Does saying "BDSM is my lifestyle" means that you are living this 24/7 ? I often present myself as a person who is into the lifestyle, seeking bonds beyond the scene. However, I am not thinking about BDSM 24/7, wearing leather whole day, whipping people each day just for fun, making porn videos and deliver lessons each day ... So, am I into the lifestyle or not? I realized that when I start think about BDSM as a hobby, I immediately see two categories of people and understand better.
Let's start with a hobby analogy.
1st group are people who have one or two hobbies, basically for ages. They spend most of the free part of the day thinking about the hobby, doing the hobby and/or watching people doing this hobby. Think about footbal as a example. Basically everyone know a person who is totally into the footbal, unable to say more than 10 sentencies in a row not related to the footbal. The same can be with a sex. Of course, these people occasionaly do other activities, but they usually have no need for consistency. I have a friend master who exactly fits into this cathegory and his passion is also his job. So he dedicated his both free and working time the same activity he loves.
2nd group of people can be characterized by high number of hobbies while some remains, some are new, some are neglected, some restored. They split their free time among activities and in some moments they simply rotate their attention because their time is limited. They can occasionaly pay attention only to a one activity, but from the long term point of view, they need variety. I fit into this cathegory.
Now lets jump back into the BDSM, being in the first group and having BDSM as a main hobby has a clear consequence, you are basically living the lifestyle 24/7 with some additional other activities. Especially masters can have some other hobbies. When a slave in this cathegory is relieved from outside work and he can be fully oriented on the service, it is source of joy for them.
Now what does it mean to be in the second group? Based on my own experience I need to own a slave, but I will dedicate my time also to my other hobbies and I prefer a slave who share some of these activities with me. In some specific cases even hierarchy and way of speech can be adjusted, e.g. if I play a hockey with my slave, he is allowed to use informal way of speech and we act as friends. I think that having a slave from the group one, he would end up beeing too alone and felt abandoned (let's skip porn video ideas about constant suffering for a while).
I am far from saying which group is "better", it is wrong point of view. The correct one is to understand who you are and therefore from which group you should seek your kinky couterpart.
Of course, there can be a lot "in the middle". What is your experience?