Category Archives: Loving and Knowing Yourself

Hanging Up on Hang-ups

Funny how we get so hung up on our hang-ups we sometimes don’t even notice when they’ve disappeared.*
I was fucking floored Thursday night when I realized the varicose veins I’d been loathing for the last year had suddenly vanished in the last couple months, thanks to my awesome new fitness regime. Poof, gone.
Ironically, I’d already bought some spring clothes last month — and no shorts shorter than knee-length. For what mighta been something that didn’t even need hiding. Silly, silly.
It makes me wonder how often we get stuck in our insecurities, fears, loathings, all out of habit, rather than reality. Is it as bad as we fear? Are we merely choosing to dwell in shadows rather than turn the light on and see what we’re really judging? Continue reading

Miss California: The Boobs Are on the Job

I had to doublecheck my old-school calendar just now. Holy fuck, it really is 2009. Who knew?
Clearly not the folks running the Miss California Pageant.
Yeah, Miss California. You remember her? Perez Hilton went all “oh, no you didn’t [SNAP]” as a result of the ass-backward beauty’s anti-gay marriage stance she posited while she grinned and pointed her perky breasts at the —
[record scratches]
Right, the perky breasts. The now-to-be-infamous perky breasts paid for by the Miss California Pageant, so their homophobic girlie could have her cake and totally, like, not eat it at the Nationals. Continue reading

My Own Private Dichotomy

Fear is not my friend. I don’t care what the bookstore’s self-help section says.
Fear is a bitch. A mean, driven bitch.
I am not a fan of fear.
I bought that book. Twice. Feel The Fear and Do It Anyways. Sometimes I do it anyways. But I always feel the fear. Ever-present, always-niggling fear.
Fortunately I know that I’m apparently invincible. Continue reading

Fakin' It, Baby

[I’ve had a strange week. I bought some wine Tuesday, finished in Wednesday night, and wrote this while under the influence. It’s long, rambling, but it’s also a good dose of in vino veritas.]
This year of mine will require tremendous courage and a willingness to fail on my part, because I’ll need to push through a whole lot of existential and emotional roadblocks that have always kept me from a few places I’ve needed to be.
It’s not like I’m not a confident person. I am. I’ve got a great personality. I can sell anything, argue anyone. I’m smart as hell. I like my writing. I’m funny. I’m kind. I’m generous. I’m creative. I’m dogged. I may even be invincible. I know these things. I know these things.
The trouble is believing them. Because I wasn’t always this way, and, before that, I wasn’t always that way. Continue reading

Thoughts On Community: In With the Out Crowd

It’s funny, this whole “sex blogger community” thing. I’m all for it, but I don’t feel part of it at all. Not because people don’t include me, they do. It’s just… it’s complicated.
I’ve always felt this way, but in the recent months my feelings have been given a boost and now I feel sort of even more isolated and unsexblogger. What’s been the recent impetus for that?
Twitter. Flat-out. See, I’ve got a little over 400 followers or so now, and I follow about 160 people or so. In the beginning, I tapped the people I recognized from blogging, they tapped me back, and I guess as I began yammering all the whacked shit I do, and what with the moniker “SmuttySteff“, my sex following grew, but thanks to my always-weird Twitter feed, also began growing past the mostly sex-blog writing-and-reading community.
Real-time comments from others in the community, about their sexual hijinks, who they’re screwing, what dates they have lined up, chronicles of their masturbation, what new toys they’ve received, how they’re dressing for X, their social interactions, and so forth, juxtaposed against the very vanilla-like-me feeds of others, just all has served to remind me that there’s a very big distinction between being a fan of sex and having really healthy attitudes about it versus being an enthusiast who seeks to keep it present in their life at all times, some of whom might be defined as “lifestylers”.
Debauched Domestic Diva wrote an interesting post this week in which she speaks of “The Lifestyle” and how she feels there seems to be this almost clique-ish attitude in the BDSM community about whether you’re a “lifestyler” or not.

I don’t mean to offend or insult anyone who uses that phrase in their lives and I am sorry if I do, but it confuses the hell out of me because I don’t really understand what it exactly means other than that judgemental feeling I get when I see or hear it. I don’t know if it means you are poly, kinky or what.
I have such a wide range of people in my life these days who all seem to be into something different. Which one of their lives if the correct lifestyle? Maybe someone can explain better to me and help me understand it because I know that right now all I am trying to do these days is just live my life.

