Caitlyn Updates

So, I started writing this out as one post but realized it quickly and easily breaks down into two.  One of them is from the every day me.  The one not concerned with my sexual identity.  The one concerned with family and my car and my phone and my job.  One of them is from my femme side.  The one that IS focused on his/her sexual identity and seeks out things that enhance her femininity especially because she can't experience those feelings in the "real" world.  So, this second part is about my femme life.  The previous post is about my 'normal' life.

Writing A Story
So, back in November I wrote about writing a story.  As almost anybody could have predicted, that lead no where.  I never picked the story up again and never continued it.  But after my long run of caps and osbcurras in December (a post every other day for 14 posts!) I actually was working on another obscurra.  It involved a couple of guys going to a clinic to get their "perfect selves".  They both wanted the same thing, being bigger and stronger and more mentally dominant, but while the clinic did just that with one of them, they turned the other into a smaller more submissive woman.  The obscurra was based on an image with a woman being pushed up against a window (seen from the outside) and a man plowing into her from behind.  So to me the ending would be them getting out with the woman hoping her 'man' would help change her back, but he thought this life was perfect and wanted to keep her that way.

It would have been a fun obscurra, but I just kept writing and writing and writing and eventually came to a particularly fun scene (it involved sex... but not).  That scene went on for a couple pages all on its own.  When I took a beat to sit back and re-read what I had I realized it's trajectory was to be my longest obscurra ever and likely, even with cutting it down, would end up at over 11,000 words (it was at 7,000 and maybe only halfway through the story I had in mind).

Instead of just dumping it and starting over, telling it in a shorter way like I did in Size Queen, I decided to do the opposite.  I'd re-write what I had and instead of making it shorter, I'd flesh it out.  I'd make more of those fun 'in between' scenes that give all the details to a great story.  And I have to tell you, I REALLY liked doing it.

I can hear you now (or maybe that's just the self-doubting part of myself)... Yeah Yeah Yeah, we've all heard this before.  You'll work on this for a few days or a few weeks and then drop it as it gets too bold.

But there's a couple differences.  One, after doing some major re-writes to make the beginning a true introduction, I have this story up to a 50k text file now.  That's about the size of a story that I'd imagine writing.  And I'm Not Even Half Way Done!  If I keep editing what I've already written, again that's only half the story, I bet I'll have this up between a 75 and 100k text file length story.  If I take it the way I think it will go, I can very easily see this being a 200 to 300k text file length story.  In other words, I'm already a quarter of the way done!  That's a big confidence enhancer and makes me WANT to continue writing.

The other big difference is I've already shared the story with someone.  I think the idea of me sharing the base story idea with everybody (out on my other blog or even here) is that I feel an entirely imagined pressure to make it great.  Good wouldn't be good enough.  If I only share it with one person, however, I can be more open and ready for criticism.  And if it dies... well I can always explore the story idea later as no one has seen it.  Except for that one person.

Now, if you're reading this and wondering why I didn't share this with --> YOU <-- then I'm sorry.  I didn't exactly pick out the person I'm sharing it with.  We were just communicating and I felt the urge to have a writing confidant.  If I had been talking to you, then it just as easily could have been you.  If anybody here wants to read what I have, I'm more than willing to share but it will be in private.  Just email me (caitlynmasked @ gmail . com) and let me know.



Look At Me!
Something fun has happened at the Caitlyn's Masks blog.  I used to focus on page views.  Well... no, that's not quite right.  I paid a lot of attention to page views but looked at them as a measure of how I was doing and not a goal unto themselves.  I had read about many way to increase page views, but for the most part ignored that and just focused on writing and posting as I found fit.  For example, when I started out I could have dragged out the posting of my old back catalogue of caps but instead I posted them fairly quickly and then ran out of material to post consistently.

