Dealing with Boredom

Today has had its ups and downs. My boyfriend works tonight, so I'll have the whole evening by myself. Normally, this would involve looking at getting high, looking at porn, and attempting to hook up. All those options are currently blocked on my computer. I still want to jack off very badly, and I have a few times today, but it's getting progressively more boring and frustrating as I keep adding the sites I'm loading to the block list when I'm done. One of the biggest remaining sites is Craigslist, but I can't block that because I'm using it to search for work.

While I'm just a bit anxious and angry at my boredom so far, it's sinking in how many hours I must have wasted over the past 10 or 11 years, especially as masturbation became an ingrained habit. But this is something I'm trying not to think about because it isn't productive. The only important thing is that I go forward and try to use the time in my boredom for something—anything—that's not masturbation. Like the blog, or one of the many items on my huge to-do list.

That's all for today I think. I'm a bit down because I keep applying for jobs that I know I'm qualified for and hearing absolutely nothing back. It's incredibly discouraging, but I'm going to keep applying until something happens. But in addition to applying for work we're also going to be shopping around the musical I've worked on to see if any small venues are interested in having us. That will at least provide some kind of break from the current monotony. All the same, nothing has turned up yet.

It's hard to keep moving forward through this, but I don't think I have any other options.

Best,

j

Finding the routes to success through failure

I'm recognizing finally that I'm trying to solve a lot of life problems all at once. This is not going to be an easy process, nor should it be. I'm trying to break attitudes and habits that I've held for about 10 years. This includes procrastination, fear of my creative process, excessive masturbation, promiscuity, general laziness, and poor diet. I have had some successes in these areas for the past few weeks, most notably in the exercise area. For the past two weeks (and into a third) I have managed to exercise at least 30-45 minutes a day for six days a week. I haven't really lost any weight yet, but I do feel a bit better and more in touch with my body.

My largest target is capping my masturbation and promiscuity. Yesterday, I blocked all the websites I frequently jack off to or attempt to hook up on. eHow has a great tutorial on how to block access to websites on a mac that I used as a refresher for how to quickly do it. The effects are instant and now every time I try to access those sites, I'm greeted with my business website's homepage. Quick, free, and effective. If I want to access those sites I have to manually edit a text file to gain access.

This has worked fairly well today so far, except for a few sites I forgot. I also never did offload the porn on my hard drive so I'm going to collect it all and do so after I post this. So I did end up masturbating a bit today, but I did not look at the hookup sites so I'm calling it a victory for the day and shoring up the defenses a bit. Any site I accessed in pursuit of getting off I added to the block list. I think this is actually going to work in the long term.

I applied to two gigs today. I'm not sure if they'll pay or not, but they're in line with my career goals, so I figured at the very least they'll give me something to occupy myself with so I'm not here thinking about how little money or prospects I have but I actually spend my time doing something.

And with that, I am calling today's entry complete as I go forward productively.

All the best,

j

Another day not quite wasted

My boyfriend is at work all day which has me a bit depressed at home. It's now after 5, so the post office is closed, so I ended up not doing the one thing he asked me to take care of today. I can get the item ready to ship but I can't get it in the mail.

I'm pretty depressed today, and quite frankly afraid to look at my finances. There are so many things in my life that need immediate attention and I'm wasting my time treading water and getting anxious about the problems instead of dealing with them. So I'm going to try something right now: I'm going to enter a bunch of my receipts in and see if I can get them all posted by 7 p.m. when it's time for me to get ready to work out. That way at least I'll have accomplished a portion of the work that I need to do before I take the major activity break for the evening (since I've been a slug today).

Before I go and begin to comb through my receipts and finances, I have taken a protective step against future masturbation and hookups. I've blocked the websites I usually go to in search of hookups in the /etc/hosts file. What this means (for non-nerds) is that any time I try to go to adam4adam or Manhunt, I get redirected to a locally hosted copy of my portfolio website. Every time I go to jack off I'll see my bio, picture, and resume. That's a bit of a deterrent and should help me refocus. Also, I'm archiving all my porn onto an external hard drive so it should be harder to get to and will provide less of a distraction.

I'm sorry I'm not providing some in depth look at what I'm going through today; I jacked off a lot and hooked up this morning in my depression and I'm just embarrassed, drained, and angry with myself. Only by holding these patterns and tendencies to the light and actively working to curtail them will I succeed.

