A Direct Correlation

In the mists of time when humankind was still thudding around on square wheels, I kept a paper journal. In fact I kept piles of paper journals, all written in cheap spiral-bound notebooks with a variety of ink colors that would make a pre-teen swoon. My pattern was to write obsessively and multiple times per day for months and even years at a time. If you could have graphed the number of words I wrote as a function of my internal angst, you would have seen a direct correlation to the point that during times of extreme upset I’d spend hours a day hunched over the paper trying to sort it all out.

Whether I even once succeeded is a matter for determination by better brains than mine; however, there can be no question if over the past six years I’ve been angsty. I have been. I was. The end of a marriage, the unexpected arrival of a newborn, a divorce, lots of sex, lots of dating, even more sex, a painful breakup, mental illness and its attendant medication struggles — who wouldn’t have been in a whirlwind of emotions? And that’s not even counting the everyday vicissitudes of raising children, working more than full-time and trying to maintain some scant level of personal bodily hygiene.

But over the last twelve months, and especially in the most recent six, I’ve felt more stable than I have in pretty much forever. Work is good. The children are happy. Medicine is¹ fixing what’s wrong with my brain. And difficult relationships have been crowded out by ones in which I am sent love notes, asked after when sick, and brought olives, ice cream and wine on a Saturday night. I am surrounded online and off with friends who want me to succeed, and who moreover believe that I am actually already succeeding.

It is awfully nice. I’m enjoying it very much. And as was the case when my words went onto paper instead of a keyboard, the happier I am the less need I feel to dump out tens of thousands of letters on a weekly basis. This is all my very long-winded way of saying that the blistering schedule of posting five times a week that I’ve maintained for ages — and which was preceded by the even more blistering schedule of posting six, and seven, and almost-twice-a-day — will probably not continue. I cannot be upset about this for who in our little niche of sex-positive perverts has written so long, so much, so personally? There aren’t many others, and I can’t be unhappy that I’m in a position where I feel good enough about life that I don’t need so much of an outlet as once I did. I’m aiming for a couple-three times a week, and if I fail at even that far less demanding task because I am too happy, you will surely forgive me.

Right?

1. for now [↩]