(Preliminary grumble: WordPress 1.2.1 for iPhone ate a nearly-done draft of this post when I tried to go from local draft to online draft. It also didn’t update to 2.x through the standard App Store update process despite both being free. WTF, WordPress?!?)

Sigh. Another long stretch without posting. It’s not like I have nothing to say. One look at my Twitter feed will tell you that. And I have posts cooking in my brain about favorite topics like Lost and The Best Bands You’ve (Probably) Never Heard Of and a bunch of other things as well. (I mean, I saw MUSE live, ferchrissakes! MUSE!!)

So why no blog posts from me? I’ve been feeling really frozen up inside, my guts knotted by anxiety, for months.

You ever get the feeling that you’re standing at a Rubicon in your life? What’s more, have you ever felt terrified, even though you know that crossing over is The Right Thing To Do™?

I’ve been there for a while now…almost a year, really, since I started the current job. In other respects, I’ve been there a lot longer. Depending on how you prefer to look at it, it could be since I had surgery, since I left home en route to college, or even going back to murky childhood. I’ve definitely written on the subject before, though.

And I’m feeling kind of “reinvented out” after the number of times I’ve done it in my life, so I really want to get this one right in order to not have to do it agin anytime soon. It’s hard work, don’tchaknow!

A few things have me brooding on this topic again:

1. Getting ready to move out of the apartment I moved into shortly after starting at my old job, thereby shedding the very last vestige of the life I led during the Tale of Woe™
2. Watching other friends being or becoming all self-actualized ‘n’ stuff. (There are six links in there, folks!)
3. Feeling like I’m finally about ready to start expressing myself in the world now that I’ve finished the process of creating the “release version” of me.

The hardest things I’m going to have to learn are self-motivation and discipline, my twin bugaboos. Need to turn those dreams into action and all that. Like I’ve said before, inspiration is never my problem. It’s that “perspiration” part that always gets me.

Universe, help me channel the Spirit of Nike®…

It’s just that taking that step and really committing to not procrastinate ad infinitum, to not constantly sedate myself with the modern opiate of the masses, and to stop fearing the risk of failure is just pants-wetting terrifying after a lifetime of the bad patterns.

My rational mind knows that doing is a skill like any other, one that anyone can learn regardless of initial talent for it (which is good because my initial talent level is roughly that of a rhinoceros with a neurological disorder taking up skateboarding). My irrational, software-virus-ridden mind tells me something quite again in the voice of my parents, every teacher I ever let down by not fully realizing my Awesome Potential™, and every friend or lover I ever offended in a moment of thoughtlessness. Unfortunately, that voice has always been so much louder than the voice of reason inside my dense cranium. (‘Sides, nowadays, even the voice of reason is starting to sound a bit suspect…)

So, the emotional pressure has built up inside of me and I feel like something’s gonna give. EIther I’m going to become Super Self-Actuated Sonya™ or I’ll just give in to my couch-tuber tendencies forevermore. Ye gods, that sounds emo! >.<

I just hope that, much like Lane Meyer, all I need is a taste of success, and I’ll find it suits me.

In the meantime I stand, tremulant*.

*10 Scooby Snacks™ to the first commenter to correctly identify the source of this title. And yes, I know it’s not a real word!

A writer, they say, writes. This makes me a sysadmin, queer/poly pervert, a geek, but certainly no kind of writer the way I’ve been neglecting my blogging. And, really, the whole point was that I was trying to improve my writing habits. But, I’m not writing it off yet. (See what I did there? It was a pun, people! A writing-related pun! HAH! Oy…)

So, I’m going to check in and tell you about the nosebleed-inducing highs and the soul-grinding lows of late. All three of you who still read this blog after months of basic fallowness.

I’m not breaking down, I’m breaking out…last chance to lose control!

Some of the highs, it turns out, were chemical. And they were helping me screw some things up in epic fashion. If any mental health or medical profession ever again tries to prescribe me any form of Wellbutrin, they’re getting a smack. I mean it. The stuff is seriously no good for me. It and another antidepressant called Remeron were effectively doing bugger-all for me and canceling one another out for some months as my primary-care was at his wit’s end trying to help me medicate myself out of The Tale of Woe™. (One of these days, I’ll post a timeline of that. Long story short, it was about 3.5 years of my life during which the universe seemed to be conspiring to turn me into emotional road-pizza.)

Actually, that’s not true, it wasn’t accomplishing nothing. It was draining my pocketbook horribly on my current employer’s horrible high-deductible + HSA health care plan.