So onward to financial tracking.

Best,

j

Underwater

I'm beginning to think that the creation of this blog was the act of some deeper lever in my psche. It's as if something deep inside said to me that I was going through a very tough time and needed to publicly document the process because that a blog worked for you the last time you went through a real crisis of self.

These past couple of weeks I've felt like I was trying to climb to some height so that when I looked down everything would make sense. Instead, it seems I've been tunneling. I hit rock bottom, and then it gave way and I fell into an underground pool. All I have left to do is look up and see the light above. So what I've been doing is looking and documenting the light above.

But the trouble is that I have to look away from the light so my eyes can adjust to my surroundings. I have to figure out how to get out of the pool and back up to the hole so I can climb out. I need to let my eyes adjust to the darkness so I can see what is around me right now to help me.

What now?

The ignored messes in my life have been competing for attention. Yesterday, my financial problems surfaced and informed me that if I do not start planning for the future right now, I will have to make some very hard decisions in the future. Whatever I can do to cushion that blow is going to help me out. I have enough money (and credit remaining, which I'm loath to dig into at the moment) to continue to live the way I am for approximately another three months. If, after one month I cannot honestly say my financial prospects are looking up (i.e. I have steady income), I am going to put my motorcycle up for sale.

That will signal the end of a lot of things for me. The end of my 20s (about 3 years too early) and the end of a my youth. That bike has the wild part of my soul in it, a part of myself I'm trying to understand and get a hold of before it destroys me.

Wild Thang

My wild side... it's the part of me that wants to go out and have lots of sex. It wants to flaunt what it has. It wants to do drugs to get high and experience the chace. It's self-destructive in pretty stereotypical ways. Luckily, I'm a wimp in a lot of ways, so it hasn't been able to convince me to do that much.

Honestly though, this is a side of me that has rarely steered me wrong. I legitimately enjoy the thrills, am still functional, and have never been in jail. I want to take big risks, and I do sometimes. Unprotected sex (very rarely, less than once a year now), experimenting with controlled substances (fun, but could land me in jail some day), the motorcycle (accident == death | severe injury), and plenty of other things I'm probably not aware of.

Where did all the money go?

You see, I'm in severe money problems right now. Well, not right now, right now I'm just in bad straights. Severe problems happens in September, when, if nothing turns around, I'll have sold the bike and will need to move on a budget to a cheaper apartment in L.A. god knows where.

I'm not entirely sure where these problems came from. Grad school attributes to them in a major way. But I have general credit card problems too; a significant amount of debt actually. For most months for the past three years I have spent more money than I have made. I'm not sure where it goes.

I'm looking around to see what I spent the money on. I have a MacBook Pro that I'm using right now, and there's an iPhone to my left. I have a Wii and about 12 games, most of which were purchased from half.com or Gamestop used. I have a motorcycle. I have a lot of software. I own a car, but it was 75% purchased with the equity of my old car. I have an MFA from an art institute. I have some expensive clothes that don't fit anymore.

I have a lot of software. I buy all the software I use for work because I want to make sure the companies I like don't go under. I also want to make sure I can ask for support when things go off the rails (since there will be a record of me as a paying customer for now multiple generations of each software title, for what it's worth). I have some expensive plug-ins for my music work. I think a large portion of the money over the past three years was software expenses to make sure I was well set up and had good tools. I recognized early on that the better the tools were, the better my result was. Better tools seem to help someone with good skills more than someone with bad skills. So in those respects, I think my software purchases are a bit excessive, but mostly valid. Since graduating I have significantly scaled back my software purchases to upgrades only, and now I can't even afford that.

Then there are the intangibles: I went without making my own meals too often. I've probably smoked around $1-2k. Then there are the gym memberships I didn't use. Oh, and the expensive car and motorcycle insurance. The brief period I shopped at Whole Foods. Going out to movies every once in a while. Gasoline expenses for travel. Oh, the road trip. Lots of alcohol (but we're drinking at home! think of how much we're actually saving -- HA). Lots of months I paid for all household expenses for my boyfriend, including rent.

But it's not like I wasn't working at all. I was. But every month almost without fair I spent more than I made. So by definition I was living in excess of my means. I'm looking back and it all seems so stupid and such a waste. I'm going to run through my quicken data and see if I can get a more exact breakdown of where my money has gone.

