Just in time to finish the year, I just posted two major updates on rope365:

  • Upper Body Nerves featuring some nerve anatomy, a practical table to nerve functions, nerve glide exercises, nerve drawing guides, and safety check tips.
  • The Chest featuring three new harnesses (Open V, pentagram and teardrop), new bottoming tips by sansblague and revised texts for the seven activities.

Also, if you missed it, we made a lot of improvements earlier in the year:

As always, we look forward to hearing your feedback. A lot of those improvements came from the comments and questions we received along the way.

We’re also looking for contributors. Let me know if you are interested in writing tips on specific topics such as bottoming tips, or personal experiences. If you have a rope knowledge writings you would like to host outside of fetlife, it is possible to add them to the contributors section.

I’m curious to hear if Rope365 helped you through 2020, and how you plan on using it in 2021. What are your rope goals for the next year?

2020 Progress and Retrospective

I started the year with ambitious goals, I wanted to complete a major update to the website, and finish writing spring to get started on the book. Then there was a pandemic, and I kept pushing on with my goals thinking being isolated would give me more time to write.

I definitely underestimated how isolation would impact me. It showed me how essentials are the friends who collaborate on the project. With extremely limited opportunities to tie, I was constantly blocked with ideas that I couldn’t bring to reality without being able to tie my friends and experiment with them.

So I didn’t succeed in finishing Spring, but I made good progress on “The Rope” and “The body”. I didn’t finish updating the website but Spring, Summer and the Resources section are in a good place and I can apply the new structure to Fall and Winter in 2021.

I also started teaching in-person again in 2020. After a long hiatus, I am now focussing on my local community in Quebec. We started with the weekly intensive in January to March, and switched to online afterward with a monthly gathering where we discuss and learn simple ties on zoom. It’s really helping us stay connected and the progress creating the curriculum for the local community is helping me improve the rope365 program.

I’ve been attending the Kannawakai salon every week, and it really helped me keep the passion in the hardest moments. Most of the time I was tying myself or a mannequin, it’s good to keep the fingers busy even if I can’t tie a real human. It’s been great to have such a diverse group of people from all around the world with whom to discuss so many aspects of rope bondage. And what a pleasure it is to hear the wisdom of Kanna and Kagura EVERY WEEK! I used to be able to learn from them 1-2 times a year, now it all the time with the salon, the French workshop we organized with Aguacate, the performances, the classes with Karada House. If you’re curious about this, check out my twitter, I’ve been documenting everything.

My head is full of ideas and I can’t wait to be able to tie regularly again, but first, we have to be patient and push a little longer.

My 2021 goals

I expect 2021 to be a difficult year, or at least, it will be quite a while before the vaccine progress allows some normality. For this reason, I want to be gentle with myself while having objectives that will help me move forward. My new objective is: do something for rope365 every week. Maybe I finish a whole chapter, maybe I only edit a small thing, maybe I only think about it. Just keep on moving.

I’ve made a list of things to do, I’ve added priority to them, I will add more along the way. There are more than 52 things on the list, so clearly I won’t finish all of them this year. Hopefully, I check a bunch of boxes and, by the end of 2021, Rope365 has improved significantly.

The priority of the objectives is set toward two big milestones, the first one would be to complete the first draft of Spring. This would enable the next phase to create the first book. The second is to have enough polish on the website to reduce maintenance and start making a French version.

It’s a constant contradiction, wanting the project to grow, keeping up with an ambitious vision. I’m constantly making new discoveries about rope, I try to bring my new rope learnings to rope365 as I move forward. At the same time, this is a hobby, life is full of competing priorities and I also have to keep on tying just for fun to keep the passion. Self-care is important.

So far working in an iterative way had been working really well, not the fastest or more straightforward route, but I’m confident it yield higher quality content. I just need to resist the temptation to redo everything 10 times and find the sweet spot of “good enough”. As long as it’s only a website it’s fine. But I’m getting closer to the point of no return where print and translation will make iterations harder.

So here to 2021, a year where we move forward while being gentle with ourselves. A year where we keep on being patient, enjoy what we have and plan for a better future.

Happy New Year!

Page count

  • Spring: 419
  • Summer: 211
  • Fall: 128
  • Winter: 143
  • Total: 901