I agree with DDD. I don’t have a “lifestyle”. Likely never will. I’m just this girl who got tired of feeling like a “slut” just because she wanted to have a little better sex. I’m 35 now, I’ve never been the type to sleep around. I don’t have multiple partners, ever. I don’t have someone lined up for a filler-shag in between relationships, and have never had someone there in that capacity. I don’t go to sex parties. I don’t really use or look for or even have porn, it’s just not my thing. I prefer my photography erotic, and certainly seek it out at times. On top of that, I have opinions on sex work that run contrary to what most of the active sex blog community believes.
I like sex. I make no apologies for the sex I like. And I sure as hell don’t judge others for having the sex THEY like. Because THAT is what it is all about. But, when I don’t have sex in my life, that’s just fine with me. I’m all right with that. I’m not a lifestyler. It’s not even a hobby for me.
But one of the problems with the sex blog community is, when I’m opting out of the sex race and dating chaos, I feel like I somehow should apologize for it. Like, “how can I like sex if I’m not raving about it daily?” I don’t think anyone’s ever made me FEEL that way, but just stacked up against the oh-so-public exploits I hear, I’m often left feeling like someone let the kindergarten kids into the grade seven class again. I’m just left feeling like I’m somehow out of my league because I don’t do it LIKE THAT.
Which is bullshit.
Because the sex I have is the sex that’s right for me. It gets me hot, keeps me hot, tends to keep me indoors, and keeps me very, very satiated — when I go there. The life I lead is the life I need to be leading right now. The lifestyle I have suits MY style for the time being. I don’t have a lifestyle. I have mystyle. I don’t need to be in relationships. I don’t need approval from anyone else. I don’t have to be sexually engaged to feel a part of my world, or even on top of it.
Not that anyone else in the community does feel they need to lead the life they do, or that they need to do so publicly for any kind of approval. I’m just saying, from my perspective, how I sometimes feel about my own exploits or the glaring lack thereof — probably mostly because I’m fully aware in a first-person kinda way of how plain and unglamourous my little existence is.
But it’s MY life. I’m doing what I need to be doing for ME. Is that really not right? Is it not “good enough” to be a part of the community? Is it just not in keeping with what’s going on out there? Or does it even matter at all?
Judging by the fact that I feel welcomed and appreciated by the community, even if I don’t really feel as if *I* belong there, it doesn’t look like it matters much at all. And that’s very nice.
Yet the fact remains. Here I am, leading a pretty “vanilla” life comparatively, and day-in, day-out, I’m reminded of that fact because I can vicariously experience some of these others’ exploits in real-time through the social world of Twitter. Let’s face it. I’m just that old-school good-girl who’s only as bad as she needs to be to have a good time. How’d I ever get running with this crowd anyhow? It’s a weird, weird world, friends. Still, it’s a fun ride.

Steff’s Easy-Start Guide to Changing Your Life: Part Two

I began this series last month, here’s part one. It’s pretty unstructured, but the early part of the series is focusing on the head game, because without the head game down, you’ll have no success. It’s all in the head game.
The most important thing you need to do if you want to effect serious change in your life is stop bullshitting yourself. No more excuses. Get it done.
What, you want to wait until everything’s perfect and momentum is good, the clouds are gone and the humidity is stable? Right. Come back here to Planet Earth, where rarely do you ever get what you want when you want it, even in restaurants where you’re paying for precisely that.
That’s why you gotta take what you want. Fuck happenstance and trials and tribulations. Shit happens, always will happen. That’s how life unfolds. I’m down 60 pounds this year, even though the last four months have been consumed with bouts of insomnia, several illnesses, debilitating back injuries, cockroaches infesting my home, and even overtime for the last three weeks steady while rehabbing my back injury, and yet I’ve lost 25 pounds in that time. Continue reading

Steff's Easy-Start Guide to Changing Your Life: Part One

So, a Twitterer made the comment that, with the holidays almost here, the annual malaise of reflection and regret would soon be upon him. And I thought, “Wow, this is gonna be the first time ever I sit down at the end of a year and go, “Holy fuck. I accomplished THAT?””
16 months ago, I acknowledged a few things to myself. I hated my job, hated who I had become, hated the way I treated my friends, hated the negativity I was constantly caught in, and hated my body. I was initially overcome with despondency. With so much to work on, where in the fuck would I start?
The trouble with being an unhappy person, or at the very least unhappy with your life, is precisely that: Where in the fuck do you start? Continue reading

Some Pre-Birthday Thoughts on a Busy Friday Morning

After a couple months of everything in life feeling like it was a little harder than it needed to be, and life just throwing one sucker punch after another, it feels like the proverbial clouds have parted and ease is raining down upon me.
My week has been busy, as will the next few days be, too. My mind’s not on sex, not on writing, so I’m just taking a moment to share before the craziness comes down.
Some family’s coming to visit me this weekend, as I secretly suspect my aunt wants to shower a little money on me after having lost 45+ pounds this year. I was laughing on the phone with her last weekend, saying how I’ve suspended my weight-loss campaign (before McCain’s “suspension madness”) because I can’t afford the clothes I need for my new body, let alone a skinnier one, so I’ve pushed the pause button for the last couple months. All of a sudden I get this phone call last night saying they’re coming to town and seeing me for the first time in two years. I can’t help but smell a shopping trip. (Please, Cosmos?)
Monday I turn 35. Wow! The end of an era. The end of being in that coveted 18-34 demographic. I will officially be out of the realm of cool. And I couldn’t care less. Continue reading