I've got to stop living outside my means, and I know that's going to mean a contraction of what I'm spending as well as an increase in what I'm bringing in and less leisure while I'm at it. I'm going to have to work harder on all levels. Or else I'm going to have to make more sacrifices than I'm prepared to; and we may end up leaving L.A. even sooner than we're expecting.

Whatever happens in the future, it's going to be a long climb upward, and I'm going to have to keep focused on the work and not look up to see how far I have to climb.

Best,

j

Regrouping

So... I didn't post for the past day or two because I fell off the wagon. Yes, that's right, I masturbated a number of times over the past two days, had sex with my bf, and had sex with another guy today too. I did try viagra for the first time today; it sort of works for me. I still have to be very into something to get hard, but when I am, I get harder than I normally do.

On Friday, I decided that since I fell off the wagon, I should start the enlargement program I was interested in. This just lead to more jacking off, so obviously, I'm not ready for that and I need to go back to the original plan and take an honest week off. I'm going to count tomorrow as the first day, but I'm going to not masturbate for the rest of the day.

My boyfriend wanted to have sex yesterday, and initially I was upset because I was very gung ho about not masturbating or orgasming. I kind of didn't want to have sex. I realized that this is the wrong idea for me, and mutual fun with my bf is now a completely thumbs up area going forward. Having sex with anyone else, for the time being, is no longer an option. So for the next week, I am going to stay off the hook up sites completely.

The hookup sites were the tipping point for me that made me start masturbating again, so I now know for sure I need to completely avoid these sites with no excuses if I want to achieve my goal. Ironically, the LPSG is fine to visit provided I go with the intent to view the articles. A lot of the outcomes of my behavior vary by intent, and I am apparently still very bad at reading my intent as I go into actions.

A new technique

I am going to employ another tool in my quest to stop masturbating: meditation. In 2006 when I still lived in Cleveland, I took five weekends of meditation classes to learn the basic practice and technique of meditation in the Shambhala Buddhist tradition, which is an offshoot of Tibetan Buddhism. I used to meditate daily, and part of me really misses and aches for it, but the stronger part of me (the part that likes to masturbate a lot) hated it.

It is no irony I'm trying to begin a spiritual journey right now. Initially I wanted to go on a four week meditation retreat that would have started this week, if I remember correctly. My goal for this retreat was to find a way to center myself, let my childish habits drop away, and find the path to move forward on my life.

I think it is for the best that I am not at that retreat. Though going on the retreat would easily bend me into a shape that could control my impulses, I have been through meditation sessions before, and I know the temptation to go against teachings runs very strong in me. I am very much an experiential learner. So instead of going to the retreat, my plan was to start a spiritual journey by myself while at home, using the rest of the time in the day to do the work that needs to be done.

Quitting masturbation is necessary for me to succeed in my own work. I bend to the wills of others just fine, so whenever I'm working for someone else, I am a fantastic employee. But whenever I'm supposed to be working for myself, I really just want to fool around and jack off, or play video games, or watch tv. Lately, I've been bored with the video games and we don't have cable, so the go to activity is the Internet and porn.

So, starting tomorrow, the new plan is:

• No more masturbation or self-stimulation
• Meditation for a minimum of 10 minutes per day, seven days a week
• Exercise at the gym once a day minimum for six days a week

Technically, I skipped two exercise days this week, but five days isn't bad when you're starting from next to nothing. I'm pretty happy with my progress in the gym the past two weeks, so next week, I'd like to kick it up a notch and make sure I keep progressing.

In any case, the sun is starting to set, so I'm going to go running.

All the best,

j

Week 1: A good third day!

Today was a really busy day so I was too distracted to worry about masturbating. But I'm noticing that I'm more energized in my work. When masturbation isn't on the table as an option, and I'm not really in the mood to do anything, I looked at my pile of busy work and just got going. I ended up finishing the final track layout of a CD I've been working on. So one major goal down!

I decided to spend part of the day by returning to some of the sites I frequent the most while horny. The main one is a forum of sorts, not necessarily a porn site. This forum is the Large Penis Support Group, or LPSG for short. I caught wind of the forum while in college or even possibly before. This is a site where, ostensibly, men go to get moral support for the problems that occur when you have a large penis.

It sounds like a joke, and there are a lot of wankers that post on the site from time to time. And a lot of it is porn—hell I use the site to get off all the time. But a lot of the people on there arrive at the site with some serious issues because of their large penises. There are men on there that legitimately have issues having sex because they are too big for most people. Hell, I'm fairly girthy and as a teen I had a lot of trouble finding a guy who was willing to bottom for me. It caused quite a complex because I really disliked the feeling of bottoming at that point. But I learned to take it, and then I learned to enjoy it.

And now for something completely different:

I need to apologize if I'm a bit scattered tonight. I live in L.A., and I am a licensed medical marijuana patient. I say that, and to sound cool I make it sound like I gamed the system by lying to the doctor, telling this next story tongue in cheek. But the truth is I leveled with her and told her about my anxiety, and told her I was an artist and didn't want to take any of the prescription medicines because I've heard so much about how they deaden creativity. I admitted I had used pot before and that it works for me, and I don't get addicted. She immediately signed me up for a year.

It is honestly ridiculous how much it helps me to smoke. I have social anxiety and body image problems, and the 420 lets me deal with them objectively. Stoned I can focus on anything I want to and forget everything that holds me back. I actually get things done and make permanent changes in my life. I always work out stoned. It makes exercising amazingly enjoyable for me. The time flies and I am very focused on form and pace the entire time. It's been a very uplifting experience actually; I can say this is the first time in my life I am fully enjoying my time at the gym!

I fully bought into the D.A.R.E. program when I was a kid. It scared the crap out of me in middle school. At my high school they would do occasional drug dog sweeps of the lockers. I know people were smoking pot, but they weren't in my group of friends (but honestly, I was mostly a loner with a few clingy friends until my senior year). If the drugs were actually around and being used I never saw them once.

In college I fell in with a upperclassmen pot smokers in the Spring semester of my first year. They did shrooms once, I remember. I wasn't allowed around that day because they didn't want me stressing them out. The eldest in the group prided himself on introducing people to pot. He wouldn't let me have any because he bet I'd skip the high and go right to the paranoia. Back then, he was probably right. But if they had only coached me through smoking it with them, it would have opened so many doors for me so young.

But alas, that was not meant to be. I came out to California for grad school in a somewhat prominent theater sound program. Drugs are done everywhere on that campus. It was eye opening. And most of the students were completely functional. But in my program, only the kids who partied smoked, and I just wasn't ready to be a partier, so I never did anything.

But I did get some that first year. That summer, during the summer, I smoked with some of the assistant program heads and one of the guys I'd had a crush on for quite a while. I also drank, so I couldn't tell whether I got high or not, I just got wasted. (I later learned alcohol and pot are super intoxicating to me to the point where I begin to hallucinate if I do too much of both). Naturally I didn't get laid that night.

Flashing forward: it was really my boyfriend who got me smoking. He's a big pot head—had been for years—and he's mostly functional with it (it's starting to fuck with his short term memory pretty badly, though). My boyfriend is my safe person. Whenever I'm anywhere trying something new, if I see him I know I'll be okay because he'll take care of any problem.

He got me started on a fairly regular basis (whenever I was out with him, really) and then once we moved in together, I started to smoke much more often. That's when I started to notice how much it smooths out my personality and helps me unlock doors within myself and let go of stress I've carried and wounds I've favored for years and years. I honestly think it's helping me be a better person. I'm not sure I would have conceived of this blog if not high, for what it's worth. (And this is the first entry I've written stoned.)

So that's my story for the evening, I'm now out to the world as a medical potsmoker. I'm sitting here thinking that I hope this won't be detrimental to my career, but what do I care? I work in theater, and I'm currently massively underemployed, and I have no intent to need to fit in the square corporate world again. So I'm out as a potsmoker. I'm going to be honest with the world now about everything.

It makes it so much easier to do that.

All the best,

j

Week 1, Day 2: One down, six to go

I can successfully count one day of success! I also got my STD results today, and am completely clean. A guy I hooked up with a few weeks ago texted me a few days after we got together saying he had the clap. The text came while I was on the highway with my boyfriend on the first or second day of our road trip (the first real vacation he and I have taken together). So before we even had the chance to have much fun on our trip I had to tell him that I most likely had it too. The text came almost immediately after I gave him road head, and I was kind of pissed with myself he couldn't reciprocate. Not that it would matter because it usually takes me forever to orgasm from oral alone. But it turns out it didn't matter at all anyhow. I guess I'll chalk it up to a good learning experience.

My boyfriend and I are officially in an open relationship, though we've done a pretty bad job at setting ground rules. The only rule in place before we left on our road trip was that I couldn't hook up in the apartment without him. Now we've decided that he needs to be at least aware of what I'm doing without him. I'm having trouble adhering to that, but I've only hooked up with one guy since we came back from our trip. I'm hoping a bit of a hiatus from masturbation and the online hookup sites will recenter my priorities.

The Online Playground

The digital age has made hooking up no easier or harder than it used to be. I'd like to imagine that if I was hotter, I would have no trouble finding men I wanted to sleep with, but I have a feeling that my online success rate will only marginally improve as I transform my body with diet and exercise. I'm pretty sure that as I feel I'm hotter, I'm going to be pickier.

Since I live in L.A., I can easily find literally hundreds of men who are online right now looking for something. That something varies from guys who forgot to log off because they have lost interest to guys who are desperate to hook up right now given certain conditions are met. The conditions are, as always, the problem. In general most men online are at home, work or at the very least a friend's apartment (though I've chatted some poor souls at public access terminals in libraries).[1] Most guys online in L.A. cannot afford to live by themselves, so they're usually looking to hook up elsewhere, so that's a huge hurdle. Additionally, most guys online are looking for men who are at least as hot as they are, and since most men have inflated opinions about their appearance and prospects, most men are looking for guys who are hotter than themselves. This creates gridlock. (You thought you could escape it online?)

All men online hate gameplayers. Most men online are gameplayers. Anyone who goes to the hookup sites to find a more traditional date is lying to themselves, and I feel I can say that as someone who is addicted to the sites. Yes, I have a boyfriend. And I love him dearly. But one of the reasons I spend so much time on the sites is that I still believe there's a better match out there somewhere. That may or may not be true, and honestly that better match has quite a lot to live up to. But I realized recently that my better match is not going to be spending very much time on a hookup site, nor would he be interested in someone who spends as much time as I do on those sites.

I don't think I'm quite ready to talk in depth about the qualities of this perfect match, but I think what I'm searching for is actually a better version of myself. The version that doesn't masturbate compulsively, or sit lazily on the couch all day some days, or troll the hookup sites looking for whatever comes around. So I've decided that the only thing left for me to do is become that better person. It's going to change my life to live with more direction and drive. It's also likely to change my relationship with my boyfriend and with all others around me, because I find the more comfortable I am with myself, the more open I am with others.

What does hooking up online have to do with quitting masturbation?

It has everything to do with quitting masturbation. My favorite past time since I was 17 (that's 10 years for anyone keeping score) has been looking at profiles of local men and jacking off. I realized a few years ago that I was more interested in jacking off by myself looking at guys' pictures and chatting with them than I was in meeting them or having sex in person. This is the definition of dysfunctional.

This isn't to say I haven't met some cool guys on these sites. I just don't tend to keep in touch with them once we do the deed and they don't hold up to my hopes. This isn't fair to these men at all, since they are all catches in their own right, just not what I'm really looking for, even for occasional hookups. The ones I keep in touch with now are mostly the ones I've talked to, but haven't met yet.

The sites I like the most are those with comprehensive search features--epsecially those that let you specify what dick size you want I'm a bit of a size queen, so this is the killer feature for me. Not only can I get to look at pictures of hung guys and their dicks, but I can easily send that horse-hung man of my dreams a message? Awesome! Maybe we'll hook up and I'll get plowed by a huge dick! But just in case it doesn't work out, I'm gonna make sure I use that time online wisely by jacking off. I won't miss out on the opportunity for yet another orgasm!

Or at least that's the way it was. 10 years on, I've only met a handful of guys with huge dicks (and almost all of those were in Cleveland, go figure). Most have complexes. Many don't really understand what they have between their legs or how to use it to please a greedy bottom to the full potential. But then there are those few that have gigantic dicks and are open minded enough to have some really mind-blowing sex that doesn't follow their usual script.

All the hookups I've ever had were online; I have never picked a guy up from a bar (I don't go to bars very much, never did except for a brief period when I was 19 and couldn't drink so there wasn't much point). Though I've definitely had some hot times, most times I would have been happier finishing myself off at home. In general, hung or not, the sex is lackluster, and I've definitely shared the blame for that a lot of the time.

I do try to learn things from my hookups (sometimes I'm a slow learner so I have to go back for more ;). There are some memorable men: the huge hung black man from Cleveland that was able to make me cum without touching myself, the truly horse hung white guy who couldn't get hard but spent an hour trying to deny that fact (he said that if he hadn't masturbated earlier that day or if I'd gotten there sooner, he would have been ready to go. As if that matters in the moment!), or a recent hook up with an Asian man in New York who was as head over heels attracted to me as I was to him (the chemistry of that one session was the strongest I believe I have ever felt).

The good experiences I've had hooking up online have just been flukes. All the men in my life I formed a deeper connection with I met while going about my life without looking for them. I think that's because I was forced to encounter those men as people first and I never seem to be able to objectify someone once I meet them, which kills the mood for sex, more often than not.

I think my need to objectify men to interact with them sexually is one the problems that has grown because I masturbate to their pictures online. I think how hot it would be to get with the man in the picture I'm looking at, without thinking about who they might be as a person. The sex is generally mediocre. It only works when there's a connection, and I have a hunch that the real chemistry can only happen when you realize you're attracted to the person in the sexy body.

I've been on these hookup sites briefly over the past day, but I haven't jacked off at all (and only went on to sent a message to a friend I'm trying to connect with for business in addition to sex). But this week, in addition to not jacking off, I'm also staying away from the hookup and porn sites, since what's the point if I can't put the material to good use? So far so good, and Day 2 is well underway. One foot in front of the other will lead me to my goal. Wish me luck as I walk into tomorrow!

All the best,

j

Footnotes

1. New technologies are starting to revolutionize the way men hook up. A new iPhone application I discovered on the road trip is called Grindr. You fill out a short profile with a picture (G rated only) and some basic info about yourself. The application takes your current GPS position and loads the pictures and profiles of everyone around you who has logged into the app within the last few days. You can send messages or pictures to anyone who appears. If you're lucky someone will be online and checking obsessively, and you'll have a hook up (providing the interest is mutual). I've never gotten this to work out, though I haven't really tried it in L.A. The only successes I've heard about are when two guys find each other on Grindr in the same club. The benefit of this is that the guy you're finding likely has some means (after all, he's holding an iPhone) and is a bit of a geek (which I consider a plus, honestly). [Back to blog]

Week 1 Focus: No Masturbation

I'm probably going to reference Joel Gabriel's blog quite a bit since I'm using his information and goals as an inspiration for the changes I'm attempting in my own life. So to follow his lead, I'm going to write a bit about my own masturbation habits today.

In the beginning

I grew up in a fairly conservative household in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. My parents are both religious (my father is Catholic and my mother is Moravian, a pre-Lutheran Protestant offshoot). I was raised in the Moravian tradition. Moravians are really nice people. The religion is about tolerance, conversion through outreach, and brotherly love. They're accepting of homosexuals implicitly (not explicitly). I'll write more about them in a future post when I talk about my religious views. My point here is that I was not brought up with the idea that masturbation is a sin; it just wasn't talked about. At all.

I first found out about masturbation because of Dr. Joycelyn Elders. Dr. Elders was Bill Clinton's first Surgeon General. She didn't become notable to me until this event transpired (quoted from her wikipedia article):

In 1994, she was invited to speak at a United Nations conference on AIDS. She was asked whether it would be appropriate to promote masturbation as a means of preventing young people from engaging in riskier forms of sexual activity, and she replied, "I think that it is part of human sexuality, and perhaps it should be taught." This remark caused great controversy and resulted in Elders losing the support of the White House. White House chief of staff Leon Panetta remarked, "There have been too many areas where the President does not agree with her views. This is just one too many." Elders was fired by President Clinton as a result of the controversy in December of 1994.

In December 1994 I was 12 and halfway through 8th grade at a private Moravian-centric school. I'd received (in retrospect) horrifyingly bad sex ed from the school in 6th grade, and my parents attempted to shore that up with two books (I think I'd only received one at this point). My understanding of sex at this age was twofold:

1. I shouldn't become a father until I am spiritually, emotionally, and physically ready.
2. As long as a girl is on birth control, I can't become a father.

That's it. I didn't understand condoms, STDs, or any of that, and I had never seen a vagina outside of poorly conceived textbook and blackboard renditions. I didn't get the mechanics or dangers of sex beyond the simplistic points above. I didn't know what masturbation was, I'd never had a wet dream or night emission though I was well on in puberty, and was pretty innocent about the entire process.

