Category: Uncategorized

“The things we own end up owning us.”

It’s so crazy for me to be able to say ‘I don’t have any money’ and it be reasonably true. I’m not middle class or upper class or whatever that means, but I’m not poverty-stricken, and I’m certainly not starving. On the other hand, I was just looking at my calendar and discovered that -without considering paying utilities, only debt- the paycheck I get on Friday is consumed before the next paycheck. Entirely consumed. Oh, and then on top of that I have to pay my utility bills this weekend, buy groceries (if I need them) in the next two and a half weeks, and have funds to buy … whatever else I may need. So here’s to two weeks of not needing anything I haven’t got, eh?

Which is not to say I’ll be much better off after that. Another two weeks, another paycheck, but more bills as well. This month, the biggest of them happen to fall near each other, so in the second half of this month I’ll be able to buy groceries again. Maybe pay off any new credit card charges I incur between now and then, on account of my bank account is empty.

I’m planning on taking Heath to IKEA tomorrow. He’s got lots of disposable income, and wants a new desk and filing system. I was thinking of getting some more BILLY (bookcase), on account of the increasing stacks of books occupying the floor rather than shelves. So tonight I looked at my bank accounts. And discovered that if I buy anything, it’s really just spending my future.

I know I’ve used untenable debt as self-punishment and self-restriction in the past. I’ve been working a long time to at least not make the situation any worse. Haven’t been doing such a hot job, from some points of view. At least nothing’s in collections. I overspent on Modern Evil Press a bit – I ought to have planned more carefully, and waited until I had cash on hand – but I’ve got two titles ready to go. Even on Amazon. (Sort of; I’ll link later.) I’ve got some ideas for the cover for Lost and Not Found, and then I can get it online, too. That’s another… $120 I don’t have right now. If I weren’t so … disconnected, I might try to sell a few of the books I have on hand, to earn the money to sell more books online. Alas. I barely exist beyond these four walls.

So, apparently people are already getting upset because I culled my ‘friends’ list on LJ down to the handful of people I’ve known for over a decade. I thought it was a pretty straight-forward thing. I took off people in the kink community on account of I’m celibate again and won’t be participating in any kink or kink-related or kink-community-related activities for the foreseeable future. I took of the NaNoWriMo people on account of they mostly hate me, and have either stopped posting or left me ‘out of the loop’ for over a year, now – I probably ought to have removed those names sooner, but … I’m lazy. I removed a couple of gay friends-of-friends, whose names I probably ought to have removed a long time ago, since I’ve only ever met them a handful of times, long ago.

The ‘friends list’ is not really anything to do with “friendship” – it’s just … it’s like an RSS aggregator, for pulling together one kind of data you want to stay updated on. And I don’t use RSS aggregators, really. And blogs … don’t have a lot of data, livejournals less so on average. Mostly memes and lists of things people did and birthday wishes, for most of the people I removed… and the bulk of the LJ’ers, who I will never, ever add. I don’t need or want to be kept up to date on what you had at Starbucks this morning, what comic book angel or superhero you scored as, or the latest funny YouTube video. I certainly don’t need to read your daily affirmations or stories about your pets/children being cute (all pet owners and parents see their pets and children as more cute that I do – even if I’m interested in meaningful details about your family’s life, seeing pictures of innocents with objects on their heads gives me no great pleasure). Oh, and then there are the virtual strangers; people who I don’t really know in life and don’t consider myself to be able to know simply via their online journal. I stopped reading outright strangers’ blogs and online journals years ago. The closest things I do now are read two or three columns by online columnists whose sites now allow “comments” (which I don’t participate in, I’m not much for comments, myself). I’m not interested in the daily lives, personal details, personal emotional struggles, et cetera et cetera of total strangers. Reading your journal doesn’t make us friends, and if I thought it did, you’d probably consider me a “stalker,” or at least “delusional.” I’m not really interested in the same things of near-strangers, acquaintances, people I haven’t seen or spoken to in longer than the span of time from our first contact to our last. Yes, if we run into each other again, see each other online, accidentally call each other when going for another number (whatever), I’ll be glad to talk, get together to hang out, help you build or move something, whatever. But I don’t want to read every little detail of your life.

Which may indicate something about why I haven’t been posting as much in the last couple of years; perhaps I just do not see the point in the bulk of what gets posted about. Perhaps I cannot comprehend the concept I just followed blindly for so long, this … blogging. Perhaps I am living in the wrong century.

