The Pathology of Time Wasters: A Study by a Worthing Dominatrix in Dullness, Avoidance, and Self-Inflicted Smallness

How will you spend time? It's your most essential asset.

I'm Lady Ava Sheridon, a renowned Dominatrix in Sussex with a playspace in Worthing and clients across the world. One thing I'm often asked to discuss is my view on, and how I handle, time wasters.

The phenomenon of time wasting is not merely strange to me. It is intellectually fascinating.

Time is the only truly finite commodity. It cannot be extended, stored, or recovered. Each day presents the same fixed allowance and the same freedom of choice. What differs—dramatically—is how people use it.

When someone approaches me with pseudo-intent, it is never my time that is wasted. My filtration system is exacting. A glance is enough. I assess, discard, and continue with my life uninterrupted.

But for you?

The cost is substantial.

By the time your message reaches me, you have already spent far too long thinking about it. Fantasising. Rehearsing. Editing. Imagining an impact you will never have. Neurological studies on fantasy-driven digital behaviour show that the anticipation phase alone activates dopamine reward loops comparable to gambling—high arousal, zero return¹.

You mistake this stimulation for meaning.

Hours Lost to Nothing

Behavioural research suggests that individuals who engage in compulsive sexualised online activity—browsing, speculative messaging, “testing the waters”—lose an average of 8–15 hours per week to unstructured fantasy behaviour². That equates to 400–750 hours per year.

Let that settle.

Hundreds of hours annually sacrificed to:

• No skill acquisition

• No physical improvement

• No cultural enrichment

• No lived intimacy

This is not indulgence. It is inertia.

Time that could be spent travelling, training, learning, refining taste, or sitting across a table from a woman who is actually present with you—spent instead hunched over a keyboard, performing desire rather than earning proximity to it.

One does not need imagination to see how dull a life must be for this to feel like a reasonable trade.

Fantasy as a Refuge for the Unexceptional

Psychologically, this behaviour is well understood.

Fantasy-based time wasting functions as avoidance coping³. It allows the individual to experience the illusion of proximity to power, beauty, and control without the discomfort of effort or self-examination.

You are not seeking domination.

You are seeking relief from the suspicion that your life is small.

Productivity research repeatedly demonstrates that chronic fantasy consumption correlates with:

• Reduced executive function⁴

• Lower self-efficacy⁵

• Increased depressive rumination⁶

• 
  

In plain terms: the more time you spend fantasising, the less capable you become of acting.

And so the cycle tightens.

You do less.

You imagine more.

You resent the people who live what you will not build.

The Asymmetry You Refuse to Acknowledge

Here is the asymmetry that seems to escape you.

While you are losing hours to speculative emails and recycled fantasies, I am living.

I move through cities.

I curate my days.

I invest in my body, my mind, my surroundings.

I dine well.

I travel often.

I choose deliberately.

Your message—when it arrives—is not an interruption. It is background noise. It is forgotten as quickly as it is identified.

The Dommes you imagine yourself influencing have already moved on. They are not waiting, watching, or wondering. They are immersed in lives that are textured, demanding, and rich.

The gulf between these realities is not accidental. It is chosen.

The Submissives Who Understand Time

Now contrast this with those who do understand the value of time.

Dedicated submissives are not drifting. They are disciplined.

They structure their days.

They train their bodies.

They manage their finances.

They pursue culture, refinement, and experience.

They do not waste time attempting to be noticed. They arrive already worth noticing.

Submission, for them, is not an escape from life but an organising principle within it—a framework that sharpens focus and demands excellence.

And because of this, their lives expand.

A Final Observation

Every morning, the same world is available to you as to me.

Movement. Beauty. Challenge. Connection.

All of it there for the taking.

And yet you choose the dim glow of a screen and the quiet humiliation of being ignored.

I find that endlessly revealing.

Time will pass regardless.

The only question is whether you will continue to spend yours proving how little you have to do—or whether you will finally accept that a life this dull is not an inevitability, but a decision.

References

1. Berridge, K. C., & Robinson, T. E. (2016). Liking, wanting, and the incentive-sensitization theory of addiction. American Psychologist.

2. Kühn, S., & Gallinat, J. (2014). Brain structure and functional connectivity associated with pornography consumption. JAMA Psychiatry.

3. Holahan, C. J., Moos, R. H., & Schaefer, J. A. (1996). Coping, stress resistance, and growth. Journal of Clinical Psychology.

4. Rosen, L. D., Lim, A. F., Smith, J., et al. (2011). The distracted student. Educational Psychology.

5. Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. W.H. Freeman.

6. Sinha, R. (2008). Chronic stress, drug use, and vulnerability to addiction. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.