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I don't know how it's measured, especially because for so many people there's an emotional as well as physical drive to it. But I have to imagine that enough research has been done on sex that it's been codified in some way or another, that there is some set of measurable stats that can figure out where you are on the spectrum of desire.

 

Also, I'm excited to announce my romance novel Spectrum of Desire is coming out in May. Very steamy, but tender and with a cover you won't be ashamed to read on the bus.

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At the end of the day it's also something so personal to you that it's mostly about how you feel about it. I still estimate that I fall somewhere in the, ha, well, gray area, notably on the 'it's just not all that important to me personally'-factor. Sex with another person, I mean. It's way complicated to figure out in any case, since sexuality is a fluid thing and how you feel about it can change from day to day. So, as long as I feel comfortable calling myself Gray Ace, it's fine.

 

Cool news about your novel! Spectrum of Desire - that could be a James Bond title. Is it a physical release?

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I definitely have a low sex drive, when it comes to being with my wife, but a fairly high sex drive when it comes to self-love. After I started taking anxiety pills, I found that my sex drive actually increased some, as it was the stress of doing the right thing and such that was putting a damper on some of my desire. The ironic thing is, that Lexipro makes it more difficult to finish, so that's been a plus and a minus.

 

Even with medication, I'm still not the most sex driven person out there. It feels like more a way to make my wife happy rather than a thing I'm driven to do, but I certainly don't mind it either.

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Following up my previous post about my co-worker leaving and me getting stuck with all his work, today is effectively his last day here which means I need to get as much turnover from him as possible.  Except that I'm sick as a dog and feel like complete shit.  But I have no choice except to come in and likely infect everyone around me with my constant coughing and sneezing because he's leaving tomorrow. 

 

This place is literally killing me.  I'm going to die here.  Stupid sense of responsibility.

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On 2/25/2017 at 10:27 AM, Roderick said:

At the end of the day it's also something so personal to you that it's mostly about how you feel about it. I still estimate that I fall somewhere in the, ha, well, gray area, notably on the 'it's just not all that important to me personally'-factor. Sex with another person, I mean. It's way complicated to figure out in any case, since sexuality is a fluid thing and how you feel about it can change from day to day. So, as long as I feel comfortable calling myself Gray Ace, it's fine.

 

Cool news about your novel! Spectrum of Desire - that could be a James Bond title. Is it a physical release?

 

Imma take this opportunity to pimp the nsfw channel in Idle Slack Chat.  If you're ever looking for a place to chat about this stuff, we mostly use that channel to talk about sex, sexuality, relationships, etc. 

 

Also congrats on learning and figuring stuff out about yourself! 

 

1 hour ago, SecretAsianMan said:

Following up my previous post about my co-worker leaving and me getting stuck with all his work, today is effectively his last day here which means I need to get as much turnover from him as possible.  Except that I'm sick as a dog and feel like complete shit.  But I have no choice except to come in and likely infect everyone around me with my constant coughing and sneezing because he's leaving tomorrow. 

 

This place is literally killing me.  I'm going to die here.  Stupid sense of responsibility.

 

Start working on an escape plan.  The more gadgets the better. 

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During my teens and early twenties I sort of got used to people around me being drug addicts. Living in Brighton where everyone seems to suffer from Peter Pan syndrome, that comes hand in hand with all sorts of consumption.

 

My first friend to die of an overdose happened when I was 18 and the number got really bad up until I was about 26 (one guy took a ton of acid and then played a 'trick' by grabbing a live train line). As people grew up this just kind of stopped and drugs just seemed to get boring or exhausting for most. 

 

Except, it seems that some of my friends just started covering it up, not celebrating it like they had and resorting to doing it in secret. It has basically hit one friend in particular pretty hard and they don't seem to have ever developed mechanisms or even come close to recognising that they have a real problem. They will make token gestures towards 'yeah, I have a problem' but immediately go out and binge, with the 'revelation' satisfying anyone that confronts them about it long enough for them to just resort back to their own habits.

