Things I'd Like to Do...

I don't think I'm going to use today's prompt from the Daily Post. Firstly, I've realized that the whole website is built around Wordpress users. This makes me feel left out when I participate in the prompt but can't get a link back, and also furthers my growing insecurity that having chose blogger over Wordpress a billion years ago, I have missed out on some degree of streed cred...or, web cred, I guess? There's just something about a Wordpress site that makes you think, "Man. This blogger is the real thing."

Secondly, the prompt is called "Out of Breath," and it's all about describing "the busiest, most hectic day you've had in the past decade." Honestly, that just feels like a really stressful thought experiment. Maybe all this mediation is getting to me, but I don't feel compelled to take the time to attempt to remember which day out of the past ten years ranks as the most stressful, and then relive that stress.

Suffice it to say, I'm sure it fell somewhere in the timeframe when I was in my final quarter of my Associate's Degree, juggling a full course load which included a portfolio-building seminar that culminated, very time-consumingly, in an art show put on by my class (and a twelve-page paper), a 24-30ish hours-a-week part-time job, an internship that was supposed to be paid (and therefore replace the job) but turned out to pretty much not be, about 7 hours a week worth of commuting, and all of my responsibilities at home.

You can tell it was hectic because of how long that sentence was.

Still, I guess it really was more hectic than stressful...or at least, no matter what it was, I look back on that time fondly. I look back on all my time at SMCC fondly, as probably the best two years of my life. There were pitfalls, sure, but I was pursuing something I was passionate about, bettering my life, meeting new people, and really just feeling this sense of empowerment: I was learning how to do things that I previously would have hit a total block in attempting to do. Something like, "I better not attempt this, I have no idea how."

In a lot of the art classes at SMCC, you just did it, it wasn't any more complicated than that. I wish a little more of that had stayed with me.

That quarter in particular, though, I have a special fondness for, probably because I simply didn't have time to be overly broody. My time was divided up between all these different things, with all these different people in all these different place. I'm busy now, too, but I'm pretty much either at-work busy or at-home busy. God, I'd really love to take an art class right now. Even if it wouldn't pay off for a long time: just, start saving up nickels that might eventually buy me an airline ticket to somewhere great.

I genuinely don't think that's in the cards for me for quite a while, though. I am enrolled in school right now, though not in any classes this semester, but it's an online degree. Communications, or something broad and useful like that.

I like communications. Marketing. I like that it got me the job I have now. But I wonder where I would be if I had decided to go to the Maine College of Art or a USM art program right after SMCC. I wonder if I'd still be pursuing the dream I went to SMCC to get closer to: writing and illustrating my own children's books.

In my mind, I'm still going to do that. But I'm eminently aware of the fact that every day older I get without actively working towards it puts me one day closer to a future where I've accidentally just driven right past my chance. I tell myself, it's cool, it's something I will get to. But then I ask myself: Will I really?


I've had a thought poking around for a while that an interesting way to start breaking into illustrating wouuld be to take some of the best posts from the history of this blog and do an illustrated version. Again, something I sort of vaguely intend to do. But...you know, maybe I should just...do it.

It feels intimidating, like something I maybe don't know how to do anymore. It's been a long time since I spent any time on my art, and it's not like I was super good at it in the first place; I never claimed to be. But I do remember my instructor, Jeff, saying that I had a really refined since of narrative in my art. He thought I should go to Vermont to get my Bachelor's in this college that had just launched a Comic Arts major. Talk about Street Cred.

Jeff is the type of person who makes you want to be cool. He's this incredibly gregarious, multi-talented, funny and smart person who you just want to impress, even years after the last time you talked to them. One of the reasons I'm really interested in recording a Scrumgirl EP is so that I can, apropo of nothing, send it to him. I'd love to go down to First Friday in Portland some time in the future and have him say, "Hey! I listened to that CD you sent me! It was great."

Anyway...I'm getting meandering. There's this new RSS feed reader that seems to be distributing my posts to a small group of people. Maybe you're one of them, or maybe they're all bots. But if you are one of them, and you'd be interested in seeing some illustrated posts, shoot me an E-mail, or leave a comment maybe. Let's see where this goes.