When Dr. Elders was forced to resign, all I understood was what I had heard on right-wing talk shows (I'm looking at you Rush): she wanted to teach kids to masturbate, and apparently that was scandalous. I didn't know what the word meant, but I really wanted to know so I looked it up in the school dictionary:

masturbation - noun

1. the stimulation or manipulation of one's own genitals, esp. to orgasm; sexual self-gratification.
2. the stimulation, by manual or other means exclusive of coitus, of another's genitals, esp. to orgasm.

"masturbation." Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 21 Jul. 2009. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/masturbation>.

This is a pretty good what, but for a fairly sheltered and unimaginative 12-year old the how was severely lacking. So I did the next best thing: I checked the Internet.

My sister had just gone to college, so to easily (and inexpensively) communicate, my parents bought AOL. Back then AOL was mostly gated off from the Internet. I don't remember a web browser yet, and there were no parental controls, at least none that my parents knew how to use. Eventually, I found my way to Usenet, which I can only really describe to those of you that don't know it as anonymous mailing lists sorted by topic. My topic? alt.sex.masturbation.

I intentionally linked to December 1994 up there. The modern Usenet groups are a filled with spam, but spam barely existed back in 1994, so it was just real people (usually freaks and geeks) talking about whatever they felt like, uncensored and unfettered. Needless to say, there was very little helpful information. However, I did manage to find a FAQ that went into way too much detail. You really have to read through it to believe it.

Somehow, after reading a bunch of posts, I still didn't get it and decided that the "best way" to masturbate would be to use a washcloth in the shower that evening. Now, the washcloths my parents bought were pretty rough, meant for scrubbing. I attempted to do the deed that night with the washcloth and ended up rubbing my dick raw before getting anywhere near a climax (though I do believe I got hard). Then I got the bright idea to use soap as a lubricant. That burned since my dick was already raw. I believe I came that night for the first time, and it started a trend that has forever linked masturbation and sexual pleasure with pain and discomfort.

Flash forward

By the time I was done with high school, I would masturbate in our finished basement in front of the computer looking at porn for hours every evening. I can't even count the amount of sleep I lost, tissues I used, or homework I skipped or half-assed. But I still got great grades in most of my classes, so it was no big deal and my parents never called me on it or talked to me about it at all. The basement began to smell strange, and I was embarrassed about all the tissues so I would hide them and not throw them away, which didn't help. So in addition to the pain, add compulsiveness, secrecy, and shame.

My first year of college I had a roommate, which cramped my style a bit, but managed to get a single my second year, so I was in the clear from 19 forward. Even after moving in with my boyfriend a year ago, I've continued my habit.

New thinking, new goals

Only a few things get me to stop masturbating:

1. Excessive work — If I'm completely engrossed in a project that takes up all my time during the day leaving almost no time left to get a good night's sleep, I'll skip masturbating.
2. Injury — I'll talk more specifically about my techniques in another post, but my association between masturbation and pain tend to mean I don't use lube. I chafe pretty easily, and after excessive sessions multiple days in a row, I bleed. I'll usually take a day or two off to let things heal.
3. Travel — As long as my days stay packed while travelling, I will often just forget to masturbate. However, a lot of my travel lately has involved a lack of privacy or excessive work, so I'm not sure if travel alone is what I need.

I've been able to hold off masturbating for about a week or so now and again, but I've always been assisted by those above distractions. Lately I've been tring to stop (not very hard), but I've only be able to skip a day here and there. This week, I'm going to take 7 days off all self-manipulation so I can physiologically and psychologically recuperate and understand more about why I do it. Day 1 is already well under way and I can tell it's going to be a difficult week. I've been tempted to give up multiple times already. The past times I've quit, I've always had something to distract me from doing it—not so this time.

After I accomplish a week of this, I'll pick a new goal, but I intend to not masturbate again for at least a month, possibly longer. I want to take this a week at a time, because I've learned setting large, lofty goals never pans out for me.

Wish me luck, and I'll be sure to tell you more than you could think to ask or want to know tomorrow.

