It has occurred to both Jill and I that we are stuck in something of a rut here at our blog.  What began as an anything-goes public forum to discuss sexual issues and talk about our experiences and goals has turned into something of a structured paint-by-numbers picture.  We participate in at least one meme or other weekly feature six days out of the week, with Saturday our only day primarily for free-form blogging.  On Sundays we do Sinful Sunday and Sunday Stealing.  On Mondays we have our weekly “M” picture.  On Tuesdays we do TMI Tuesday.  On Wednesdays we post a Retro HNT picture previously exclusive to The Other HNT, and as of this past week we’re also participating in Wank Wednesday/Wanton Wednesday.  Thursdays see us posting a picture based on one of themes suggested by The Naughty Hangout.  Friday usually brings both a Formspring Friday post and a short Flash Fiction Friday story.  This doesn’t leave us a lot of time to post quality works of original fiction, or thoughtful dissertations on sexual matters.

To demonstrate my point, we posted a record thirty-seven entries during the month of January.  Of these, only five posts were not done as part of one of the aforementioned features.  Of those five, the most recent was a sponsored post for Eden Fantasys, which we might not have written and posted of our own volition were we not participants in Eden Fantasys’ Sponsored Posts program; and one was a post wherein we were tagged by our friend SassyCat.  The remaining three posts are Jill’s pieces “Facial Expression” and “Thoughts on New Year’s Eve and Social Nudity with Friends“, and my own “Jack’s Dating Advice, Hookup Tips, and Guy Type Analyses“.  Only three completely spontaneous posts out of thirty-seven.  Pretty sad.

By comparison, of the thirty-one entries we posted in November, thirteen were original non-meme material.  We posted a Dirty Haiku, an announcement of our friends Vincent and Mia joining the sexy blogosphere, a diatribe about Formspring, an erotic story about our friend heelsnstocking, a quick post on Thanksgiving Day, a sex toy review, a snippet from an I.M. conversation, a recap of our visit to Power Exchange, the story of a very awkward encounter at a friend’s birthday party, a post for Love Our Lurkers 6, my thoughts on how being a stay-at-home Dad has affected my daily masturbation regimen, a tirade against Ashley Madison for body shaming, and a post about a bill in Wisconsin that would strip teachers of their credentials for watching porn.  That still translates to eighteen meme posts, but compared to the thirty-two we posted last month, that’s pretty damn good.

Why is this, exactly?  Why have we sold our souls to the meme demons rather than treating our loyal fans to the sort of thoughtful original content that they have come to expect from us, and which they undoubtedly deserve?  The easy answer is that life has kicked our ass the past month and a half.  You’re undoubtedly aware that we’ve recently moved; this move inspired a TNH picture entitled “Move-In Madness“, as well as a recent “M” picture.  We’ve moved several times in the last couple years alone, but this was probably our most stressful move despite the fact that our current place is less than three miles from our last one.  We gave notice at our old place in mid-December, which means that while I was taking sexy Christmas pictures of Jill for your enjoyment, I was simultaneously working out the logistics of moving our furniture and boxes without a truck.  The presence of a baby and the absence of many strong backs to help us meant that we spent almost the entirety of January both physically and emotionally exhausted.  The fact that we managed to blog as much as we did is, in retrospect, pretty impressive.  And for that matter, the fact that we managed to have sex pretty consistently throughout January, to the point that it trumped getting more than a couple hours sleep some nights, is impressive as well.  Let’s face it; we love blogging, but of the two, sex is the higher priority.

Our blog-reading has suffered as well.  We usually endeavor to read as many blogs as we can, commenting whenever we see something that inspires us to chime in.  Unfortunately, the downtime that was in the past reserved for reading blogs has of late been used in part for unpacking, putting things where they belong, and – *gasp* – actually sitting and doing nothing.  If you’re used to getting comments from us and you haven’t lately, it isn’t personal.  We are just now feeling settled, and hope to be back to our normal routine before long.  This is also why our fellow Formspring Friday players haven’t received any questions from us lately.  Sorry about that, all of you.

Where does that leave our blog?  Hopefully not doomed to an existence of memes and little else.  For starters, we’ve decided to cease participation in Sunday Stealing.  Nothing against Judd Corizan, WTIT, or any of the regular participants, but after more than four months of posting our answers, we got the feeling that it wasn’t the right question-and-answer feature for us.  We already participate in TMI Tuesday, and have on and off since 2009.  Between the marathon-like twenty-five question average, the tendency toward repetition as demonstrated last week, and the fact that it’s written by vanilla bloggers for vanilla bloggers – again, no offense meant here – meant that we had to move on.  There are only so many times an individual can answer the question of who is his or her celebrity crush, or tell which song makes him or her sad.  It was fun being a smart-ass each week, but as we said during our inaugural Sunday Stealing post, we’ve had an idea for a different ongoing Sunday feature for quite some time, and we’re going to try it out tomorrow.  If it works out as we are hoping, it will adhere perfectly to the spirit of this blog, and while it will be an ongoing feature it will ideally be an exciting read.  Stay tuned.

In conclusion, our biggest fear is in running out of things to blog about.  In the past, far too many posts of ours involved us apologizing to hypothetical readers (who probably didn’t exist at the time) for disappearing.  Over the past five and a half months we’ve attracted a decent-sized following, and we are determined never to let such a thing happen again.  Therefore, our participation in memes, while it may not always inspire spontaneous posting of original content, encourages us to get into a frame of mind that facilitates active blogging.  Now that we are finished moving we hope to strike a better balance between community-building memes and the fantasies, stories, and recaps for which this blog was founded.