When I started posting in November of 2010 I quickly grew to a huge (fore me) monthly page view.  Until late 2013 I averaged between 60,000 and 120,000 page views a month with an all time high of over 160,000 page views in April of 2012.  When I stopped posting regularly I dropped pretty quickly down to monthly averages of 30,000 to 40,000 page views a month.  Then I started back up again and had a run between February of 2015 and February of 2016 with average page views back well north of 100,000.  Since then it's been a peak/valley of nearly 90,000/35,000 page views.  That valley seems to be my bottom as I've only dropped lower than that a couple times in VERY dry months.  I'm talking about months with NO posts still getting 27,000 pageviews.

Well, enter December of 2019.  I mentioned that run of posts coming every other day.  That extended from Thanksgiving to Christmas.  What has that earned?  December of 2019 had 149,097 page views!

To put that in perspective, I haven't had that many page views since November of 2015.  And from the beginning of Caitlyn's Masks I've only had 3 months with more page views!  April of 2012 is my all time high at 166,597.  May of 2012 had 156,125, and November of 2015 had 157,628.

I'm not really sure what to attest those pageviews too.  While I posted a lot in December (12 times), I've posted more times in other months and not gotten close.  I'd love LOVE to say it was quality of posting, but the obscurras and caps in December were average at best.  I don't see anything that sticks out as great or even better than normal.

I guess this is just a big Thank you to everybody out there that's been reading and following along.




Music In My Heart
I've talked a bit about music before.  Quite a bit actually.  One thing that I've found more and more interesting is how my sexuality dictates what I'm interested in listening to or even find appealing.  The more feminine I feel, the more I like happy dancing, poppy music.  Music that repeats itself heavily which makes it eminently singable and music that has a strong produced beat to it so that I can shake and shimmy along with.

Here's a couple examples of "girly" songs I've enjoyed recently:

This is "Sweet but Psycho" by Ava Max.  I heard this on New Year's Eve and it just struck the right chord.  Since then (4 days ago!) I've listened to it over a dozen times and it's currently, as I write this, on repeat!

I know this is an old song, but I recently heard "Blurred Lines" by Robin Thicke and where previously it had just been pop hot garbage, it got under my feminine skin and I've fallen in love.  This would probably be the most polorizing between my masculine and feminine sides as I really don't like it when I'm feeling more masculine but just love it when I'm feeling more feminine.

"But you're a good girl
The way you grab me
Must wanna get nasty"

This is "Dancing On My Own" by Elle Fanning, but honestly just about anything from the soundtrack of "Teen Spirit" works as I listen to many of those songs.  It was an entire movie that I felt all femmy and happy and now recapture that by bringing up the album!

I not only love the music in this, but I love the video for it.  "Echoes" by Lola Marsh.

Obviously I expect most people to have heard this before, just like I had.  But when I was far younger, I didn't like it.  "Tiny Dancer" by Elton John just didn't do anything for me.  And it's not like it was the artist as I liked/loved several of his songs.   But in the past year this has shot up to one of my most listened to songs and I feel all happy when I hear it.

"Hands To Myself" by Selena Gomez is another prefect example of a song that I dislike when I'm feeling more masculine but adore when I'm feeling feminine.  When I use my mind I see that it's just far to simple, to over produced, to pop like to be "good".  But when I'm feeling femmy, those thoughts just go away and I'm left with just a feeling and that feeling is good and happy.  Oh, and this one in particular I heard when already in a femmy state of mind.  I was watching Dancing with the Stars and this was the dance that utilized the song:

Understand, when I was a working photographer I shot a lot of dance.  I learned to look past the obvious sex appeal and look at the technicality of it.  It was in my self interest to do so as I wanted to take photos of these dancers and sell them back to them.  After years of that, I look at dancing with a far more technical eye.  But when I saw this dance live on TV and heard that music... I WAS that woman (Jana Kramer).  I was a woman dancing and being sexy and being led by her latin lover.  It helped a lot that she was the "star" and he was the professional dancer as her performance looked almost nervous... she was really trying to sell the dance where I was seeing her really trying to sell her femininity.  Just like I would have loved to do!  So, yeah... that song entered my playlist that night!