Day 11. On with it.

Derogatory and Arbitrary - 10 Minute Free Write

As I've been struggling to come up with fresh, new material for my daily posts, I've decided to enlist the help of a writing prompt. I expect I won't do it every day, as there may be days where I actually have something I'd like to say. But for today, I am using the prompt on http://dailypost.wordpress.com, which is, today, "Ready, Set, Done: A Ten Minute Free Write."

So, you know. That's helpful. Okay, with that introduction done, I'm starting my ten minutes...now.


Oh good. The first thing that comes to mind is blankness. It's a bit ironic that the day I go looking for inspiration is the day-- apparently they do the free-write weekly-- where there IS no real prompt. But, okay, fine. The time limit will help me.

Dan and I had this whole conversation the other night...okay, it was really just an exchange-- where we we talking about how long my posts take me. I was, yet again, complaining about how overwhelmed I am by the many things I have to get done. He made the point that it's not like I can just pump out one of these long-ass posts in 10-15 minutes. I told him, yeah, actually, I'm pretty sure that's how long it takes me. Somewhere between 15-30 minutes, anyway. He seemed a bit flabbergasted by that.

(I want to take a moment here to point out that I'm pretty sure part of the idea of a free write is "free association-style" writing. As in, I am going faster and less methodically than normal, and it's probably coming out sounding somewhat...god, what's the word? There's a word. And here's where I would normally take like a twenty minute break to look up the word.

Frenetic! That's what I'm looking for! Man, maybe this free write helps my brain work better. It would normally take me a really long time to find a word I was looking for. I should escape the parenthetical now.)

There are a couple (several?) words that I have that trouble with over and over again. I've thought about carrying them around on a little list, it happens to me so often. (I know I'm referencing something that was previously in the parenthetical, which is a no-no for a parenthetical, and totally defeats the purpose of the parenthetical. Just go with it.) One of them, I know, is....derogatory. Which, okay, the way that happened right now. I was thinking that I could only ever remember one of them when I go to remember it-- not just the word itself, but, like, what the word it is I tend to forget...I'm not making since. I want to slow this down and make it make sense.

I know there are two words, at least, that I can never remember. But as a general rule, when I go list them, I can only think of THE CONTEXT and DEFINITION of ONE OF THEM. (Those should have been italicized. I don't like this free write stuff. It's stressful.) Whether or not I can actually remember the word itself is a whole separate matter, but I can only remember the surrounding information of the words I struggle to remember one at a time. So I was pretty sure that the word I was going to remember this time was...the one in Good Will Hunting. The one where he says "Drinking coffee is as _____ as eating caramels." Arbitrary. It's arbitrary.

But, just now, I was certain I was going to be able to remember that arbitrary was the word I usually forget, but as I was trying to think of the actual word, the OTHER word came to mind. It didn't even come to mind, it came to fingers. It's almost like I've typed that sentence too many times before: I always forget the word derogatory.

So, there you have it. Derogatory and Arbitrary.

Hey! There's my timer!.

--

Goddamn. That was awful. I mean, I'm sure it got some cobwebs out or whatever, but I got really hung up on trying to explain that whole "remembering what words I forgot" thing. I have no idea if I did it well...I suspect not. I'm not going to go back and re-read now, I suspect the urge to edit would be overwhelming. And I was supposed to be "ready, set, done." The done thing being the important piece.

I will spellcheck it, though, as it became clear to me during that that I'm not at all sure what the correct way to spell "derogatory" is. Oh, look at that. I got it write every time. Not so lucky with "parenthetical" though.

Day...10? I think 10. On with it.

Repetitiveness and Redundancy

More and more, I'm starting to get the sense that this is the thing that needs to be chopped out of my routine, with regards to my latest set of goals. I'm supposed to be exercising, mediating, and writing every day. Mediating is arguably the most important, since it's probably the most transformative of the three, and certainly the most helpful at helping me solve what's become the central problem of my life: stress. Exercising is important because I've let my weight get to a point where I'm unhealthy, and that is wreaking havoc on both my self-esteem and my joints.

