Burnout, Disconnect & Finding My Way
Lately I’ve been disappearing, again…
I’m either fully present and consumed by everything I’m creating, or I vanish entirely and want nothing to do with any of it. There never seems to be a middle ground, and it’s becoming a pattern I can no longer ignore. It affects me, my subs, my work, and the way I move through this industry every time it happens. Whenever I return, it feels like there’s a trail of scattered damage left behind me from the abruptness of my absence. I can’t keep moving in cycles like this and leaving more mess, so I won’t be returning until I feel certain in how I actually wish to proceed.
I think part of the problem is that I still carry an attachment to what all of this used to feel like.
I’ve been in the industry a long time now, long enough to remember when being online felt slower, more intimate and far more alive. There was creativity in it, humour, anticipation. You could put up a silly task or an artistic idea and suddenly there would be threads full of eager participation, subs bouncing off one another, adding to the atmosphere and making the whole thing feel communal and exciting… It didn’t even matter if they were my subs or serving others, everyone was involved, Dommes, Subs and onlookers.
I think part of me has tried to recreate that feeling within The Annex because it’s one of the things I miss most about how all of this used to feel. Maybe that’s part of my problem? Perhaps I’m simply resistant to change, clinging too tightly to an era of connection and interaction that no longer exists in the same way. Or perhaps people really have changed alongside the internet itself. I honestly don’t know anymore. This is just one tiny aspect or thing in a sea of many that has shifted...I could go on and on.
People scroll endlessly. Content is consumed and forgotten within seconds. Attention spans are fractured beyond belief and the emotional energy people once brought into kink or adult spaces feels increasingly absent. Sometimes it feels like people are present with words but absent in spirit. There… but not really.
I think many of us are simply tired. Consumers are tired. Creators are tired. The entire online ecosystem feels overstimulating and emotionally flat.
I wanted to invest in a space that would co-exist with The Annex, for real time, but I question the investment when everything is shifting and tanking...I can't quite justify it at this moment in time.
I’ve realised that I don’t want to continue existing in this endless cycle of forcing myself to “show up” just to disappear again when the looming disconnect inevitably catches up with me. So for now, I’m taking a step back to properly understand what this feeling is and what it is, exactly, that I’m trying to recover from.
It’s not that I no longer want to exist as Lenore or work in this industry. It’s that I no longer know what shape Lenore is supposed to take or hold in a world that increasingly feels hollow.
The online aspects of this life have become so deeply draining for me in ways I struggle to fully articulate. The messages never end, the emotional labour never ends, and the expectation of constant access never ends. Somewhere along the line, dominance began feeling less like dominance and more like being permanently on-call, dispensing dictated service for strangers around the clock in exchange for livelihood.
What once felt freeing now often feels relentless.
I entered this line of work because of the autonomy it gave me. The control. The ability to shape my business around my own desires, energy and boundaries. To work when I genuinely wanted to work and create experiences that felt authentic to me rather than obligatory. But lately I’ve found myself accepting sessions that my gut already knew I didn’t want to do, simply for the sake of sustaining business, and that is an enormous problem.
I know some people will probably judge me for admitting that, but I think honesty matters here. If I continue overriding my own instincts and forcing myself through experiences that leave me emotionally depleted, then eventually there will be nothing genuine left of me within any of this at all.
Submission used to feel more immersive and sincere too, more natural. Now a lot of it feels self-serving, transactional and emotionally disconnected. I don’t even say that with bitterness, only sadness.
I think the post-covid influx into online kink spaces has intensified a lot of these problems on both sides. Trust feels fractured now. Many submissives approach interactions cautiously, almost expecting manipulation, scams or emotional traps at every turn. At the same time, many Dommes have become exhausted from constant attempts to extract free attention, free labour, free emotional energy and endless access without respect or reciprocity.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, genuine connection has suffered. Both sides seem wary of one another now. Guarded. Burnt out. Unfulfilled. And I think that underlying tension has quietly changed the emotional atmosphere of online kink spaces more than people realise.
I feel myself becoming more protective of my energy as I get older. I no longer want to take sessions simply for the sake of taking them. I don’t want endless disconnected interactions that leave me emptier afterwards. If something isn’t feeding my fucking soul then I don’t want it…
Lately I’ve felt far more drawn to my camera and creation itself. Not just filming kink, but filming with intention, intimacy, care and beauty. Capturing atmosphere, turning ordinary moments and the mundane parts of life into something emotionally charged and meaningful through a lens. I miss the feeling of creating experiences and capturing moments without the intention of feeding algorithms.
I still find myself full of ideas for sexual and kink based work that could be visually stunning, cinematic and deeply immersive. The kind of things that linger with you afterwards because they made you feel something. But then I find myself questioning where that kind of work even fits now? Most people are not really arriving to feel deeply or witness something, they come to cum and disappear again…
The industry itself feels strange lately. Dry, oversaturated, repetitively exhausting. We are drowning in subscriptions for absolutely everything while simultaneously becoming numb to it all. AI Dommes and Cyber Brothels are appearing everywhere, audiences are burning out, creators are burning out, and there is a shift across the entire space whether people want to acknowledge it or not.
I don’t know where I fit within that future yet. What I do know is that I cannot continue as I have been. So for now, I’ve removed most things intentionally. The Annex remains, Bluesky remains, but beyond that I’ve stepped back significantly while I try to untangle my own head and reconnect with whatever it is I’m actually craving from life, kink, art and connection.
In the meantime, I’ve been throwing myself more into my vintage shop. There’s something grounding about it…tangible and human, somewhere I feel deeply connected to things still. It gives me space to breathe (and earn) while I figure out what parts of myself I want to carry forward and which parts I’ve outgrown completely. Revisiting this part-time venture, which admittedly has been neglected for a while in terms of sourcing and listings, has also forced me to recognise just how much of my life is consumed by being “Lenore” around the clock.
I don’t have any dramatic conclusion to this journal entry. No big announcement. No definitive direction. No solutions or answers for you, if anything, more questions arise… The only acknowledgement I can give, is that something within me has changed and I can no longer ignore it.
I still crave expression. I still crave intimacy. I still crave Kink and filth.
I'm not leaving and I do want to be clear about that. But I won't be back until I understand what coming back actually means for me and in what capacity. It will have to be in a way that's genuinely sustainable and fulfilling for me. I still want to share and l want to exist in some form, but I need it to be real, and I want it to matter. Right now I'm figuring out what that looks like.
When I know, you'll know.
Lenore
Offering to Mistress Lenore, a quiet gesture of appreciation
Buy Mistress a Coffee
Thank you for reading