Regardless, the culling of such a thing called a “friends list” is not an attack, not a hostile action, not petty or hateful or even personal. I don’t want to read your blogs just like I don’t want to read ANY blogs, really. I leave Zoe & Amy on here, myself, and Marie. Maybe Marie. Depends on if her posts feel like too much, and I want to get rid of them, too. She usually has a pretty good signal to noise ratio, though, and had been a relatively low volume of late, so … maybe. Amy posts once or twice and then not for months, almost always about her health. Zoe posts a little more often, but has reverted into the sort of posts that originate the word “blog” – they’re just links to interesting things he found online – and the occasional important post about something really meaningful, but the volume is almost as low as his wife’s. And me? Heck, I don’t read my own posts after I post them, I just want to be sure they ‘got through’ as it were.

If I were less lazy and uninvolved I’d just give Zoe a call from time to time, maybe spend an afternoon with him once in a while, and I’d take Zoe & Amy off the list, too. Stop cross-posting. Let this old, useless LJ account dry up, shrivel up, and fade away. Alas, I am lazy, and they are busy, and we’re not quite there yet.

“I must be fine, ’cause my heart’s still beating.”

I’m feeling better now.

I bet you didn’t know how bad I felt. Let me express how I know I’m feeling better: As of yesterday, I started listening to University-level lectures again on my iPod. Before the breakup … I didn’t mark my calendar when it stopped, but … before the breakup (maybe it was even before that last suicidal night that I stopped), I was going through various lecture series and even entire classes at Universities (I’m listening to Chem 1A from Spring 2006 at Berkely now, I finished a Particle Physics lecture series last night and this morning.) at a pretty good clip. Like, depending on the course, I can listen to up to eight or nine lectures a day… or if it’s this Chemistry class, two or three… but when I was … well, a bit scatterbrained, occupied, anxious, not feeling good, or however you want to put it, I couldn’t concentrate enough to retain anything. I couldn’t listen to them at all. They weren’t enriching, they were simply frustrating.

Which makes sense. Scientists recently found that worry and anxiety reduce the capacity of your short term memory, for example. You literally can’t create new memories as well, or retain fresh information as much, if you’re worried or anxious.

So… being able to pay attention to lectures this week… a couple from Princeton earlier in the week and some hard science in the last couple of days… I’m feeling much better now.

(The following is from a series of emails I had with someone on the subject of my decision to stop having sex. I feel that it may help clarify in ways my long post did not. The other person’s text is in italics.)

Why are you being celibate these days?

I am trying to avoid immorality. Sexual immorality is a big area I had let slide.

Ok, so are you saying your going to wait till you get married before you do again????

That is my current outlook, and it is a bleak one (on account of I have low hopes for my becoming (and also locating) a suitable candidate for marriage). Yes.

So how long are you giving yourself to find a suitable mate before all bets are off and you stop being celibate???

Well, see, the idea isn’t that I’m desperate for sex, or desperate for companionship. The idea is that I want to behave rightly, for as much of my life as is possible. Now, I can’t alter the past, so I can’t undo what has already happened. What I can do is alter the future, avoiding sin as best I can and seeking after what is right and good.

In reality I’ve always felt that it would be unlikely for me to ever end up with a spouse, and that sentiment hasn’t changed, so the outlook isn’t some countdown until a wedding day “or else.” It’s more an outlook of I’m probably never going to have sex again, and if that’s God’s Will, that’s okay.

In combination is this: I should never have had sex in the first place. Which is to say, it would have been better to go from birth to death in celibacy.

* * * * * * * *

Continue reading Further clarification re: celibacy now

I’ve been trying to think about how to write this out. I’ve actually spent a lot of time thinking about this subject in general. Thinking about how to act this out, what to do, what to say, what not to do or day or think… How to make this work. How to make celibacy work again.

An active sexual life has come and gone for me over the years. When I was very young, I drew a line in the sand and said “no sex” and meant “no intercourse.” So when I was a teenager, for a couple of years, I did most everything else. Then for a couple of years I avoided sexual contact again… Until I descended into a very long, dark period where -among other things I did that I oughtn’t have- I didn’t treat people with the respect they deserved, and found it easier to make friends and get laid (still no intercourse, but otherwise quite promiscuous for a time). Then, as being an asshole wore thin, I gave it -and sexual conquest, generally, and most social contact- up. And for a few more years, there was nothing, though … not always by choice. Somewhere in there I blotted out my childhood line in the sand, thought it might be okay to have sex someday if the situation was right. ((There is an undercurrent in that of wanting to someday have another chance with Sara, and her expressing that she didn’t want to be my first, that she couldn’t stand the idea of my waiting for her in that way, even if it wasn’t for her as much as for marriage. Looking back now, I’ve known for a while that the decision to allow myself this option had a lot to do with wanting to change the way Sara looks at me, thinks of me.)) The situation just never came up. And then I moved to the mountains for a couple years, became depressed (due mostly to watching my grandparents fall apart, rot from inside), and became disillusioned about companionship (people I love don’t want to reciprocate, it seems), and it became a choice again, of a sort. And for a year or so, things just went on.

Continue reading No vow, just celibacy