And, let me get be straight about this, writing is important, too. It's all about starting to deal with a lot of things that have been festering for me for a long time, as well as focusing my goals and priorities, and helping to straighten out my head space. Plus, as I think I've mentioned in previous posts, it comes naturally to me, and puts me, at least occasional into a state of flow- a state of activity which is a perfect balance between challenge and ease-- which is probably as beneficial as mediation, in a lot of ways.

The thing of it is, this doing it once a day for thirty days thing? Fairly arbitrary. I do need to get back into the habit of using writing to work out my thoughts, concerns, and emotions. It's a very important part of the way I learned to cope, in the hardest parts of my life, and I feel like things have gotten so dark for me in the past few years because I abandoned it.

But, on a night like tonight, where I just want to go to sleep, and I end up staying up later than I mean to, either to write, or because I'm stressed about having to write and avoiding it? I just spent 30 minutes I could have been sleeping discussing with Dan how having to do these three things every day is overwhelming me. The reason I spent that time? Essentially because I'm an adult version of my teenage self, and I was avoiding my homework. Being this. This right here.

But I'm not quitting yet. Of the three goals, this is the only one that has an expiration date. 21 more daily posts after this one and I'm off the hook. I can take newly limbered-up linguistic skills out of boot camp mode and use them to write when I happen upon something worth writing about. I hope it's still, at least, two or three times a week. But it should be happening when I feel like it.

I'm proud of myself for the overall quality of these posts, despite being out of practice, but given how few people will read them, they're probably not as important, write now, as the quality of my sleep. When they help me to stumble upon some realization, well, so much the better, that's a big part of what I'm doing this for. But I need to stop writing long posts like this just to "do my homework" when I could be using that time better to get ready for the next day.

And so, with that, I'm off. This whole thing feels repetitive, anyway. I bet I was complaining about it yesterday, too.

Yep. Look at that. Not a carbon copy, exactly. But certainly not worth anyone else's time to read both of them. Since it wasn't worth my time to write both of them.

Sorry for cheating you out of the last several minutes.

Day 9. On with it.

Time and Energy

I don't know if I've hit on this yet or not, but I'm finding that, for the first time in my life, I truly do not have time for the things that I want to accomplish.

I've certainly used the excuse of not having time for things in the past, but, as a general rule, it almost always actually meant that I didn't the energy. I had time up the wazoo, but if I was too overburdened with other stressors-- and, hint, I always was-- I didn't have the energy to do anything productive with that time.

I'm still a very low-energy person in general. That hasn't changed. I still need a great deal of downtime to just...attempt, in futility, to summon the strength the face the world at large.

But it's not clear to me that, at this point, it would matter if I didn't. In the past month or so, I have, quite ambitiously, added the following daily goals to my routine: exercising, writing, mediation. I also have this clear sense that, if I'm going to live without Zack, I need to be in more regular contact with him, albeit from 3,000 miles away. I care about the job I have now far more than jobs I've cared about in the past, in terms of making it into a career, so this tends to somehow monopolize a lot more of my time than I'd guess, given that it really is just a forty-hour thing: theoretically no more, theoretically no less.

And then there's, you know, a baby.

I don't know. Maybe it is still an energy thing. If I didn't need any down time at all, there would be enough time in the day to work, exercise, write, meditate, and spend at least an hour of quality time with him-- whatever that is. Of course, other things would continue to get totally cut out: cooking, cleaning, upkeep of the very old, very needy dog. I'm sure I wouldn't magically have time to make my relationship somehow work.

But I can't actually pretend that I have no need of down time at all. And I certainly can't continue to sacrifice sleep.

It literally pains me to leave this post in awkward state where it feels like it didn't accomplish anything, but I am so. Goddamn. Tired.

