Tools and Problem Solving

A friend of mine was telling me about how not many people 'air their dirty laundry' about their relationships... this is of course people's right, but it has the side effect that no one has any examples of how to resolve issues in relationships. So I thought I would air a little dirty laundry here, and show you how we're fixing it.

So, things have been a little rough for me over the last couple of weeks. I've been a little lax with my duties as Daddy to my boy, not just in what I can do for him but also in enforcing things he is to do. I find it against my ethics to enforce duties from him when I am unable to perform my own.

Part of the problem is that I've been stressed and a little scatterbrained. So I can't necessarily remember things I've told him to do, I can't think straight enough to make it all work. Now in an ideal world, I wouldn't have to remember, as he'd just do them - but that's not how D/s relationships work in real life. As a top you have to be aware of your bottom's movements, you have to be aware whether or not they're following their instructions, and you have to be aware of how it affects them. Not because you don't trust them, but because if you cannot enforce your own rules, the structure of the relationship falls apart.

Yesterday we discussed this problem. We found that if the problem is that I can't observe and remember details of his actions, we need a way of keeping record of these things that doesn't tax my brain too much.

My boy lives in a sharehouse, and they use http://www.chorewars.com to keep track of everyone's housework. You can use it for things other than housework, and it's an ideal combination of to do list and record keeping for things like tasks and rituals. They have another server so people can have more than one account if necessary.

So! I wandered over to http://www.worldofchorecraft.com and started up an account.

Not only can I write down tasks and my boy can claim them as he does them, but I can also add chance encounters (yes, it's a little nerdy, but stick with me here!). You can choose a percent chance of running into a monster. You can also specify a percent chance of treasure found if you defeat the monster. The treasure can be anything you like, so I've put in some treasures that are nice rewards.

For example, my boy must write a blog post once a week. So I made a blog post task, with a 20% chance of a monster. If he encounters and defeats the monster, there's a 5% chance that he'll find a treasure. The treasures I've listed are things like, one home cooked meal by partner, one kinky activity by partner... that sort of thing. Little rewards that can be used like vouchers.

Not only is it a record keeping tool, but it's an incentive to get things done - but because you can specify chances of these things, rewards aren't going to occur so often that they lose their feeling of "yay, this is special!".

Plus, I'm feeling more comfortable setting tasks and rituals for the boy, now that I know I can keep track of them - and he can as well.