Think of it less like a punishment and more like a practice.

Hello, mon chérie,

TLDR: Spanking is a ritual.

You make the same coffee every morning. You have a specific order for getting dressed. You light the expensive candle when you're having a bad day because it makes it feel less bad. 

That's a ritual. And I think spanking falls into the same category (which sounds ridiculous, but stay with me here...)

People tend to imagine impact play or kink as this BIG THING which is intimidating and you need a handbook for. Something involving a level of seriousness that, frankly, I do not have in me.

But the older I get, the more I think it's actually about creating moments that pull you out of your own head (I talk more about this in other blog posts too.)

It's the same reason people take ice baths. Or pull tarot cards. Or spend twenty minutes making an unnecessarily elaborate martini at home when we could just open a bottle of wine and move on with our lives.

But the point isn't efficiency. The point is the ritual.
The point is deciding that for the next few minutes you're going to pay attention.
To yourself. To your body. To another person. To whatever is happening right in front of you.

A paddle happens to be very good at that...

You pick it up and suddenly you're not thinking about your inbox anymore.
You're definitely not thinking about what you're making for dinner.
You're just *here.*

Which, honestly, feels increasingly rare!

I think that's why I'm so interested in objects that support ritual, and not because they're practical (most rituals aren't?) - like, nobody needs fancy wine glasses. Nobody needs a collection of tarot decks. Nobody needs six different lip liner pencils in nearly identical shades of nude.

And yet....

We surround ourselves with objects that make ordinary moments feel a little more intentional.
We all have objects that somehow make us show up differently. Maybe it's a perfume you only wear when you want to feel like yourself again, or a coffee cup that's objectively no better than the others but somehow makes the coffee taste better. 

A paddle can do the same thing, but not because it's particularly serious or extreme, but because it invites you to pay attention and be playful, making an otherwise ordinary evening feel slightly less ordinary.

That's all a ritual really is - deciding that a moment matters! The paddle is just there to help.

Anyway, go make it a ritual, mon chéries. ✷