I Don’t Think of Self Care as Service

I don’t think of self care as service.

Firstly, I’d like to specify that—for this post—when I say self care, I’m talking about basic physical health maintenance—a healthy, regular diet, hydration, basic hygiene, enough sleep, so on. I’m not currently speaking only of luxury self care or of mental self care, and am mostly speaking of the day to day, not lifestyle overhauls.

Now, self care is valuable. The very basics of it are even necessary. On either side of the slash, with or without a dynamic, kinkster or vanilla—you need water and food and sleep and such to survive. To be healthy, you need enough of those things, regularly, and it needs certain healthful qualities.

That’s also reason number one why I don’t think of self care as service: I have to do it, with or without Mistress. It’s not an option. I did it before her. What I strictly need and what is reasonably healthy don’t change because of my dynamic.

My personal—not universal—definition of a service is something that Mistress would need or want, independent of me. Now, there are services I initially introduced her to, but now she’d want them independently.

Making her meals is a service. With or without me, she has to eat. Cleaning the house is a service. With or without me, she’d want a clean living environment. (And—as a side effect at the very least—this does mean that there’s food and a clean environment for me, too.) Taking care of her is my job.

Now, without me, she’d probably lower her standards of clean. She’d probably handle certain tasks in a way that was easier or faster, or neglect them entirely, unless there was someone else to outsource to. This happens on a small scale when I’m too sick to serve and put on Light Slave Duty. But in her ideal world, she would still want those tasks to have been done, frequently and well, and there are plenty of others she would pick up doing herself eventually.

So, those are services she just wants done, period, with or without me. And I love providing service. It’s my full time job.

But, if I wasn’t in her life, she wouldn’t want or need my self care. Sure, as a kind person, she’d wish good self care on any given person out there, but it wouldn’t really have value for her. Because she does own me, you might say that I’m taking care of something she owns—the same thing I do when I take the cats to the vet or put gas in the car, which I do consider service—but since the possession I’m maintaining is myself, it’s more like me paying my own marginal costs, solving a problem I create, a net neutral at best, rather than adding value to her life. So it doesn’t meet my personal criteria for service there.

Let me give a disclaimer: I’m not naturally inclined to self care. It’s not a talent of mine, for various reasons, including the schizophrenia. Left to my instincts, I am a monomanic tortured artist workaholic who views self care as a necessary evil. However, I don’t truly endorse that method, and so I try to rise above those instincts and take care of myself to get more done, using productivity systems and, well, Mistress ordering me to take a break already.

Aha, you might say. So she does want your self care. Well, yes. And I’m grateful for that. There are a few things to consider in that, though, besides her just caring about me.

One: not everything I do because of Mistress is a service. Yes, we view service as a key focus of our dynamic, but we also have other focuses and are generally M/s. To me, a lot of other things I do because of her fall under acts of submission, but not service. While submission and service are highly correlated concepts for me—but certainly not for everyone—they’re not exactly the same.

I think of acts of submission as anything I do because of Mistress. This could be obeying a once off order, doing a recurring service task that was assigned, obeying a rule or protocol, asking for permission when required, wearing my daily uniform, assuming my slave positions, so on. I exclude from this the things that I would do with or without her.

So, some self care acts are not acts of submission, either—things I do attend to well myself. But some—the ones I do only because of her—are, by my personal criteria at least. That is an act of submission because it is not something I also happen to want—I am submitting to her will: having a largely healthy slave. And submission is important to me.

Another thing to consider: it’s difficult if not impossible to provide consistent, quality service without consistent, quality self care. My service declines when I’m too hungry, too tired, too dehydrated, so on. While I don’t think of self care as service in itself, it is a crucial step one towards service. For her, ensuring my self care is, if nothing else, a cost of quality service.

In my Anticipatory Service class, I have a section on learning new service skills. While learning the skill might not be in itself service by my criteria, you sure can’t provide that service without it. I view self care similarly.

Likewise, if you have a traditional job, self care and learning probably aren’t part of your job description, but you can’t do your job well without them.

And because I want to do a good job, I must value self care at least for that.

Say, virtually all of my to do items come from one of two places: my calendar, and my recurring task list.

I have rules about what goes on those. It must connect to at least one of the following: writing, being a kink educator, running Las Vegas TNG, going to butler school, being a slave (service or submission), or the basics of maintaining my health. I chose these areas based on their reflection of my personal core values list. I do plenty of other good things, but those don’t earn a place in the official systems.

And you saw my health listed in there: it deserves the priority because it feeds the other categories, including my service.

Now, being a slave also affects my self care in other ways. We’re high protocol and practice lifestyle sadomasochism. This affects my self care.

I sleep on the floor, nude, on a leash, with a set wakeup and bed time. I need permission to go to the bathroom. (Sometimes she accompanies me and throws humiliation in there.) I need permission to shower, am required to do it regularly, am required to shave everything neck down whenever I do (unless I gain permission otherwise), and am required to report for an intimate inspection after. (Sometimes she uses this opportunity for watersports, soaping, cold showers, etc.) So if I ask for the required permission to shower (a basic self care act), and she says no at the moment, doing so then would not only not be service, it would be disobedience.

I love all areas of our dynamic, and sometimes they require self care, and sometimes they make it a challenge.

In the end, I want our dynamic to be about her, for her to get the best deal she can get—and sometimes that means putting myself aside, but sometimes that means overcoming that instinct to make sure she has a largely healthy, well taken care of slave.

I don’t think of self care as service for me—but it’s part of our dynamic, and it’s important.