts of me but sometimes it's hard to juggle things and work out exactly who I am. However, I know this much - I like chocolate, ritualised punishment scenes, wine, playing on the dance mat with my crazy flatmate, being smacked and abused, being a sensation slut (slightly scary someone recognised this within 30 seconds of meeting me), winning whatever the cost, giving as good as I get, climbing the career ladder, being stroked, fussing over other people, climbing mountains and being a good little girltoy in pretty knickers and a corset. Ooooh and the seaside....Confused...me...never!