Steff the Singing Fool

Opera Man always makes me smile.
There are a few Vancouver characters that the locals who’ve been here for years know about. Like the Rock-Art Guy. Or Opera Man.
Over the the 12 years I’ve lived in Vancouver proper, once in a truly blue moon the cosmos aligns ever so fortunately, and I luck out and happen upon Opera Man taking a stroll. Nowadays in his 60s, he’s a shorter, smaller, slimmer Italian man who shuffles casually with his hands clasped behind his back and just belts out baritone operas at will. He oozes joie de vivre.
I’ve seen Opera Man when I was depressed as I’ve ever been, and when I heard him and his spontaneous operatic bliss, I couldn’t fucking help but grin. Big. I love that man. Big love. If there’s a “Dude, you rock, and make Vancouver Vancouver” award, he gets one.
Me, I love to sing. But I’ve always been a coward. I have an all right voice. Took voice training back in the day. I’m deeper-voiced, with a throaty, sultry rattle, and smooth power when I want it… but I’m shy.
One of the many “Making Steff Rock” projects I’ve undertaken in this year of conscious changing-of-self is that of trying to force myself to be a bit bolder, less afraid of being spotted for being myself out loud… in all my trouble-making or bold ways that I usually keep somewhat under wraps amidst the general populace.
So, tonight, cycling home along one of the more travelled bike routes, I decided to sing out loud. Continue reading

Struggles Between Sexuality and the Self

A reader, Dp, just happened to ask me to maybe touch on the difference between a person’s sexuality and the person. He and I sort of look at the equation differently, I suppose, but it’s something I’ve been considering a lot.
I’ve placed a sexual encounters personal of late, trying to find that elusive friends-with-benefit situation that encapsulates someone brilliant, someone my style, and someone who nurtures both the same high libido I do while still being a passionate and creative lover who’s not afraid to cross a few proverbial lines in the sand.
I have a tall order to be met. I know it will be a frustrating search. I’m already frustrated, but I’m resolved. I’ve had responses accusing me of being a “shopping list” woman who’s out there for a trophy man rather than reality guy. That’s so not the case. I’m a reciprocal woman. I bring to the table everything I’m seeking in a partner. Absofuckinglutely. I deplore hypocrisy, and I do not ask for anything I’m not willing to provide, or that I haven’t provided in the past.
I’m sure there are a lot of people out there who are comfortable separating the sex they have with the people they are, but I’m not. The sex I have is as much a part of who I am as the girl who loves to bake for her office coworkers. I mean, it’s part of my identity. As much as I am a generous woman, I am a sexual one with a big love for intimacy and passion. I’m given to doting on partners, and I love selfishly receiving. I’m keen on orgasms. But I’m also keen on taking all night to get there sometimes. I seek power almost only in sexual exchanges, though sometimes in my life; but certainly there’s a part of me that does seek that power. To deny that she exists, or to wrongly assert she’s just a “mode” I operate under, would be to blatantly ignore a core part of who I can be, and often am.
But just because I enjoy power exchanges as part of sex doesn’t mean I can do without the smothering, doting affection of old-school intimacy. Because I can’t. Affection and intimacy are as important to me as any other facet of sex, whether it’s taking a good hard shagging or practicing an evening of switchery.
Born and raised Catholic, much of my life has been spent trying to get past the “Satan is waiting for you if you engage in sex” bullshit taught by a church who seeks to shame practitioners away from sex. It’s taken my whole life to realize that who I am when I am a sexual being, someone who’s getting shagged frequently, is a better person than the moral, abstaining girl that life sometimes induces me to be. I’m better all the way around when I’m getting laid. Simple.
The hardest thing I’ve had to learn to be in my lifetime is that woman I am when I’m having sex. Realizing that she’s not a bad person just because she likes to take it the way she does, or domme a fellow when the urge strikes, or tease and taunt a fella to the brink.
I’ve learned slowly over the years that I need to get past that mind-body connection. Past that place that distinguishes the mind over the body, or vice versa, and instead uses them both together to transcend mind/matter, which some of us believe has to happen for real “sexual union” to occur between lovers. Complicated, huh?
It’s one of the reasons that getting vocal about sex wound up being a huge turning point for me in taking my sexual experience to another level. By being less concerned about my volume, just allowing that natural reaction to occur, I somehow got past another level of hang-ups, got more into the now, less into the thought side of it all. It was, and is, such a struggle to override the person I was raised to be as I try to embrace the person I’ve discovered I am, all the while trying not judging the latter just because I was raised as the former.
How each of us gets to that point where we stop segregating who we are sexually with who we think we are morally, and realizing they don’t have to be separate people, that we can (and often are) both, is a struggle I think some of us will be fighting for our whole lives. There will be no easy answer to how you get to that point of accepting the coexistence of your sexuality and your morality, and the realization that one need not cancel out the other.
But the only way I know to do it? Stop stopping at our comfort zones. Stop assuming that just because you’ve always thought one way about sexuality that your mindset is correct. Stop assuming you know how a sexual act will or will not make you feel. Don’t presuppose things like bondage will never appeal to you, because the odds are mighty strong that, like the majority of people out there, who you truly are sexually is something that will be shifting and changing with the rest of you throughout your life. Embrace it. Most importantly, explore it.