Category Archives: over thinking

Mandatory Sex Party Meme

Posted on by
5

When I find a blog I really like, I’ll go back and read all of the old posts as if it were actually a webcomic. Hyperbole and a Half is certainly like a webcomic. It has illustrations, plot, and a main character. It has more text than a webcomic, but it’s quality, funny text.

It also has mandatory sex parties.

I actually should say that it doesn’t have them, or I at least I couldn’t find one. It just made them famous.

Once upon a time the author wrote a blog post saying that she Googled the term, with quotes, “mandatory sex party”. The only hit that came up was her own blog. This made her sad. She called upon her readers to fix this and fill the internet with mentions of mandatory sex parties. Some people love audience participation, and even though I’m reading a year old archive I said, “I have a blog! I want in!”.

First I had a look to see what had happened since her post, so long ago, in the year of our lord, two thousand nine.

I searched “mandatory sex party” (including the quotes), and Google returned about 10,900 results.

I’ve seen and heard a lot of memes, and I’ve watched things go viral, but still I am amazed. Behold, the power of the mighty internet. Some woman (or superhero?) from the vast reaches of the internet says, “Jump!” to a bunch of faceless entities on the internet (us), and what do we do? We JUMP. Why?

I think the internet, as a whole collection of faceless entities, has a certain overall brand of humor for its most active participants. This humor thinks the term mandatory sex parties is really funny. This humor loves the idea of arbitrarily spreading the term, even if the actual concept that would lie behind such a term is kind of disturbing. That’s the weird thing. Most of these faceless entities not only will never experience a mandatory sex party (whatever that is), they don’t want to.

The term is funny, but the actual prank and humor actual has to do with search engines. The term is said and this is the reaction:

“What? Ha. What are you talking about? Haha.”

That’s it.

To the term “mandatory sex party”, add pranking a search engine. The term is said over and over until Google goes from one hit to over ten thousand instances of the term mandatory sex party. The reaction is:

“Wait… what? Really? Seriously? Hahahaha! That’s hilarious.”

Yes, I’m saying manipulation of a search engine is funny. We’ve come a long way from water filled buckets on door jams.

Done Training

Posted on by
Reply

Sometimes when I’m done training, I feel like a bobble head,

during a training, a sloth versus monkey.

The fish out of water, the kid in the corner,

the under dog, too old for new tricks, stolen thunder,

two seconds too late, over thinking what should calm contemplate,

the beginners mistakes, lessons sticking and slipping away.

Some things I enjoy, I have a natural talent in.

Some, I lag behind in.

On rare occasion, I have to remind myself I do it for the fun,

train for the challenge,

compete with myself no matter who is on the mat with me.

Colorblind to the belt, immune to the envy,

sometimes a single sweep a victory,

or just the heart I have to try and be here.

Sometimes when I’m done training, I feel like a better me,

who is never done training.

Working and Worn Connections

Posted on by
Reply

You put yourself around people, and connections just happen.

Longer lasting, deeper connections take work and time… and can potentially sour, sever, or fray away at any time.

This series of connections is part of what can make us couple or stay solitary. Sometimes connection comes naturally and people flow into your life and effect it in unexpected and amazing ways, and sometimes interactions seem like a futile exercise in fickle, selfish human experience in which we are all essentially still alone.

We keep trying, it’s all we can do. Life is for living.

Opening

Posted on by
Reply

I can’t say I enjoy review time at work. This is only my second review at work (since this is year two) and I’ve already developed a distaste for it. I like the concept and understand the benefits. I am not saying they shouldn’t exist, but it is a painful process for everyone involved including me.

I’m not going to say it caused anything, but it triggered a lot of thoughts that have combined with what’s been going on with me as of late.

Here I am trying so hard to look at myself and my interactions with people. I am trying to have a real understanding of what I do versus what other people do in their interactions. I’m not talking about making people like me. I’m thinking more directly, how do I get what I want from my relationships with people? How do I get the relationships I want with people?