All the best,

j

It begins again

I'm going to attempt to blog one more time. I never put much of an effort into it, but it has stayed hidden in the back of my mind for a few reasons. I had an online journal I used to post to when I was a 19 year old college student back in 2002. I had just submitted myself to the university's counseling services after seriously contemplating suicide, which was catalyzed after a breakup with an emotionally abusive boyfriend on New Year's Day in New York City. It was a life turning point, and I felt very liberated to share so many personal details with the world. It was followed religiously by a few gay students at my undergrad, but never received any greater interest. In this journal I attempted to understand my life and figure out my drives and motivations. I was incredibly lonely during the first part of this period, but then met another boy who I fell deeply in love with. I stopped journaling in public because my blog was not anonymous, and then moved all my writing to a private journal that I have maintained off and on since May 9, 2002.

This private journal of mine catalogs all my major relationships and realizations that came out of my undergrad years. There are some major gaps in it, but the journal now totals 325 pages and almost 210,000 words. I am proud of this journal because it helped me work through a number of life plans and issues, but I am ashamed of it because I do not feel I have grown as much as I could have in the time I wrote it. There are several revisions of my life plans, and at least half a dozen false starts toward self-actualization

Why now?

A few reasons I'm going to give the online blog another fair shake:

1. I recently graduated from an MFA program. This program was a terminal degree in my field, there is no more studying to do. I feel fully prepared to work in my chosen field, but my interest has begun to wane, and there is almost no work to be had because of the tough economic climate. I'm staring down over $100k in debt, and while I am grateful for the life experience I've gained this past year, I am not happy or healthy.
2. However, there are exciting projects on the horizon. I am a composer and a musician (not exactly what I went to grad school for), and have recently completed the first stage of a project that I am proud (and a little scared) to call Good. I am preparing to bet a large portion of my future success on this project, but know deep down that in my current habits I am not ready to commit to it.
3. I stumbled upon a blog by Joel Gabriel that opened my eyes. He's struggled with the same bad habits that I have my entire life in much the same way I have. His posts are an inspiration and lit a fire under me. However, I have not summoned the drive to walk in his footsteps alone; I am hoping some public accountability will help me.
4. Finally, I made a promise to myself that I would change my life. I want to, and there is a small fire inside me to do so. I need somewhere to allow it grow so all the bad habits and insecurities (the weeds, if you will) can be burned away, allowing the healthier, stronger growth a space in which to thrive.

What are my goals?

My goals for this blog are a bit multifaceted.

• I want to stop masturbating.
• I want to sublimate my sexual energy into creative energy.
• I want to undertake penis enlargement and other sexual exercises (similar to Joel's) and track my progress.
• I want to track my fitness and health as I work my way into a healthier lifestyle.
• I want a place to showcase my creative work as I work to develop my voice.
• I want to get my finances in order before my student loans are called in.
• I want to eventually integrate this semi-private and anonymous forum with my public life so I can live as an integrated individual.

In my last public blog I worked very hard to preserve my identity. I'm not going to work as hard at that this time around since I firmly believe that the things I intend to work on here do not demonstrate any weakness or failing in myself or my character. Rather, this blog is my strength. This is the formal demonstration of my will and determination to improve myself.

Last words for the day

I was recently at a workshop to help improve the creative piece I was talking about earlier. In this piece, I've had to move from the more behind the scenes positions I'm used to (theatrical sound technician/designer/composer) to the forefront (composer/performer). This is a very difficult transition for me. I always want to be perfect, I never think that what I'm doing is good enough to present to other people. But I was proved wrong during the workshop; everyone loved the piece I was working on, and everyone loved my music and my performance of my music. It took me completely by surprise. You see, I've always wanted that kind of spotlight but never thought I deserved it.

Leslie Cararra-Rudolph helped me get to this place. She is most famous as the voice of Abby Cadabby on Sesame Street. She told me she has experienced a lot of death and loss in her life, including a brother and a dearly loved comedy partner. She told me she approaches everything she does in life as the last time she will do that thing, so she give everything she does the best shot she can in the moment because it is the last time she will ever do that thing. She recommended I find an item, or get a piercing, or tattoo, find something that will remind me day-to-day that life is short and that I only get one shot at every day. I later found a small rock that presented itself to me in such a way that I knew it had to be my item. Some days I forget what it means, but telling the story over again helps me remember.

In conclusion

I've decided that this blog is the next step of my journey, and I'd love to travel on this crazy life journey with as many people as possible. Please, feel free to leave comments, either publicly or privately. I want to hear about your journey and the successes and failures you've experienced on the way. Together we can reach our goals!

All the best,

j