I keep staying up just a little bit later than I mean to to get these posts in. Then my sleep cycle is screwed, I spend the next day tired, and what gets sacrificed is everything else. I did manage to mediate earlier today-- as well grocery shopping, and I got in some actual social time with a real life human being that I don't live with for the first time in months-- but my exercise routines have really started to suffer. Three out of the past four days have been lacking a truly meaningful amount of exercise, and the day I did manage, it was a really long walk, which...it counts, I guess, but I have trouble giving myself props when I don't break a sweat.

So for tonight, I'm going to have to put this on the chopping block: obviously not totally, not officially. But tonight, I'm going to have to settle for an average post that any old person could have written. No moving emotion, no epiphany, perhaps not even a callback to the beginning of the post. At this point in my life, I truly do not have the time.

Day...8, I think. On with it.

Best Interests

I really wanted to be attempting to sleep no later than 11:30. It seems like I'm always just 15-25 minutes away from my goal. Like, that actual increment, for things related to time, and that metaphorical increment, for life things.

Or something. I don't know. I'm being pretentious.

Let's make this a quick one. A brief observation.

I just made another attempt at bathtub-hair-untangling mediation. It didn't feel as successful this time, probably because of my awareness of time passing as I tried to get to my bed-by-right-NOW goal. The very non-figurative ticking of the bathroom clock did not help that matter, I assure you.

I think, back when I wrote more regularly and was less concerned with mediation as formal practice, what I substituted for actual mediation were these meandering thoughts that I would have when I was alone, which would become the outlines for blog posts I wrote later. Sometimes, it would be like free association, a journey of wherever my mind chose to go, at least until I honed in on something I found interesting. Other times, it would be a careful editing process. I'd stumble upon some phrasing I thought was perfect, than carefully add to that, starting over and over obsessively, to be sure I didn't lose the initial inspiration.

One way or another, when I took a bath, I would usually come out with this very clear sense in my mind of what I was going to write about.

It doesn't really work that way anymore, possibly because I'm out of practice as a writer, possibly because I'm trying to take the somewhat meditative practice that worked for me in the past, and stick into a mold that more closely resembles what everyone else thinks meditation should be. I don't know what I believe in all that-- was I getting enough benefit out of letting my mind instinctively figure out what it needed, or was I missing out on something key? Perhaps the enhanced ability to focus that's supposed to come out of the sustained practice of formal mediation.

It bothers me that I have to use the words "meditation" and "meditative" so many times.

Either way, I came out of the tub today with just the vaguest hint of the point I want to make in my "very brief" post tonight. And that is this:

On my lunch break, today, I was listening to an episode of This American Life where they described a condition called "Delusional Disorder." Delusional Disorder is like many mental impairments, such as schizophrenia, in that the victim tends to believe, deeply, in things that are not true. Unlike schizophrenia, however, there is a insidious problem with Delusional Disorder: the delusions are generally fairly plausible.

We're not talking about people who believe that the government planted slow-hatching alien eggs in their anus or that Oprah Winfrey is being controlled by a talking dog, people who are clearly crazy. We're talking about people who very vehemently believe that their wife is cheating on them, or that they are related to a celebrity, or that they invented the world's first egg dying kit.

While these kinds of delusions may seem easier to live with, they're often incredibly destructive to the victims' lives, and the lives of everyone else around them. The show focused on this woman whose marriage ended because, after five years, when under a great deal of stress from work, her husband became completely and utterly convinced that she was cheating on him to nymphomaniac degrees.

Eventually, after it became suitably problematic in their life, and she spent many long hours googling what might be wrong with him, she read about the diagnosis which was later confirmed by a therapist. But that didn't get them very far as a couple, it turns out.

The trouble is that Delusional Disorder is very hard to treat. As the story said, antipsychotic medications are helpful with schizophrenia because they help prevent hallucinations, but the lies that a person with Delusional Disorder are convinced is true are from a very different place. There hasn't been much success in the therapeutic practice of convincing them that their delusions are wrong, either.

Instead, the story explained, what's considered to be the best practice is to get the patient to admit that, even though he or she fully believes in his delusion, it's not in his or her best interest to act on that. Okay, sure: Chuck Norris is really your father. But since he has a restraining order against you, for whatever reason that may be, it's probably best if you stop trying to reconnect with him.