I'd been meaning to write about music and how I feel about it now a days for awhile now.  I don't have much more to say than that though... it just surprises me!



I'm Sexy In The Background
I'm one that often gets bored with graphics.  I guess that's understandable as I worked with them professionaly and want to have visually beautiful graphics wherever I can.  One area where I express my desire is the backgrounds/wallpapers on my computer.  I've mentioned before that I have a 21:9 aspect ratio 34" screen and how I absolutely love it.  That hasn't changed a bit.  Thank the Goddess that there's a large community of people sharing their wallpapers designed for this as at 3440x1440 pixels it ain't easy to find a good image and just crop it down.

Now, most of my backgrounds I intend them to be viewed in a very particular way.  You see, most of what I do on my computer is through a web browser.  Sure, there's the occasional word document and there's the occasional Photoshop use and even the occasional full screen game.  But every morning it's just the web browser.  Every evening it's a majority of the web browser.  I mention that because I don't just look for 'good' images, I look for images that will look good with the center of it covered up.  The right and left sides have to look interesting as that's almost always all I'm going to see of them!

Now, I've been doing this for a couple years now and I have about 170 backgrounds.  That doesn't stop me from every few months going out and finding a dozen or so new ones.  Just to have something break up the monotony, you know!?  Most of my images are nature, urban settings, comic/anime graphics, or military aircraft.  They're not only prevelant in image searches, but also tend to look good as a whole image and still look good with the center portion covered up by Google Chrome.

So when I came upon this image, I initially thought I'd just enjoy it's beauty for a bit then move on.

It just wouldn't make a good background for me.  For one, there's absolutely nothing on the left side.  And with it's super non-contrasty color space, it would be a dull grey/blue/brown boring area just peeking out on the left side of my browser.  And then there's her face placement.  It's a PERFECT crop for this layout, but again the browser will just cover up most of her face and leave maybe an eye peeking out on the right.  At best, half of the space on the right will be the same dull background and maybe her hair.

So, I decided to not get it.

But I couldn't stop looking at it.  I couldn't stop seeing 'me' in it.

You probably know, I picture my femme self as a redhead.  Sometimes without, but most of the time I picture having freckles.  Glasses are a big part of my life as I need to wear them all the time and I've always been jealous of women's styles they can choose from so naturally I almost always picture my femme self in glasses.  And no matter how comfortable and confident I am or try to present myself, there's always an underlying nervousness to me.  So seeing 'me' here biting "my" lip in some kind of indecision... well it hit home.

I'm fully aware that I'm attracted to the image in the exact opposite way.  When I'm feeling masculine I look at this image and see... Wowza! She's damned sexy!  But who doesn't picture their ideal self as not sexy.  I mean, of course I see my female self as sexually attractive just like I see my idealized masculine self as sexually attractive (spoiler alert... I'm not sexually attractive!).

Fuck it, I finally thought.  If nothing else I could just drop it into the rotation and if it bothered me when it came up I could either hit my mouse pointer to the lower right hand of the screen and get a quick full screen image to enjoy, or just skip to the next image and eventually take it out of the rotation if it bothered me enough.  But a funny thing happened... it cropped nearly perfectly!

I've had this image in the rotation since November 30 and it's my absolute favorite image right now.  By Far! And it's well and beyond more than just her lovely face... it's the way it peeks out behind my browser... the very thing I was worried about!

Here's how it looks to me on most days (I took a snapshot of it while writing up this post):

(yes, I'm still listening to "Sweet by Psycho"!)

The way she''s peeking out from behind the browser is how I feel a lot when I'm feeling my most feminine.  I feel that I'm peeking out from under my own skin and through my own eyes... that if someone could take what I'm feeling and put it into an image, it would be this.  They would see this version of me.  Shy, nervous, aware that she's attractive but with no idea what to do with it...

Caitlyn

This very well might become my own internal image.





Here's an example of making that image more vibrant and sharp like Dee mentioned in a comment: