Entice Me

POV: it is Sunday night, the price went up, and you are explaining to yourself why next year will definitely be different

The Back to School rate on MistressMind ends Sunday. $77 a month becomes $97.77 on the 28th and it stays there.

Six month minimum. Two live calls a month, the group chat, the book club, the monthly ritual, Discounts for Breakfast at Tiffany's and pleasure products at enticeme.com

You already know what to do. Go do it.

"Now is not a great time."

Correct. It never has been. Go anyway.

Three days left on the September "Back to School" rate. I will say that once and then leave it alone.

Here is what I actually want you to do tonight.

Picture yourself next September. Same month, one year on. Nothing dramatic has happened either way.

Now ask: is she still waiting for things to settle down? For all the Back to School tasks to be complete (what was a Back to School purchase for you, btw?)

If the answer made your stomach drop, you already know what to do. All your power is inside you. Now go use some of it on yourself for once.

Nothing is going to blow up.

That is the part nobody warns you about. You are not headed for a crisis. There will be no moment that forces the issue.

You are headed for QUIET. Politeness. Two people who share a mortgage and a calendar and are usually kind to each other.

And in five years you will be able to point at right now, this exact stretch of your life, as when it set.

There is no emergency coming to rescue you from this. That is not the good news. That is the whole problem.

Which means the only thing that changes it is you deciding, on an ordinary Tuesday in September, that another year of fine is not a way to live life.

Six days.

That is how long the Back to School rate on MistressMind has left. It goes to $97.77 on the 28th and it does not come back down.

But that is not what I want to ask you.

I want to ask what you thought would be different by now. Back in January, when you told yourself this was the year. What specifically did you picture?

Tell me. And then tell me honestly how close you are.

POV: you spent two weeks deciding on $77 and eleven seconds on a $340 vet bill for a cat who was fine

You budgeted for everyone's dental.

Budget for wanting things.

Say this out loud, in your actual voice, alone in the car if that is what it takes.

"I want a space where I get to want things."

Notice what happens in your chest when you say it.

If it felt ridiculous, or selfish, or like something you would need to apologize for afterward, that is not evidence you should not have it.

That is evidence of exactly how long you have gone without it.

You are not worried about the money.

You will drop $462 on the kids' club soccer season this month and never think about it again. That is the same number, over the same six months, as MistressMind at the September rate.

You are worried about what it means about you if you spend it on your own pleasure.

Because a soccer season is defensible. You can say it out loud at dinner. And nobody has ever taught you a sentence for "I bought myself into a room where I get to want things."

So you call it not having the money. It is not the money.

It is that you have never once been given permission, and you are still waiting for someone to hand it to you. Nobody is going to. That is the job.