Everything Under the Sun

This year's rendition of a yearly reflection will mark 3 years of writing to the past year. 3 years of writing in this collective forum. I've written in times of hardship and in times of joy. I've written after intense experiences and in moments of nostalgia. I've written about topics I'm interested in and curious about. I've written poems, stories, and reflections. I've written to years, to people, to myself, and to the ether. And this year there's plenty of material.  At the end of last year I wrote in my reflection to 2019 that 2020 would be "interesting, surprising, predictable, exciting, and humbling as well, yet so different and new." That is has been. I'm sure there will be endless blog posts and articles written about the psychological implications of 2020, from people who've experienced the worst of it and from others who seek a pity party. But thus is life. There are tough individuals and there are not-so-tough individuals. My...

One of the topics of discussion I've frequented this year and in the last few years has been, "How do we get what we want out of social situations?". Generally speaking, this has come up as it pertains to women but it can also be about meeting high status individuals who may help your journey to success. On the women topic, I, along with most of my friends, have found ourselves frustrated by the current social environment and our inability to meet, attract and retain high quality women. Dating apps seem like a numbers problem, far too many men participating and far too females. The bar scene doesn't cut it. Turns out when you involve alcohol, the outcomes get messy and disproportionately fail. Access has become a valuable commodity. But three problems persist here; one, men and women are far more stingy when it comes to sharing their friends, so much so that the activation energy needed to set up a blind date or first encounter is rarely achieved. Second, as time pass...

Sometime in late October 2019 while I was living in Washington, I had an experience that I look back on now as a microcosm of the last decade of my life. I picked this story today to think about because of an experience I had last night that's reminded me that my psyche is heavily influenced by my past experiences. I believe it's important to address your present psyche through a lens which considers how that psyche was formed, how the intricacies of thought, behavior and emotion in the now, are affected by your past. Because it's not an accident. And perhaps understanding it can aid in the resolution or overcoming of a nagging issue.  When I moved out to Seattle in August 2019 I began experiencing heart palpitations. My heart would skip beats and become irregular. It caused me obvious physical discomfort. But the most sinister aspect was the psychological discomfort that accompanied it. You know when your leg cramps or your eye lid spasms you can pretty much brush it off a...

I chose to title this post 'on sexual intimacy' and not 'on intimacy' because my thoughts are more focused on the sexual aspect of intimacy and not just on intimacy itself. But to be comprehensive about the broader topic of intimacy, I'll briefly lay out my thoughts on it as a prequel to the more nuanced dissemination of how I think and feel about sexual intimacy.  As with everything, I seek to understand my life and the world around me by breaking it down to its parts. Then I create structures of understanding, detailed out into phases and steps so I can track my position in the structure. Then I use the new found structure to establish a formula of action which is based on my thoughts and values and experiences. On this note, the precursor to intimacy is familiarity. Once familiarity is established with someone new, intimacy can began to be developed. Intimacy in my mind is an overarching concept that describes closeness between two people. There are three compone...