Update, and perhaps return to blogging

If you notice the pattern of posting on the blog, you'll realize that winter seems to be a difficult time for me to post. My desire for an FLR, and for sex generally, seems to wane and return with the sunlight. It wouldn't stun me if it were something like seasonal affective disorder, but I've never investigate. I self-medicate with St. John's Wort and that seems to help. But mostly I wait for spring.

This can make growing an FLR pretty difficult, especially when the impetus comes from me, and then suddenly goes away as it does in the winter. This winter, though, my beloved has given me the wonderful gift of being steady when I can't, and has maintained the basic structure of our FLR, even when I would have let it go (only to know that the desire would return again, as it has).

Every night, we check in before bed time. Often, the only thing I've done for her that day is to make her coffee. I've missed a few of my nightly e-mail performance reports, but only a few. But many of them have been very brief, when it's felt like not much had happened that day.

Occasionally, I've missed on my responsibilities doing something around the house. Back in the late fall, we settled on writing lines as a method of reinforcing my awareness of what I need to be doing. I find it very effective.

Recently I discovered the Line Writing blog, which has given me a whole new perspective on lines. And for failing at one of my household tasks, I now have a dauntingly large number of lines to write:

"Keeping faith with my beloved is important. If I am unsure whether I am fulfilling my commitments, I will ask for guidance." 500 times by Thursday evening. In a new journal she gave me for the purpose. It's daunting, but satisfying. Which is why this won't be a long post - I have lines to do.

Also, from some blog or other I discovered the idea of standing against a wall holding a coin with my nose. To which I added repeating a phrase related to the failure that earned me the consequence.

I know these possibly sound outlandish, but in both cases, the intent is to get me to focus on what needs to be done, and what I need to be mindful of. Because, although I'm very enthusiastic about FLR, I'm often not very steady or diligent about it. These things help that.

It also helps me to know that my beloved cares whether I'm diligent or not, and her consequences enforce this - they help me know what's important to her. The down-side is that she is very deliberate and conscientious, which means that coming up with a consequence for something takes her more thought and time than she'd like to put in to the project.

We've addressed this by coming up with "Make a consequence" - something she can say when she notices a failure, or "MAC" if we're in public (which hasn't happened yet). I then submit the consequence for her approval in my nightly reports.

I've also read the "The Marketplace" - first book in the series by Laura Antoniou. I'm thrilled that my beloved is reading it as well.

Thanks to all those bloggers who blog more steadily than I do. You're a lifeline.

Jamie