 

I am trying to get through to them as it is now fucking up their life, job and relationship. They just don't seem to care and use anything they can as an excuse to go back to drugs. The very fact that the drugs are fucking up their lives, is an excuse in itself to continue to do more drugs.

It is kind of scary to me, I am in my late thirties now and we (my friends and I) would be past this phase of our lives.

 

I need to do a proper sit down for sure but after that I am seriously considering contacting their parents.

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1 hour ago, twmac said:

During my teens and early twenties I sort of got used to people around me being drug addicts. Living in Brighton where everyone seems to suffer from Peter Pan syndrome, that comes hand in hand with all sorts of consumption.

 

My first friend to die of an overdose happened when I was 18 and the number got really bad up until I was about 26 (one guy took a ton of acid and then played a 'trick' by grabbing a live train line). As people grew up this just kind of stopped and drugs just seemed to get boring or exhausting for most. 

 

Except, it seems that some of my friends just started covering it up, not celebrating it like they had and resorting to doing it in secret. It has basically hit one friend in particular pretty hard and they don't seem to have ever developed mechanisms or even come close to recognising that they have a real problem. They will make token gestures towards 'yeah, I have a problem' but immediately go out and binge, with the 'revelation' satisfying anyone that confronts them about it long enough for them to just resort back to their own habits.

 

I am trying to get through to them as it is now fucking up their life, job and relationship. They just don't seem to care and use anything they can as an excuse to go back to drugs. The very fact that the drugs are fucking up their lives, is an excuse in itself to continue to do more drugs.

It is kind of scary to me, I am in my late thirties now and we (my friends and I) would be past this phase of our lives.

 

I need to do a proper sit down for sure but after that I am seriously considering contacting their parents.

 

As a child of someone with a lifelong crippling addiction problem it's a very hard thing to love someone in that state, sorry you have to go through that. While generally do think the adage of "not until they're ready" is a good rule of thumb -if you think it might lead to some actually crippling life changes maybe try to loop in family.

 

It's hard, and it never feels like there is a "right" answer.  

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Cheers, it doesn't help that they have deliberately isolated themselves so that it makes it very hard for them to get help.

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I lost my older brother to a drug overdose in his mid-20s twmac, so I've got a long history of knowing the kind of pain and sadness of watching someone go down that rabbit hole. 

 

I can't say that I have any good advice.  Just the same platitudes that everyone has heard.  But that sucks and I wanted to acknowledge that. 

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Cheers, it has been especially hard because they lie to everyone about it, so you have to unravel a lot of their bullshit before you can even talk to them about the real problem. Sorry, this posting was originally a means of venting, I appreciate any comments at all right now and I wish they would understand the damage they are causing to themselves and to their partner.

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Man, that's a rough situation, twmac. You hope that these things have a way of remaining in your juvenile life - I can perfectly understand the frustration of this shit following you around into adulthood. What a depressing this, seeing people around you die of overdoses and drug-related stupidity. Man. I wonder if this cycle continues in certain neighbourhoods nowadays, or if this was a 80s/90s thing. Yesterday I saw an episode from the first season of Star Trek TNG and it was drug-themed to the point of being a PSA. It felt anachronistic and weird to see it now.

 

Unrelated: today is election day in the Netherlands. It's framed as the next big place where populism might win, after Brexit and Trump, and before elections in France and Germany. Geert Wilders is poised to become the biggest party, but thankfully all the other parties have denounced him as possible coalition partners, so there's no way he'll come into power. Even so, it might be a symbolic victory, which is scary. But there's good news as well: in the last few months there's been incredible energy in the green party GroenLinks (my vote as well), with young upstart Jesse Klaver and his Obama-esque message of hope and climate-friendly change. It probably won't be enough to win big, but it's still an upset to the establishment, who stand to lose a huge amount of seats. Especially the labour party is set to be decimated. Still, that leaves us with the likely event that there's a smattering of parties each with their own little audience and no one with a decisive victory - which is all but necessary to form a coalition and choose who gets to be prime minister.

 

Suffice it to say, this is a pretty exciting and tense moment and I've been feeling tension in my stomach all day.

