I haven’t been posting much lately. I had various things interfere, like fatigue, depression, and some of my old hobbies, including dance.
I’ve lost my momentum. I’ve started lots of pieces and my drafts document is overflowing, but I haven’t been able to sit down and work things up into actual posts.
Maybe my approach needs to change. Maybe I’m trying to write about things that I don’t yet know the answers to. I don’t like to post until I’ve reached a conclusion and maybe I don’t have any conclusions right now.
So I’m going to try something different and allow myself to be a little less polished, a little more stream of consciousness.
Another thing that’s been interfering with my writing is that this is a sex blog and my sex life is very quiet. My desire is low. I don’t imagine my depression was very helpful in this regard, and the medication I’m now on (citalopram) seems to have snuffed out what embers there were.
My depression seems to be under control: the seriously down moods are few and far between and I sometimes even get spontaneous good moods. I had been started at one dosage and then had it increased twice. Since the meds seemed to be increasing my fatigue and my mood was stable, my dosage has been reduced twice so I’m back at the low dose where I started. I’m happy to take the medication as long as I need it, but hopefully when I get off it, I’ll see some positive effects on my libido.
Another part of the problem is that I don’t really know what turns me on. I’ve always had a difficult time figuring out what I like and what I want, and only in the last few years did I even figure out that I should be asking myself those questions. I have questions but no good answers. Physically I can get turned on, but I don’t know what input I need to get there. So I don’t blame the medication for the whole problem, and I think it’s much more complicated and difficult to solve than just not taking that pill.
In the meantime, I’m looking forward to my next trip to see Gawan, which is less than four weeks away. I’ll be staying at his house again, no real travelling, and probably a lot of time in bed and/or in a state of undress.
Sex Is My New Hobby 
A very open and honest piece of writing. I have only just started following you but I really enjoy what you your blog. Writing is never easy, whatever the subject, but your blog is inspirational so please keep up the good work. I wish you all the very best.
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Thank you. I’m glad you enjoy my writing.
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Just talk to us . I just love reading your blog . Just write what you feel
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Thanks. That’s the plan 🙂
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Wishing the best for you, Zoë. You will find your groove. Let it come naturally.
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Thanks. I’ve gotten out of the habit of writing, hence the loss of momentum. I’m not going to force it, but I know I need to put some effort in if anything’s going to happen.
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The things that helped me out of a slow blogging patch were making myself write shorter posts (I’m still struggling with that) and commenting on other people’s posts. I found the latter had a symbiotic effect as it lead to more traffic on my blog, which in itself was a great motivator.
Whether that’s any use to you at all or not, I hope you you find your way through the fog.
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Yes, I’ve come to the conclusion that whatever platonic ideal of a blog post I had in mind, it was too substantial to just do it, and so I didn’t. As a result, I decided to try smaller pieces. For instance, to write this post I set a timer for 20 minutes and just wrote what was on my mind, then did another 10 minutes of editing.
As for comments, my current goal is to successfully reply to the comments on my own blog before going elsewhere to comment 🙂 I’m still following a number of blogs but more passively than I was before; I don’t think I have the energy to engage at this point.
Thanks for your encouragement.
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I hear ya!
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When I was practicing my ideas on behavior were based on behavior follows emotion and emotion follows thinking. in order to emote one must first think (Albert Ellis and others). My first statement at the beginning of a session was “well, what have you been thinking about”. When the client told me of a situation I would ask, “and what did you think about that”. You said “I’ve always had a difficult time figuring out what I like and what I want”. I would wonder what you think about sex. If you want to have a sex blog it does not have to be about your sex life it can be an exploration of what is your core thoughts about sex?. How did you learn about sex?. Who taught you? What do you think about the many, many ways people can have sex? Is there some contradiction in your sexual behavior and your sexual thinking? These are all questions to be explored with your therapist. Suggest you read one of Ellis’ many books or some of his followers. I am sure there is a ton of stuff based on his theory that has been published since I retired. I have not sat face to face in 20 years but I had a lot of success following this theory. This approach could also help your depression. Most of my clients were depressed. Also let the professional manage your medication.
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You appear to be new to the blog, so I’d like to direct you to the post about my epiphany for a start.
The term “sex blog” is descriptive rather than prescriptive: it wasn’t that I set out to write a sex blog, but rather that the things I wrote about made “sex blog” the best description for my site.
As for the medication, you seem to be saying that I shouldn’t adjust the dosage on my own. If so, you’re reading in things that I didn’t say, and I have no idea why you believe that the dosage isn’t being carefully supervised.
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I recently tried publishing what I thought were unpolished pieces. It turns out that my “unpolished” work is pretty good.
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The issue I’ve been having is not exactly lack of polish, but lack of direction or conclusion. But yeah, I’m trying to be less self-critical.
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There are plenty of people in the world that will be critical of our work. We should be the ones to talk our work up.
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But I’m so good at being critical! I mean, I am. I have high standards for myself, I can tell when I haven’t met them, and I generally know what I need to do to improve, and then I do that. It’s constructive instead of me just feeling that everything I produce is shit, you know?
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You’re being too critical.
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You seem to have missed my point. And now you’re being critical.
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My apologies.
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I know the feeling. Including the fog. There the problem affected my brain, but was physical and – eventually – curable. So I hope you eventually have the same fate: a doctor saying, “you’ve got [fill in blank], and science can kill it.”
But in the meantime, treasure the moments of clear and use them, and don’t overdo it.
On blogging, I think your stream-of-consciousness will do very well, since you good at that and highly readable, thought-provoking and more.
And it is better to post a little often, than to wait till you have got some long complex argument perfect. Because no one ever gets it perfect, and we read you to know you and hear what you have to say, first and foremost.
Beyond that, I’m sorry to hear you’re having troubles, and I hope it gets better, and then better than that. And so on.
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Before, I would have an idea and write it out, and in the process develop the idea. I knew when I was ready to post because it felt done. Now my thoughts tend not to have conclusions, so it’s hard to know when to post. But I’m trying to adjust and I hope my writing will continue to be interesting; I don’t want to just recite what I did or thought today – there has to at least be some synthesis beyond ‘diary entry’.
Thanks for the positive thoughts.
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