So, my newly-referred psychiatrist thought it would be peachy-keen to step me down off the Remeron first, leaving the Wellbutrin unchecked (and the truly marvelous Cymbalta as the only really effective med for me in the cocktail). And the resulting behavior prompted my therapist to say I was acting like a bipolar person in their “manic” phase—euphoric, out of control, and in my case even more oblivious to the concerns and needs of those around me.

I ended up burning my romantic relationship with wee Amy (tho thankfully not my friendship), screwing up so badly at Bawdy they asked me not to come back, and so obsessively seeking new partners that I almost drove the lovely Renie away completely.

Once I came down, I was (to continue to overuse the word) mortified at myself. I can’t think of a single relationship I didn’t strain, romantic, platonic, or employment.

Don’t try to keep your composure, I’m only having a laugh…

But there were happy things, too! My relationship with Renie has been intense and amazing. Even if we don’t make it (though I still have this odd presentiment that we will…I could be wrong, but I don’t think I am), it’s nice to know that I can feel chemistry that intense for anyone, and that someone so miraculous could feel it for me.

I’ve also been seeing two delightful women named Amy C and Kanane, who’ve just been wonderful to me. I guess my polyamory isn’t “academic” anymore, and what’s more it’s really nice to settle into a groove without feeling obsessive about meeting new partners every which where and all the time.

My longstanding friendship with a woman who’s always impressed the hell out of me—Heather—deepened in a wondrous way, as has my friendship with Amy of Chasing Amy, who’s also damned impressive. Chasing Amy has also been responsible for some of the more interesting and sexy stories of my recent life, for which there will be future blog posts, have no fear. (Teases: “Best…housewarming…EVAR,” “Pasta and strippers!” and, “FIVE?!? And a boy in the room?”)

I’ve also made new friends, like the astonishing Mags, and reconnected via the Internet panopticon of Facebook with two friends I’ve known from birth (mine or theirs, depending), Nick and Sam.

And Polly! Never has anyone made me look so good as this camera-slinging Photoshop goddess. She’s sweet, kind, and talented. How could I know her for a couple of years and only now start to realize how cool she is?

I am so surrounded by exceptional people. And they all, oddly, seem to like me. How cool is that?

The psychiatrist poses as psychologist…

And my therapy has gotten in-fucking-tense. We’re into all the crappy childhood imprints I took that have been holding me back since time immemorial and perennially making me feel like a loser and a failure. I’ve been avoiding talking to my mother for months now knowing that, after our last conversation was the straw that broke the camel’s back, the next time I talk to her I was have to read her the riot act. She still wants me in her life things are gonna have to change, swiftly and permanently, ’cause I’m not having it anymore.

*sighs* What a fucking cliché.

But this is going out to all my friends…I need your help. I need your encouragement. I need you all to check in with me and help me overcome all this crap in my head that keeps me from doing things for me. Doing things for others, never a problem. Other people deserve things, and the people around me are so worthy of happiness and success.

But I’m having such a hard time making those baby steps toward feeling like I deserve things, too, and not neglecting myself horribly. So help me not lose sight of my goals and wants, OK? I really need you guys now.

You all rock. And speaking of rock, 10 Scooby Snacks to whoever can name all the songs quoted in my section headers without Googling ‘em. (Not that I could prove you didn’t Google them, of course…)

But I won’t wait two %^@!*($#^ing months to write again.

…you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.“
—Ferris Bueller

So, you may have noticed it’s been a couple of months since I blogged last. Life has been crazy to say the least. My new job has become hectic to a point of making me wish I could clone myself even despite the inevitable rent that would cause in the fabric of space and time…or maybe just an amusing xXxenophile vignette.

My fling with Amy ran it’s course, but I still adore her and have a sneaking suspicion she’ll be around in my life for the foreseeable future. And it was delightful while it lasted. She’ll forever have a special place in my memory and my heart as the girl who helped me get my groove back.

‘Sides, if not for her, I never would have been shining as brightly as I was when I met Renie at a women’s pool party over at the delightful House Weirdness. And the *click* was probably heard around the world.

I’ve had a lot of partners and lovers. A lot. I’ve had several primary partners. None of them have ever been on the same wavelength with me like Renie is. I’ve finally found my partner in crime. As poly as I am, as kinky as I am, as desiring of adventures together and separately as I am…and seems to know more about making life good than I do despite being 10 years my junior. I’m in love…truly, madly, deeply.

