I haven’t been writing so regularly. I haven’t been having sex so regularly. My life has been disorderly – off and on in a variety of ways for a year now, but especially for the last five six months or so.
A year ago, I had a sudden onset of pretty dramatic back troubles. Ten years ago, I had a near-paralysis set of back troubles culminating in a surgery that had a more than a year-long recovery. And from which I never fully recovered. So, the onset of new and scary symptoms a year ago had me quite anxious. In this instance, aggressive physical therapy seems to have, if not done the trick, at least restored me to relatively unimpaired function. And I am, for better or for worse, in better shape than I’ve ever been. My weight is under control. I go to the gym five to seven days a week. I do both aerobic and strength training exercises. And I manage my strength training exercises to be appropriately respectful of my history of back troubles.
I look as good as I’ve ever looked.
So, on many fronts, all is good. Or relatively.
But, I have a life. And in that life, apart from my body and my mind, there have been several sets of exogenous, real-world stress. And a few others that aren’t exactly stressful, but nonetheless take up a paramount of psychic energy.
The ones that are bona fide stressful involve mortality: that of two sets of in-laws and one set of remaining parents. That’s three couples, six adults. Five of whom are in their eighties. One of whom has effectively lost their memory. Another of whom has what is called an indolent lymphoma. Two (others) of whom can barely navigate stairs any longer. Our house has a flight of steps leading to the front door.
One of whom is a (gay) Trump supporter.
And so on.
And finally, in the most bourgeois, but also most disruptive of circumstances, our home has been undergoing renovations since the beginning of July. Renovations we didn’t choose, and which will only make it less pleasant to live in. During the period of the renovations, we have for the most part been unable to live in the house. Since July, we’ve lived in five different places and moved six times.
Some of this has been fun: we got to know a couple of neighborhoods we hadn’t spent lots of time in previously. But mostly, it’s just been disruptive. And the last three four weeks have in some ways been the hardest. As although we’ve returned to our home, the construction isn’t finished. And in many ways, the house hasn’t been properly livable. It was only this week, for example, that our refrigerator functioned. We don’t have proper heat, and living in the Northeast, it’s gotten cold. Add to which, our hot water has been off as much as it’s been on in the last couple of weeks. So, it’s been a rough year for us.
Notwithstanding that, my brain has been active. I just haven’t really been able to motivate myself to share my brain’s activities. I’ve been trying to do a lot of things, but I haven’t been able to do a lot of things.
I have over the years occasionally given you lists of topics about which I aspire to write. Here’s such a list:
- More thoughts on a submissive assistant, and the interactions between the fantasy of an assistant and my newfound ability to fantasize in ways that don’t implicate planning.
- My thoughts about how my relationship to beauty and to porn seems to be changing as I age. Migrating from activating a sense of longing and deprivation to a more equanimous sense of appreciation and gratitude.
- My thoughts about Grok and artificial intelligence and the (ethics and morality of the) manipulation of digital images as well as the creation of fictional characters and how that interacts with my porn appetites.
- Some internal family dynamics. In general, I haven’t written much about either my marriage or our child, but there’ve been some interesting, exciting, challenging things within the family.
- My thoughts about my relationship to my sexuality. That’s given me lots to think about both with respect to my relationship to my masculinity. And with respect to my relationship to my sexuality. And my thinking about the relationship between the two.