And yes, the reporter telling the story acknowledged how utterly unsatisfying that is, for all involved.

There was something about this idea that resonated with me, but I didn't get what until now. The thing is...I think, to an extent, I have Delusional Disorder. It honestly struck me, while I was listening, that I probably did, in some way, in some facet of my life, but I couldn't figure out what that facet may be. But now it seems pretty clear.

The post last night was about not having enough conviction to make my relationship with Dan work, and part of that is based on the leftover conviction that I have that Zack and I are meant to be. That idea was what I based my whole adult life on until recently, after all. The goal of keeping my marriage together was the driving force of my life, and it was inspired, on some, totally irrational level, by my faith in it's pure righteousness. It was tautological: He and I were going to make it because he and I were going to make it.

I built a whole life off of the questionable truth-- I can't even bring myself to call it a "delusion"-- that he and I were meant to be. It was my guiding tenant. And then, one day, it was gone.

Okay, there's a lot to be written, and I'm sure a lot I have written, about what that does to a person. But, for the sake of getting to bed before midnight, let's just fast forward to now.

Most of me may be a fairly reasonable person. But part of me is still completely stuck on what turns out to have been more delusional that I'd like to admit: that Zack and I were fated, somehow.  I know that, on some level, I still believe that. A very large part of me that I do not keep secret believes the Zack and I will get back together some day down the line, whether it be five or fifty years from now-- and fifty seems a lot more likely, to be frank.

But then, there is the rest of me, that has to continue living, as a normal, rational person. A normal, rational person who currently has a totally different life, with completely separate person, who is also the father of my child.

And I, most of the time, act as my own therapist in all of this. Except, I don't even try the things that have failed for sufferers of Delusional Disorder, not any more. I really have no interest, at this point, in the vain exercise of convincing my star-crossed lover self that I am wrong.

Instead, I ground myself in this life by merely convincing myself, one day at a time, that it's not in my best interest to act on my delusion.

And yes. I can tell you right now, it's an utterly unsatisfying way to live, for all involved.


Hopefully I'll get a chance to expand on all of these themes at a later date. For now, it's 11:59....oh shit. Midnight.


It's Day Seven. On with it.

The Ghost of Convictions Past

One of the last posts I wrote before I stopped writing for a while was on the theme of conviction. It was all about the fact that my marriage had fallen apart because I lacked the conviction necessary to make it work. For years, I had it: a steadfast belief that Zack and I were somehow right together, and that I would do anything in my power to make it work. When I lost that, once and for all, it was all just a matter of time.

I don't have it in my right now to go back and actually read the post. Perhaps I will when I'm done writing this, but if I were to do it now, I think it might destroy me. Particularly, something I wrote towards the end. A confession, of sorts, to readers who were not aware of Dan yet, and the fact that he was an integral part of my loss of conviction with regards to my marriage. I said something to the effect that I no longer had a deep belief that I could make a happy life with Zack, but that I did believe-- deeply-- that I could make one with Dan.

I hope that I'm wrong. I hope that I wasn't naive enough to put that in writing, for the world to see. For me to look back on, and just...laugh through the tears.


Dan and I knew what we were doing was stupid. Both of us knew-- and discussed, time and time again, that it wasn't the way to do things. That you shouldn't end a marriage to be with someone new, that you shouldn't start a new relationship on the heels of a significant breakup. They should be separate events. We knew that. We said it.

We said it over and over again so many time that we decided that it should be the title of our little musical duo's first EP: Separate Events. That part may still come true.

But what happened, quite obviously, is that we forged ahead, anyway. We spoke to how dumb it was to let one be the cause of the other, and we did it all the same. And now we're in a relationship that is deeply polluted by feelings of anger and regret over the way my marriage ended.

Except that we're just barely in a relationship at all, in so many ways. We live together, have combined finances, and raise our son together. But we don't sleep together -- in the literal sense or the more suggestive one-- we barely touch or kiss, and most of our more substantive conversations are about how unlikely it is we'll make it, and how unhappy each of us our.