But I’ve also met a bevy of beautiful Amazons…more on that later. That’s important.

I’ve also found some new motivations and meanings in my life…both long-term and short-term. I’ve already alluded to one of the short-term ones: Geek Salon. Part intellectual salon, part geek house party. Something like a mini-BayCon every month. I’ll talk more about it later, but I will make it happen and you’ll hear all about it here.

The other idea is one I’d had for a long time, but it took meeting a wonderful woman named Beth to crystallize with the right metaphor…the right name: Amazons. In a queer women’s culture that seems to be obsessed with butches, andros, genderqueers, and FTMs (not that there’s anything wrong with them, mind), and in which even a group calling itself the “Femme Posse” was a disappointing queer ladies’ auxilliary that seemed to do nothing but plan Butch Appreciation Day, it’s time for the powerful, femme-loving femmes (even if they love others in addition to their fellow femmes…no one’s demanding exclusivity here) to reclaim their space and their pride in the community, dangit.

And I’m going to make it happen…create my own private Themiscyra. I want it to be a thing…a meme…an identity. When a gaggle of fierce femmes shows up at the dyke bar/play party/club/whatever, I want heads to turn and people to whisper in awe, “The amazons are here!” And we’ll have our own space for just us, in person and online. I’ll start it…but I want my fellow amazons to join in and make it as great as I know it can be.

In the long term, I think I need to work on how to stop the damage that I now realize was done to me growing up. I’ve been so hampered in figuring out who the hell I am, loving that person, and in reaching out for what I want…feeling like I actually deserve it, and deserve happiness.

As my therapy goes on, the shape of it is becoming clearer through the haze of non-stop, low-grade (and sometimes rather intense) pain that was my childhood. More and more I see how I was discouraged from being me at every step along the way by my family, my peers, my circumstances. I still struggle with the idea of doing things for myself, from the mundane tasks of self-maintenance to the achieving of life-goals and the realizing of desires.

I’ve started reading books by a very interesting psychologist named Jane Middleton-Moz. In specific, her books Children of Trauma: Rediscovering Your Discarded Self (in which she explains that trauma isn’t just colossally bad individual incidents, but can also be an accumulation of smaller mini-traumas…and that the reactions of the significant adults in a child’s life can be more harmful than the traumas themselves…or they can practically delete the damage if they’re handled right) and Shame and Guilt: Masters of Disguise (reasonably self-explanatory).

I wonder if I’ll have to go back to college and study developmental psych now. Maybe I can find another way to advance the cause. We’ll see. Goodness knows I don’t want to be fixing computers and telling people how to access their basic application preferences for the rest of my working life, even if it’s paying the bills for now.

But first let me get Geek Salon and Themiscyra going.

It’s nice to have both short- and long-term goals, eh? I’m finding it to be!

BTW, shout-outs to Amazons I’ve met in recent weeks not mentioned above (in roughly chronological order): Dana K, Jetta, Tora, Celestina, Lucy, Lori, Violet, Tegan, and Brandi. You’re all amazing and you kick much booty. My Themiscyra is open to you all!

Now, like I promised, something a bit more positive and fun than castigating people for their unresponsiveness. A spoon-full (or is that a cube? ) of sugar, and all that.

My experiences with mind-altering substances of a non-prescription nature have been few and far between for many reasons, none of them being any resistance on my part to the idea of illicit substances. Indeed, as any of you who know me know, I find the idea of criminalizing victimless acts to be, well, criminal and just one more sign of the cultural insanity bequeathed upon this schizoid country by its original European settlers: Puritans and their fundamentalist religious zealot ilk.

No…I just don’t find it very constructive or alluring to take (IMHO) too-frequent vacations from reality. This is one of those small things in my psyche for which I’m very grateful. When it comes to substances, legal or not, I just don’t have addictive tendencies. I suppose I should add this to my Thanksgiving “thankful list.” Sex, intimacy, codependence…they’re another story, though at least the sex part is easier for me to deal with courtesy of my greatly-diminished post-op libido.

I also pass no judgment about the desire to either “take the edge off” or to take lengthy leaves of absence from everyday reality. Believe me, I can sympathize. Ever since puberty, “reality” has been something of a sworn nemesis of mine for relatively obvious reasons. Fantasy worlds like Dungeons & Dragons and other role-playing games or those of sci-fi/fantasy novels and comics were my escape of choice through adolescence. In college, it was sex and hedonism (though, admittedly, that was also quite a bit to do with self-exploration as well since, without those adventures, my most profound personal epiphany would have certainly taken much, much longer!).

