Today has been…. semi-productive.

Fucked around in the morning. Played video games, read some Terry Pratchett, masturbated, laid in bed, stretched. The usual.

And. NSFW TMI warning, I am very glad that I can masturbate to completion lately. For a while I could not. I just wouldn’t get there. I chalk it up to a combination of stress from school and the goddamned “sexual side effect” of adjusting to my higher dose of Paxil.

When I first started on Paxil, the sexual side effect didn’t bother me because it suppressed my libido almost completely. Which, from a detached clinical point of view, was sort of interesting. I remember being horny, I remembered what turned me on, and I remembered how fun my menage a un used to be.

But all that was left of my actual desire was an abstract and highly intellectual sensation of stimulation. Other than that, I was practically asexual.

The problem came (so to speak) when I started getting my libido back after around 18 months on Paxil. At first, it was nice to feel it again. It was like reuniting with an old friend. But the lack of completion issue made any attempt to act on the urges an exercise in futility and frustration.

That’s what it’s like when you are male. Women’s sex drives don’t seem to be as focused and driven as men’s. They don’t have this insane drive towards The Moment that we have. They can have fun with themselves without orgasming and walk away happy.

There is no female equivalent to blue balls. I am so jealous.

Eventually that goddamned side effect let up enough that I could masturbate maybe once or twice a week. And that’s how it’s been for a long time.

But my psychiatrist upped the dosage on both my antidepressants, Wellbutrin and Paxil, and so, just as I had found a treasure trove of my kind of porn (furry, gay, with a plot), I found myself unable to reach my destination.

I am so glad that shit is done with for now.

Anyhow, that’s not what I set out to talk about tonight, I just sidetracked myself like usual.

So you can stop wondering what “The fight for the center” has to do with masturbation now. They are not related.

No, what I am talking about with that title is nothing less than the battle for my immortal soul and the very pith and marrow of my existence.

In one corner, we have our all too familiar reigning champion, The Jagoff. If he wins, I will go back to just letting the days go by after I graduate. His greatest desire is to have me back in his clutches 24/7 again, and for there to be no more of this pushing and striving and (ick) ambition, just day after day of video games and hanging with the fuzzies and very little else. Just sleepwalking through life without resistance.

But he faces a challenger which we will call The Living Fru. TLF has sworn to destroy the Jagoff, then burn it, then jump up and down on the ashes. Its greatest desire is to drive me into the light and warmth where I can truly live. It represents the life-drive of the id and is therefore the opposite of the Jagoff. Where the Jagoff wants me to sleep peacefully and painlessly, TLF wants me fighting, kicking, and screaming until I force myself into a place in the world instead of staying outside of it.

It’s motto is “pain is better than death”.

Today’s battle had mixed results. I implemented a bunch of notes into my Episode Three but part way through I thought “I can hang with the fuzzies and revise at the same time!”.

But no, I can’t. I ended up in the other mode instead, and that’s not good. My policy of not doing anything else when I am writing is the only way to go. It takes up too much of my mind power to allow for my usual scattered mode of being, with mental tabs open in my browser, my chat window, my email, and everywhere else as well.

All that crap takes up space in my brain that I need for writing. So, no distractions. Not even music playing unless it’s all things that I have had forever and that therefore can be mere audio wallpaper and not distract me at all.

I have, of course, been pondering my post-VFS lifestyle. I am tentatively planning for a daily schedule where I mess around and be lazy in the morning, job-hunt in the afternoon, and write at night.

But that’s written in sand, not stone, so things may change.

The post-graduation period is when the battle for the center will begin in earnest. I am determined to eschew the embrace of my previous easy (but deathlike) depressive lifestyle and instead fill my days with work and purpose and all the other things that keep me awake and alert and alive.

It’s good that I have employment as a fixed goal. It gives me a focal point for my energies. My ideal situation is always “fixed goal, variable method”. I consider that to be the best way to get things done in general and in my life in particular.

And I have thought of lots of different ways to raise my online profile and lots of little angles via which I could seek some form of employment.

Anything that I get paid for will be appreciated. Even if it’s just little bits of piecework that gets me ten bucks here and twenty bucks there would do wonders for my self-esteem and my self-worth. That is worth far more to me than the money itself, which would likely go to things like getting me a better wardrobe, paying entry fees to prestigious writing contests, and pay expenses for attending open industry events.

I am going to make this work somehow.

It’s high time I took my place in the sun.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow, homework permitting.