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Today is my last day working at the company I've been at for 5 years due to a layoff. For the last few weeks I've been pretty excited about getting out and doing something different, but now I'm getting really bummed and am shedding a tear or two.

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After watching my dog throw up green bile for 2 hours, I took him to the Emergency Vet. They took some x-rays and found 3 corn cobs in his intestines. Exploratory surgery was required. He's been better.

58c9821256a70_2017-03-1513_02_14-2089(20161512).png.aece4fc1d9dce03439d51214115d5fba.png

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4 minutes ago, preston said:

After watching my dog throw up green bile for 2 hours, I took him to the Emergency Vet. They took some x-rays and found 3 corn cobs in his intestines. Exploratory surgery was required. He's been better.

58c9821256a70_2017-03-1513_02_14-2089(20161512).png.aece4fc1d9dce03439d51214115d5fba.png

solid cone of shame picture

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Yeah, he's still a puppy, so he'll try to eat giant rocks if no one's looking. 

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Update on the Dutch elections: PHEW! No populist revolt in the Netherlands, it seems. Wilders got a much lower amount of votes than predicted and the likely outcome is a mid-right or mid-left coalition. No matter how this unfolds (unless there are elections again in a few months should any coalition be impossible to form), Holland at least seems to have learned a lesson from the US and the UK. There's open debate on television right now how Trump may have actively worked to make a lot of people go 'let's not go down that road, no matter how fed up we might be with current politics'.

 

It doesn't hurt that GroenLinks has become the largest party on the left either, and the amount of seats divided among stern climate change advocates has doubled to nearly a third of parliament. I consider this evening to be a big win and possibly the best we could hope for under the circumstances.

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It's still unfathomable to me how people can have been so unhappy under VVD rule and happily vote for them again. Like, they cause the problems and are rewarded with power, it's just depressing.

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I don't know if everyone has been unhappy. For sure, in the communities I am in Rutte is seen as inherently awful, but I doubt everyone sees it that way. Hell, even I don't see it that way. And yes, there are things I'm not happy with, but there's lots to applaud in the previous four years of government as well. Their resilience, level-headed way of dealing with things, the way they handled tricky situations with MH17 and brokering deals in Europe in the financial en refugee crisis... again, perhaps not to your specific liking or mine, but a far cry from the cataclysmic rule that some (many) people are making it out to be.

 

And they still lost a quarter of their seats in parliament, so it's definitely a punishment in one way or the other.

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I was at work yesterday when out of nowhere I started feeling incredibly guilty and anxious. After like 20 minutes it turned into a sense of dread. I went and sat in the bathroom and I started to feel like I was going to die. It was ridiculous.. I mean I knew I was ok, rationally anyway, but I had this intense feeling like my life was in danger. The dread went away and I was left feeling disorientated and uneasy until I went to bed. I'm not sick today so I guess it was a panic attack? 

Weird. 

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Irrational "I'm going to die" feelings are definitely a hallmark of a panic attack. If it continues, definitely go see someone.

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Sounds like a mild panic attack to me. I barely ever get them, but I had one randomly at work a month or so back while I was on till. I completely muddled a person's order because I couldn't think straight, and I had to call someone over to take over for me. I sat in the breakroom for a while, and was shaky for the rest of my shift and could barely leave the storeroom. Thankfully, my boss and co-workers were super understanding even though I never warned them this could happen (it's Very rare for me).

 

Definitely best to see someone about it if it becomes a regular occurrence.

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It's really shit when your body/mind gangs up on you like that without any warning. Is it a stress-related thing, or more something that depends on your personal level of anxiety?

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1 hour ago, infamous space turtle said:

Hmm sounds similar Cactus. I wasn't stressed and I don't think overly anxious, I think it was probably an anomaly but ill get help if I experience it again. Thanks yall. 

 

If it helps, I went through a period in my twenties where I got panic attacks on planes and sometimes in cars, and it wasn't specifically a fear of either. It was a psychosomatic response to specific sensory input, something about the vibration when landing a plane or when suddenly braking a car that triggered it. I never understood it fully and it went away just a few years ago without any further treatment.

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