All that said, the changes imposed on me by circumstance in 2008, and really in the last 3 years if I want to be completely honest, have left me depressed and ill-equipped to cope. Finding my way out of the rut I’ve been in has been difficult and frustrating. So, when a new friend offered me an opportunity to make my neurons fire differently, I didn’t pass it up. Perhaps, I thought, this was just the kind of rut-buster I needed.

I wasn’t without some trepidation. The particular “vehicle” for this journey was one with which I’d had a handful of experiences in the past, all of which were both unenjoyable and non-constructive. Still, with a different set and setting and with people I knew would a) be sharing this journey, and b) be very warm, caring, and supportive despite not knowing them very well, I thought it would be worth the chance. How right I was.

The experience itself was not at all what I expected, perhaps even hoped, it would be, but it was very much the one I needed. Instead of gaudy visible or synesthesic effects, I was treated to what I can only describe as an “instant imprinting” effect coupled with an ease and satisfaction with simply being, both alone and among my fellow psychonauts, that has escaped me in daily life.

I connected easily with the others on many levels, including sexually. That’s one thing that’s really been missing for me since I dated Jenny during the first half of last year. I’ve had sex since then, but it was without that feeling of connection that was facilitated this past weekend by our “ticket to ride.” Real connection, despite my ability to make “fast friends” (thank you, vagrant youth!) and my willingness to be wide open with new people, is very hard to come by for me. Thank you three (and everyone else whos been reminding me of this at other times) for helping me feel desirable and worthy of it.

I also, on the tail end of the trip, had a very helpful and cathartic discussion with my hostess about the extreme likelihood that I was an undiagnosed hyperlexic as a child, and the effects that this has had on me on into adulthood. I count the vehemence and rigidity with which I hold certain ideas and opinions (most notably to do with words and meanings), the almost painful discomfort I feel when exposed to stimuli I find distasteful, and my extreme difficulties with nonverbal communication among these.

I also think that the chemicals involved had a lot to do with easing the passage of a message that had been having trouble penetrating my thick cranium in regular life from people like my therapist when they were expressed to me during our wee voyage. Namely, that I somehow need to find it within myself to be OK with being in the space I’m currently in even with all its uncertainty, questions, and fear. The traumatic stripping away over the last few years of all the things that made me feel happy and on the right track during the latter half of 2005 and the first two months of 2006 were, perhaps, necessary to put me into the chrysalis I’m in now. Then, perhaps, I can emerge from it changed again and better able to deal with this new phase of my life…to find new purpose and new satisfaction…to go beyond the carefully-controlled and increasingly narrow comfort zone I’d carved out for myself.

It’s not going to be easy. I know this. It’s one reason I’ve been so paralyzed of late by fear, anxiety, and depression. I had recognized even before becoming semi-employed that this was going to be a journey of 1,000 miles which was going to take me to a new place that likely didn’t include staying on (or, as the case may be, staying on full-time) with my erstwhile employers and co-workers, as much as I really do like them.

It’s also been too easy to give in to feelings of aloneness and despair at the prospect of, once again, pulling myself up by my own emotional and fiscal bootstraps, especially when my personal reserves of wherewithal have felt so drained. I see now that I owe all the friends who were there for me, listening to me express those very feelings, a deep and heartfelt apology for the fact that those feelings were demeaning to them whether I meant them to be or not. I’m sorry. I really am. I’m sorry now, and I’m sorry if I lapse in the future. I’m not really alone even when staring at my own four walls, and I resolve to remind myself of this regularly.

I know that one trip over one night and day isn’t the whole 1,000-mile journey. It’s just the proverbial first step of more than I can count and possibly more than I’ll even have time for in my allotted span.

Finally, I think that my next step is, by necessity, going to have to be learning to accept that I’m never going to be able to achieve or learn or experience everything in this life that I might care to…hell, I won’t even have time to consider all the available worthy options! Whatever choices I make don’t have to be The Best of All Possible Choices™, just good and worthwhile ones. In the previous phase, my pursuit was obvious: find myself and make myself out of the given materials. The question of what to do with myself needs to be one I can allow myself to answer without those stresses.

*sighs*

Does this mean I’m going to have to learn the Getting Things Done™ system? Bloody hell!

Still, amazing what progress one can make when one has the right tools at one’s disposal and a willingness to actually use them. Happy New Year, indeed.