On Sex Blogging and Alter Egos

When I started this blog I wanted to be a secret sex blogger. Secret because I wouldn’t use my real name or show my face and sex blogger because I wanted a place to write about sex.
 
I picked a character from a movie I’ve always loved, started all gung ho, wrote a few things, posted some pictures, participated in Sinful Sunday and then… lost steam.
 
Why? Because there are REALLY good sex bloggers out there in the blogverse and finding that I was producing a pale not-great imitation of their stellar work was disheartening.
 
However, I also struggled with the idea of creating a whole new online character in Annie Savoy. Who was she? What did she want? Was she me or not? A part of me or not? Did it matter? Who cares? In any case, I couldn’t find a lane. I couldn’t figure out who I was on this site, why I was out here doing this and what I (or she) had to say, if anything.
 
I left this site for a year or so until October of last year when I realized that I was on the verge of turning 46 and I felt trapped in a cycle of negative thinking that was affecting my choices in men and my general view of myself.  I was sleeping with a man I wasn’t even sure I liked, I kept making resolutions to lose weight and then did nothing about it and I needed something to change up.
 
So, I decided to take some pictures of myself. It's an odd response, I guess, except that I've taken a lot of pictures of myself in the past, albeit mostly selfies and mostly for lovers. But I thought that perhaps if I saw myself objectively I could see myself differently.  
 
The first picture was terrible, from a photographic standpoint, and I would never post it now, but I needed somewhere to start and that was it. Then I made myself take another terrible picture the next day and post it. Then I moved locations and by the third picture, I stumbled on something else entirely.
 
After that third picture I realized that what I really wanted was to take really good pictures of myself, pictures that weren’t selfies and had some depth and focus. I decided to use my iphone, a tripod, a self-timer and the background of whatever environment I happened to be in that week. I wanted this project to be primarily about good pictures from an artistic standpoint and to push the boundaries of my photographic skills while I served as a photographer and model. And then because I’ve always been word focused, I paired the finished pictures with quotes and poetry and voila, there was a little story and a totally different kind of blogging exercise.
 
A few months in, creating these little stories is the highlight of my day and seems to serve it's mental purpose as well. I’ve stopped obsessing about losing weight (though I still would like to) or the prospect of never getting younger (which will never happen) and instead have tried to see my body as an object in space and let all my emotional attachments to it just chill out a bit. Creatively, it gives me a job every day. To find a place and an angle and a captured moment and some words and put them all together.
 
And now a page or two later I come to my real point: How much of this has to do with being Annie Savoy? How much of my creativity gets unleashed because I can express these things and post these pictures through an alter ego in a way that I wouldn’t in my real life? And more importantly (to me), is Annie Savoy a real character or just a blogging façade?
 
I follow sex bloggers who show their faces and write about their lives and I’m so admiring of their bravery. I also follow sex bloggers who edit out their faces and any identifying characteristics and yet write honestly about their lives.
 
Somehow Annie Savoy feels like a third category where it’s a blog that clearly shows a real person living in the real world and yet has very little in the way of personal details. What even is that? I certainly don’t know yet.
 
But I do know that I’ve had men approach me via this site and Instagram and want to know more about my “real life” and I don’t know how to answer their questions. I know they’re asking me but I feel they’re asking about Annie, who for the moment only takes pictures and reads a lot but doesn’t have much in the way of hobbies or eye color.
 
It’s a weird place to be, right? Kind of like blogging induced schizophrenia.
 
However, I’ve taken up the Lovely Rebel on her invite to be part of Smut Marathon 2018 and do some writing this year so perhaps this blog will develop more roundly and we’ll see if Annie has some depth to her or if she’s just sharing space with me for the moment. I’ll be as curious as you to see where it all goes.
 
Happy 2018 everyone XO

I’ve always felt that the formal structure of a photo, its composition, was just as important as the subject itself... you have to eliminate every superfluous element, you have to guide your own gaze with an iron will. 
- George Brassai