My latest non-relationship made me question the way I exhibit my sexuality. I started thinking about it a while ago, and finally figured out the gap between who I am, sexually, and how I show it. Or rather, that I don't show it, and it's a very negative inhibition to have when you're with a person you really care about. Even if that person can't tell, always forcing yourself to withhold something is emotionally exhausting.

So here's what I came up with:

I started having sex a little under three years ago. One of those years, the first one, I spent with a person who constantly degraded the fact that I was more sexual than him. It was his insecurity, his problem, that he manifested by joking about me -in public, no less- knowing full well that it hurt me.

I'm afraid of unleashing myself, because I'm afraid that I'll get put down again. I don't want to feel ashamed of myself again, even though, consciously, I'm very comfortable with who I am.

My second, which is  one of my most significant sexual relationships, was just a bad, psychologically, but it the opposite direction. I slept with someone who was just as openly sexual as me, but who couldn't deal with our age difference. As a result,  the sex we had was fun, and interesting, but not as deep, emotionally, as it should have been. He projected his insecurities about my youth onto me, and I took those insecurities onto myself.

It's time to stop letting those insecurities keep me from being who I want to be, I think.

I listened to Vast's April for the first time today.

I'm just going to go ahead that Jon Crosby must snort a lot of cocaine. Sure, there are other reasons why he seems to have a bigger and meaner sinus infection with every album, but the narcotics argument works pretty well to explain why his music has pretty much all it's original creativity.

Ah, well.

On Paula Abdul:
Mom: Wow. She was born in '62, so she's already 40.
Dad: She's 46.
Me: um.
Mom: Oh. She's just a few years younger than me.
Me: You're 42.
Dad: She's older.
Mom: Oh.

I stayed up until three in the morning last night, refusing to let myself fall asleep until I was sure that closing my eyes wouldn't set me into uncontrollable panic. I haven't had an anxiety attack since August, I think. I don't want another one (or three) now. Still, I've had an intensely, and inappropriately unhappy week.

It seems I have a number of options. Solid, completely plausible options, and each one seems to make me miserable. The only thing I'm sure about is using the money I save to move to Arizona to complete the Sivananda yoga teacher training course in California, hopefully come April. It's what I'm going to be doing in September that has me worried.

Any solution that I come up with puts me at odds with myself. It's confusing. And it just doesn't feel like I have a whole lot of time to figure this out.

Really, what I want seems completely unrealistic. I want to get the fuck out of here, except that I'm not sure where "here" ends, and "there" starts. But where do I go to find a society that feels healthy? Where do I turn to get away from the waste and the excess? Where, exactly, does being surrounded by people feel less isolated? Or, at the very least, where do I get the coping skills to stop being shocked at the fact that don't live in a cleaner, friendlier, more efficient world?

I'm a high stress individual. I have a very hard time letting go of these things. I know that I am being neurotic, and illogical, and I haven't mustered the rational to stop. In the meantime, every time I move my neck, I seize up. And it's been a while since I've slept normally. And when I get depressed, I also get lethargic. Yeah, it's been a bad week.

God, I'm going to end up in a monastery.

It's just like I expected.

After a three-hour swim, following a six-hour shift at work, I am still completely exhausted this morning. Factor in that I haven't swum in months, and I woke up in the middle of the night with a rather distracting ache in my right shoulder, and that I'm am both opening and closing the restaurant today. It's going to be a very long day.

Ah, well, it was worth it.

Best. Shoot. Ever.

A while ago, I ordered a bunch of Infradig albums. Three CDs, plus a grossly oversized t-shirt, for twenty-five bucks? Awesomeness. How can I not love a band that I once heard described as electro-funk-groove-hop?

I first heard of the band three and a half years ago, when I saw them live the last time I went to Cornerstone. God, I was probably so much more innocent then. ... but that's irrelevant. The show rocked my world, but when I downloaded some of their tracks from their website a while later, I was stupid and didn't like them.

Fast forward three years, and here I am in Arizona with a lot of free time. It was inevitable that I would rediscover the fabulousity of Infradig. So I look them up, and discover that they're breaking up. Sort of. Winding down? Whatever it is they're doing, it's confusing, but they're going away and it makes me a little sad. The last time I forgot about a band and looked them up years later, I was overjoyed to hear that they still existed. Incidentally, the Audio Paradox album is next on my to-buy list. If I can find it again.

So anyway, I've been listening to a lot of Infradig this week, what with me suddenly having three shiny new albums. I've also had Over the Rhine's Changes Come album on repeat, because they are one of the few bands whose live albums I like, since I'm not a big fan of a lot of their studio stuff.

Um. Bubbles.

/digression

Ecstatic Everywhere is their newest work. I like the first two thirds of the album, and I'm kind of in love with "Splutter." I already had  most of Kinetic Transfer, and it's my favorite. Now that I've heard their latest album, I additionally appreciate it because it's fully instrumental.

I'm left with Clinical Indifference - The Psychology of Breathing. I've had plenty of time to listen to it, and my expectations are fairly high.

But I think I'll hold it off for a special occasion.

Hm. It's five in the morning and I've been awake for the last two and a half hours.

This does not bode well.

It was ok when I woke up in the middle of the night last night. And the night before. And had to be up by five on Friday. Today, though, is not the best of days for insomnia.

Even if I abandon my plans to cook and clean and buy groceries, working a seven hour shift at the end of the day will probably painful in a myriad of ways. Goodness knows I don't need another excuse to drop stuff.

I wonder how long I'll do the insomnia thing this time, before I have some sort of emotional meltdown. Sleep deprivation makes me all kinds of crazy.

It's so quiet, it's creepy.

I feel vague disgust at myself today.

I don't want to talk about it.

I can't describe how I feel.

Maybe I shouldn't talk about it, then. I'll talk about tomorrow. It's going to be a crazy day.

Up at five for my last day at work. It was the first more or less non-shitty job I've ever had and I think I'm going to miss it a little, especially considering that the next job I'm going to have to get very, very soon, will probably be less decent. But will hopefully pay more and offer better hours. Luckily, I had the foresight to switch my shift from 12pm-5pm to 6.30am-1pm, because I have a photo shoot at 2.30pm.

So far, wardrobe for said shoot is a Mayan mask art piece and heels. I love that my life is changing so that I can feel comfortable standing up in front of a camera wearing nothing but stilettos for the sake of art. It's not that I want hundreds of pictures of me nekkid floating around. I just want to be able to take off all the unnecessary things to make something beautiful.

At 7.00pm, I have to be downtown, because I'm going to see Giselle at the Joffrey Ballet.

It seems like a good way to start the last weekend I'll have in Chicago for a while. I still haven't started packing or organizing. I haven't decided which books to pack into the one small back I'm allowing for literature. I have a check to send out, a my Chicago CTA card to cancel, my last voice lessons to attend, and a friend to see.

The closer I am to leaving, the lighter I feel. It's a strange feeling. I think I'm used to feeling confused. Now I have no idea what my life with be like a year from now, not even a slight speculation, and it's the most liberating feeling I ever remember feeling.

At the very least, I may not be saying much, but it's been a while since I've written anything. I'm glad I'm getting my words back.