I need to work on some things.

As much as I’m open with my personality and confidence, I don’t actually open up to people. I don’t trust people. I put myself out there because I would rather die than be dishonest about who I am, but I have become so guarded over time from being hurt by people. It’s true that I have been making some new friends and rejuvenating old friendships lately, which is no small thing. But, when they’re talking, sometimes I realize how much they give to me freely and how much I hold back. I don’t trust myself to be upset, weak, or cry around my friends. I won’t admit I’m having a bad day, complain, tell them about a problem, or ask for help anymore apparently. I’m stubborn, independent, and do not want to burden anyone. I don’t want to focus on being negative. I want to have a good time with friends. I spent some time recently with a friend talking about some financial problems I’m having. I talked at length. That was weeks ago. I still feel guilty for putting that on them, for making that part of their night more negative, and I feel like maybe I hurt our relationship. Who wants to go out of their way to spend time with someone who just spent the last hour (or whatever) complaining about money?

Flip side, I listen to my friends problems and help them all of the time. I have no idea why I make that double standard for myself.

I should let people in and people help me. It could make us closer if it doesn’t push someone away.

I have to be willing to take that chance. Keeping at a distance from everyone may seem wonderfully safe, but it’s a large burden to carry on yourself.

I need to learn to take chances in my relationships with people. The worst thing is that people may drift away, but if I don’t let them in closer, they’ll do that anyways.

Connections Crossing

Posted on by
Reply

Life: the waking dream that hazes between points of rest. Each moment is taking place in an external world that my inner world just made up based on that same external world made up by everyones’ own inner world. I dream so vivid that times asleep become more real than the day to day.

I keep searching for truth and on the way I often fancy the notion I’ve found some. We make our own truth and it only becomes more and more apparent as we trust what our senses tell us. Our senses hear what others chose to feed us. Even as we accept it as reality, we know that deep down we’re victims of everyone’s filter, especially our own. We experience a reflection of a reflection spiraling off into eternity, so we may as well be blind.

I’m bound to this world the same as everyone else. Sometimes I get notions of how really lost and alone we all are as a whole who shares the same wants. Humanity, the race of contradictions, struggles to see behind the masks of one another. When I look at you, I try to see past our posturing and learned responses.

Connection crosses us so easily and is severed with the slightest touch. As we’re all seeking it as savagely as we pull away from one another, it’s a wonder we survive.

Why Pick Up When You Can Eat In or Take Out?

Posted on by
3

Why do I mind? Why is my open-minded brain unable to be completely comfortable with the idea of the open-ended relationship? Why does the prospect of him picking up women really get to me. …or as he asked,

“What are you so afraid of?”

Besides the obvious, losing what happiness I’ve gained, not being able to get closer and missing an opportunity to be closer, not being used to this position… Besides the negative connotations of pick-up with ideas of manipulating people for sex… There is more.

I was finally able to get the clarification from the boy on the subject of pickup. There are many methods of pickup apparently, and apparently one of them goes along with what I was thinking and Steve described in one of his quotes on a post:

“I compensate for my lack of self-confidence by deceiving others.”

The boy admitted that a lot of guys do that. He admitted he tried it, and it failed horribly. He wasn’t comfortable with being fake and it showed. It also wasn’t getting him what he wanted.

And what does he want?

According to him, he uses techniques learned in pick-up to break the ice and be able to display his best qualities to someone. He can project the kind of person he wants and what he wants from that person.

There are two camps of people in pick-up apparently. One of them is the people who use pickup to rack up their ‘score’ in the game, like notches on the belt. The other is the people who use pickup to learn how to approach and get the women they want and then move on to relationships with those people. These people are not necessarily lacking in confidence in other areas of their lives, they just have a hard time meeting and getting anywhere with women. The latter type eventually move out of pickup, while the former stay there and rack up their ‘score’.