It's not that we've given up; we haven't. But, for me, at least, 75% of the reason we're still together is that there really just isn't anything better out there for me. I hate Maine, and only live here because of Dan, and because I've always wanted to buy my parents house. (I get that hating Maine should take away from that. Truly, I do. More on that irony in some future post. Or I believe, in some past one.) None of my friends live in Maine, and the most important person in the world to me, aside from Ezra, I guess, lives 3,000 miles away, right where I left him.

If Dan and I broke up, I would be bound to Maine through the joint custody arrangement. I would have lost him, the only person who lives here that I have a significant bond to (with the exception of Jeff, who lives an hour away and, I believe, intends to leave this state eventually). So I'd be even more alone here than I already am. My parents are planning on selling their house in a two years or so, but without Dan's income to combine with mine, I would not be able to afford it. So I would lose-- heartbreakingly-- the only thing I ever actually wanted here, and the relationship that brought me back here. The person I consider my family would still be 3,000 miles away, but I would have to stay here, with no one aside from my son to make it somehow worth it. And I'd be a part-time, single parent. Which...I like being a parent, to an extent. But I don't like being alone with my son for any length of time. It's very stressful.

Dan and I love each other. We don't work, but we love each other. And I guess, despite the fighting and the completely separate ideals and the totally disparate world views...it's better than the picture I just painted. Alone, trapped, burdened and homeless.


I don't seem to have a way to wrap this up. To put a neat little bow on it. (I'm talking about the post here, not my life, though I could understand the confusion.) It's just been a shitty night, as they often are.

I don't feel like this post accomplished anything. None of this is anything I haven't said before. It hurts to say the same thing over and over again and never get to a point of realization-- which I guess was my mistake, the begin with. Naming an EP after a concept isn't really the same as letting the truth of it set in.

This blog is supposed to be about me working through things, but this post just feels like banging my head against a wall. It's all things I've said and felt and thought before, and it doesn't get me anywhere. I guess because saying that you're trapped out loud doesn't magically release you: I feel trapped because I am. I feel trapped because there's nothing I can do.

Oh, conviction! That's why I feel bad about this post...because I never wandered my way back to the point in the beginning.

I wrote in that post, however long ago, that the thing a relationship really needs to stay afloat is the absolute conviction of it's participants. Resolute commitment to each other. This, I do not have.

If I could just make up my mind, once and for all, to be where I am, to be with who I'm with, to make a family out of this lose grouping of people...well, it would help. It's not clear to me how much. Dan and I are so different, I don't know how well we'd ever be able to get past that. If someone could just show me a pie chart of how many of our troubles are really about us, and how many are about circumstances, and how many are about the fact that I'm not totally in this...I mean, if the numbers lined up right, I could be convinced to change my mind, I guess.

But it's hard, the second time around. It's hard to not look at his faults and think, "Am I going to be able to stand that in ten years? Or is it just going to be something that I'm bitter with my friends about over drinks?" Still, even that I could overlook.

In reality, it's just hard to love anyone that way again. I don't know how much of it is fear of the vulnerability of real belief, having had it once and lost it, and how much of it is just the fact that, really, so much of me is still in love with Zack.

It seems that conviction, once lost, still has a unique staying power: maybe my trouble isn't so much the lack of conviction for my life now, but ridding myself of the bitter traces of the old stuff. The ghost of convictions past will haunt you, wherever you go.


I'm tired, and don't know how much of this made sense, but the Dickens reference feels pithy enough to end on. So there we have it. Day 6.

On with it.


(Edit: If you didn't follow the link to the original conviction post, I would highly suggest doing it. I just went back and read it now. Not only is it, in my opinion, one of the most poignant pieces of writing I've done to date, but in the end, it is oddly prophetic. It ties in to this a lot more cleanly than I expected it to. That is all.)

Sex and Priorities.

I am....not really drunk anymore. Not quite yet hungover. That weird time in between. That terrible anticipation of what is to come and regret for what has passed.

Since the birth of my son, which was more than somewhat traumatic for me, to say the least, I can't really have any amount of physical intimacy without first getting pretty drunk. As such, I have almost no physical intimacy.

