Ideal Day...

I begin each year...planning and organizing. Goal setting and dreaming. I have several tools that I rely upon to do that. But one of my favorites for the past three or four years is a book called Wishcraft by Barbara Sher. It is one of those self-help books full of exercises to help you identify your goals and then plan how to achieve them. This is one exercise from that book...visualizing your ideal day.

Now another tool that I use is called the Wheel of Life. It is basically a pie chart divided into eight sections: career, finances, environment (where you live), health, leisure (hobbies), self-development (a biggie with this life long learner), family/friends and the hard one for this girl anyway...love life. I have been doing this exercise for five years...never once has love life been anything other than red...for long anyway. After my last relationship ended, I decided that my pie would only have seven pieces...I would give up on love. Except for me...the romance writer...that is impossible.

The problem is...how do you plan, set goals for and organize...love...Mr. Right? I have come to two conclusions. 1) He is a part of me that I will never be whole without. And 2) there is absolutely nothing I can do to bring him into my life. I have only fate, Fortuna, to count upon in this goal. But there is one thing that I can do...visualize him now so that I recognize him when he does show up.

Because I have loved many 'good' men, but I have never been loved by Mr. Right. And I am too old and hopefully too fucking wise to keep settling for 'good' when what I need is Right.

So here is that Ideal Day exercise...you may notice...He is the center of it. That is because I have the core of everything else that I want and need...six beautiful children, my writing and good friends. He alone can bring me the ones that I am missing...because He is the missing piece that makes the jigsaw puzzle of my life complete. So this is me visualizing, putting it out there into the universe and opening myself to Fate/Fortuna...(oh and my horoscope, yes, silly I know, but it says that 2015 might be the year).

***

I love waking up in your arms. Your cock nestled securely between the cheeks of my ass and your arm thrown about my waist. I am never sure which is better: waking up in your arms or falling asleep in them. Good thing I do not have to choose. Some mornings I feel so incredibly blessed that I have to wipe the tears back. Other mornings, I show my gratitude with a blow job or quickie before I sneak out to curl up with the computer and write.

Before we met, I always felt like such a fake...the romance writer who had never known true love. Oh, I had tried...I had given myself, more of myself than I should have to several men. Each time I had convinced myself that he was the 'one.' And each time it was the same...I gave and he took until I had nothing left to give. I know it might not have seemed fair: all the hoops that I put you through. But I needed to be sure this time. I needed to know that this time it was not a one-way street.

After all my standards were so unbelievably high, who would have thought that a man existed outside of my books for whom...honor, family and love were as important to him as they are to me. Your intelligence too matches my own...and I do mean intelligence and not just education. I learned the hard way that the two are not the same thing. Intelligence is as much about your Emotional Quotient (EQ) as it is your IQ. And like me, you make decisions thoughtfully...and passionately. It is an odd combination. Our Ying and yang that balance one another.

Except in one key area...strength. After a lifetime of having to be the 'strong' one, simply because no one else was as strong when the chips were down, it was not always easy giving over control at first...even though it was exactly what I wanted to do with my whole being. But our friendship proved that you could be counted on, especially when those chips were down.

That is the other key difference: your stability. I am the idealist, the dreamer. I see the world as it ought to be. You see it as it is, but you never denigrate me either...you actually find my idealism refreshing. It brings the passion that you thought you had lost back to you and you are as grateful for that gift as I am for all your practical shit, taking over as my business manager. I know that without you my 'instant' success would have taken me years more to achieve. More years of struggling alone to balance everything.

Thing is that I always believed that love was the only thing with the power to save us in this fucked up world. And I readily admit I needed saving from...myself. I smile as I kiss you softly remembering the final scene in Pretty Woman when Richard Gere had conquered his fear of heights to climb the fire escape and 'save' Julia Roberts. He asked her...so what now? Her response is the blueprint by which we live each and every day...'now we save each other.'

So my turn to do my bit as I sneak out of bed and make a cup of hot coffee. I power up the laptop and begin writing. Three thousand words a day is my goal...almost a book a month. And I am so fucking thankfully that you provide the structure, the fences, the boundaries that were always so hard for me to do on my own. I tried of course, but I needed your strength and stability to bring the balance to my dreams. Funny sometimes when I think of the song, 'Wind Beneath My Wings.' Who would have thought of a Dom that was content to 'let me shine, always a step behind.' But then again, you truly are 'my hero and everything I'd like to be.'

Of course, we both know that I never will be. That is not my nature...anymore than flying high is yours. I am your falcon. You care for me and set me free to be everything I was always meant to be. And I always come back to the safety of your arms. To the special reward of those words...'good girl.'

I know that our lifestyle is unusual. People would be shocked if they knew how much control I ceded to you. But that is it...I gave that control because I can trust you to handle it, to manage me and our lives. We share the same goals, we want the same things, we are Ying and yang, light and dark, dreams and reality.

And because all of that other shit like finances and websites and schedules and even stupid shit like what to cook and wear are no longer my responsibility, I am free to do and be what I am best at...a writer, a mother and yours.

Despite getting caught up in the fantasy of you or maybe because of it, I make that writing goal. Just in time to fix breakfast for you and the children. I smile and fight back the tears again at our unusual brood. Special needs...but then again aren't we all? We all deserve to be special...and that is what you make me feel...special, loved, secure. Things that I have waited a lifetime to feel.

The day is complete and utter chaos...how could it not be. But it is loving and loud and full of life. Our family is the strangest mix of 'Yours, Mine and Ours' with the 'Brady Bunch.' But it works...and not just for us, but for them too. Each finding their place and with us able to do what we never have before...trust the other to care for our children as we would ourselves.

Yet through it all...meltdowns and demands...life goes on, things get accomplished. Houses get straightened. Meals appear magically on the table. Hell, occasionally we even manage trips out into the world. But we always come back to the safety of our nest...the one that we built together with love and dedication to those common values.

Together we are stewards of this magical kingdom. Not hubris despots out to garner power and wealth, but benevolent rulers seeking to serve the greater good of our family, our world...and one another. I always said that the best love of all was the one where two people were in a competition to out give one another...and no one was keeping score. And that was how I knew you were the one...you did not ask what I could give you, you never demanded my submission...you sought first to give.

You loved me through it all...and you still do. Never taking me for granted anymore than I take you for granted, because we both realize what lucky bastards we are to find a love for all time. And we are joint stewards of it as we are everything...the writing, the children. We are living a dream and gratitude is the twin partner with responsibility that is the key to unlocking it all.

And when the day is over and everyone safely retreats to their personal space...I find mine as I always do...in you. And I am free to just surrender total and complete control. It is something I never thought I could do...but was the deepest dream of my heart. True partnership. Swordbearer slaying my demons and shieldmaiden battling alongside my Master.

We end the night as we began the the day...in one another's arms. After making love...whether it was soft and tender or kinky as fuck, because both are us. Equal but separate...different...matching...two halves of a whole. Ying and yang. Master and slave.