So where does the boy fall in this broader picture? He says he will at some point fall into the latter, but is not done with the journey. He feels like he has more to learn and experience. He may stay in it for not much longer, he may stay in it for a while yet. He doesn’t know.

I do have to ask, with how close and how serious we’ve been getting, why pickup now?

He admitted he wasn’t seeing anyone else right now, the people he was seeing when we started out were long gone. He’s been going to his pickup meetings, but hasn’t been picking anyone up.

He admitted that his intentions were to use pickup to attract people he wanted to eventually settle with. The settling itself though still scares him. It comes down to the classic fear of commitment. Like, he could buy a house right now. It’s a good market to buy a house. His rent is too high, it’d be a good investment. He doesn’t want to though. Why? He’s afraid it would ‘root him to a place’. Even though he could sell or rent it later, he sees this as an all or nothing, as if he’ll die in the house he buys. It’s symbolic more than anything, and the metaphor frightens him. This is the all or nothing syndrome I talked about him having before.

This fear goes even deeper into his relationship history: fear of repeating old mistakes.

The boy has had two major relationships in his life and both of them: unhealthy. One of the girls he lived with, and even financially supported. He was needy and so were they. He expected too much from them and as a result gave more and more hoping for himself to get back what he wanted and be fulfilled. He didn’t know how to express or get what it was he wanted. There was no good communication, expectations were unreasonable, and there was too much too fast.

Even with only two relationships, he’s gone further than I have, and made some of the same mistakes as me only even more hardcore.

He has been very needy in the past and is now firmly on two feet. According to him, what we have right now is the most healthy relationship he’s ever had.

He told me what he was afraid of: afraid of repeating the past and slipping back into bring this needy person. This is something I understand all too well, a common theme in my own worries.

Now I at least understand why our official relationship status is what it is. He’s afraid once he relabels what we have, things will change and the worst may come.

Now that I understand his fears, let me come full circle on my own. I didn’t realize this until we started talking, but the big issue really is that I am following relationship rules that I didn’t make and I don’t fully understand. They’re becoming defined, but I didn’t define them: he did. I’m still expected to follow these rules or stop seeing him. That’s an uncomfortable bit of control I’m giving him. I know that in other relationships I’ve had, I didn’t exactly control the parameters either- they were defined by canned traditions.

Things weren’t one hundred percent defined at the beginning, and they still aren’t. In one of my last posts I talked about whether or not people we both knew were off limits or not. We never talked about it, but he told me one day that yes, people who we consider friends are at least. There wasn’t a discussion, it was just something he felt like he needed so: new rule. The rule itself I don’t disagree with, but I do take issue with these rules seeming like they’re being made up as we go along and he’s the one making them. I know they are being made up as we go along because this is new ground for both of us. Even if I were to find myself being fully comfortable with a non-traditional relationship, feeling like I’m following someone else’s rules feels like it is against every fiber of my being. I am fiercely independent and fear people trying to control me.

The other side of that is with these rules, I can see other people. I don’t want to, however. I could try to make myself do it, but doing it because he is? That sounds like a bad idea.

I can flirt with other people, but so can he. Another undefined place is how far we’re allowed to take that while with each other. I don’t want to do the drama jealousy game when we’re out together. I also don’t want to have a double standard. This is the next thing we need to talk about.

I hate that I feel like I’m always the one who says, “We need to talk.” even if I only do it once in awhile. Even if parts of me feel better after wards, I’d rather be having fun than these sorts of discussions.

I’m all set with reading the rest of The Game. Maybe I should have forced the issue of talking about PUA sooner. He asked me why I didn’t. I asked him why he didn’t bring it up if he was waiting for me to. We were both scared of where that discussion would go. We can’t let ourselves be afraid of communicating, though. This isn’t likely the most scary discussion we’re going to have. Really, if we are too frightened to talk to each other at all, that’s where we should break it off.

So what do we do? The obvious answer is we keep talking, and discussing, and figuring these things out. We’ll see where things go from there…