I don't, strictly speaking, just mean sex. It's gotten so, most of the time, I don't want to be touched, or, often, even looked at. I'm sure a lot of this has as much to do with my complete lack of sex drive-- brought on at least equally by the birth control implant I had inserted in my arm as it is by the trauma. I find that very ironic. Bitterly ironic, but ironic just the same.

The moral of the story is: I rarely want sex, and when I do want it, I pretty much have to be drunk to have it. And, as often as not, when I manage to arrange things in my life to the point where I am able to get drunk, circumstances still don't lead to sex.

Dan, my current fiancé-of-sorts-person, is much better with this than Zack, my former husband-person. (Today, in the, from the time I woke up to the time I'm going to bed since, would have been our 11th wedding anniversary. October 18th. I realized that very late in the day, having spent the whole day thinking it was the 17th.) Dan is fairly self-sufficient when it comes to satisfaction, and, even when he's feeling "needy", he doesn't equate my lack of interest with rejection or any kind of personal deficiency.

Not so, I think, for Zack. For Zack, rejection was very emotional. That really fucked up our sex life. But then, it clearly wouldn't have been super healthy, anyway. As I, clearly, do not have super healthy feelings about sex.

The thing is, Dan IS better at dealing with my lack of sexual interest than Zack, but I'm not really any better than I was at dealing with the guilt and shame of not providing enough. It's this very real, ever-present artifact of my marriage to Zack, and to a lesser extent perhaps, my Catholic upbringing.

When my sex drive is healthy and working as usual-- typically in the presence of a third party-- I tend to see it as this reprieve from an otherwise bland life. I recall, in one instance, comparing it to that thing in Pleasantville where all that was black and white suddenly became color. (Less creative, perhaps, when I stop to think that Pleasantville was making that exact same comparison. But whatever. An apt metaphor is an apt metaphor, wherever it comes from.)

When my sex drive is as it has been lately, I spend a lot of time thinking that I would be much happier without sex. Not in a sexless relationship: in a world where sex didn't exist. A world without viagra, and billboards in Time Square where 80 foot strangers seduce you with their cold, dead eyes in attempt to get you to buy chewing gum. A world without condoms, birth control, or uncomfortable clothes meant only to entice other people to have sex. A world where, when my best friend is having a good day, I can be happy for her without having to endure a conversation about how she and her girlfriend has sex BEFORE dinner instead of after, and how they're might be lingerie later.

That stuff, needless to say, is totally abhorrent to me right now.

I still find people attractive, in a...visual way. It's weird how that part doesn't go anywhere. I can see a guy-- I did tonight, in fact-- and be very drawn to looking at him, wanting to talk to him, wanting him to want me. But the part where I actually want sex never seems to kick in.

This is all to say...I'm drunk. But not really, anymore. I got drunk in order to have sex, and that didn't happen. If anyone read this, I might care that they knew. Or Dan might. He discovered, tonight, that I'd been updating this. I didn't try particularly hard to hide it. But I suppose that'll effect how I right from now on.

It's a lot of calories to accomplish fucking NOTHING, and I don't look forward to tomorrow morning, either. I also having mediated yet today, and, although I managed to persevere last night, tonight is really not looking good.

I mean it. Don't root for me. My head is spinning like crazy and all I want to do is close my eyes. I read somewhere how achieving a state of flow-- where you're so invested in what you're doing that time flies by without you really noticing that well-- is just as good as mediating or some shit like that.

And, would you look at that! I've written more than a page again! So somewhere in there, I must have achieved "flow" and lost track, right? It's gonna have to be close enough, for tonight.

This. This is what happens when you shift your priorities of one night. I may have the lowest sex drive of anyone on earth who isn't married to Bill O'Reilly, but I decide one night that I want to get laid an all my fucking goals go by the wayside in vain pursuit of that.

Now, apply that same effect to the rest of the normal, fully-functioning people on the planet, and it becomes clear why our whole society is in such a state of utter shit.

Day, whatever the hell it is. What, 5? I think 5. On with it.