# clarity: it's the last day of 2021; where am i in life?

it's the last day of 2021, i thought i collect my thoughts of where am i in life.

quick summary about me: i'm a techie guy who married about 8 years ago and now we are raising a kid together. moved to ireland about 8 years ago and then to switzerland 2 years ago. i was working from home at a megacorp since the pandemic started, so about 18 months ago. in general i'm super introverted, probably a bit autistic even.

the staying at home gave me ample time to think things through. if i have to use one word to describe my state of mind, i'd say "clarity". i feel like i understand my needs and through this understanding i can meet them and thus be happy in general.

# relationship

i think i'm in the incredibly rare situation of being in a caring and understanding relationship. the relationship was a bit volatile in the past simply because i didn't know what i wanted out of life.

but opening up and communicating everything you feel can really deepen relationships. this was hard at first because i didn't know how to communicate. at some times i thought i can't communicate with my partner the way i want. i was more of a writing-type, she was more of a verbal type.

but then i simply kept experimenting with various methods. @/optioning really worked out for us here. i can now discuss anything i want in depth. this eliminated the need for a "communicative partner" for me that i was always trying to look for in one way or another (see @/slowpals for such a desire).

now if anything bothers me, i have means to talk about it and get support right from my closest person to me. this helped me a lot to put my private thoughts in order.

# work

another key aspect to happiness is that i can get things done both at work and in personal matters. and my secret for this is to wake up early and make progress while i still have the early morning productivity boost effect. i wrote about this in @/mornings.

and if something is too big or abstract for me to actually invest time in, i just write a blog entry about it. blogging was incredibly helpful for me: it helped to get a lot of dumb noise out of my system and this helped me to focus on other things afterwards.

also, looking back and seeing that i did something makes me feel good, and motivates me to do more. there's the old adage "if you want something done, give it to a busy person". i can totally feel it on myself: since i have a kid, i'm more time constrained. this forced me to get more organized to get anything done and in the end i became more productive overall.

# sex

some see sexual expression as one of the fundamental needs of humans. i really feel that on myself. in fact, i think i might have stronger sexual desires than average.

i was raised in a quite a sexually conservative environment. sex was never really discussed around me and monogamy was the only relationship i have seen.

and even though i had an awesome wife who could give me everything i ever wanted, for some reason i still didn't feel fully satisfied sexually. i couldn't understand it.

after some serious discussions, i started trying out stuff. it started with innocent things like naked yoga. i did it, but still wasn't fully satisfying. but zürich is quite awesome from this perspective: they have this sexual bodywork school thing here. its primary attraction are the tantramassage courses. i did quite a few of them.

i could say a lot about it, but let me condense things here. there's lot of intro, talking and prep but eventually you are paired with another person, and exchange massage with each other. this massage includes genital pleasuring too. you do it in a room with 10-20 other naked people doing the same around you. and the whole thing is guided, the instructor tells the group what to do, how to touch the other person. it's quite fun.

this school also taught me that it's normal to have sexual desires. other people have them too. there's nothing indecent about having them. we should talk about them. we should explore them, etc.

i decided that i'll try to have such fun extramarital sexual experience regularly. i even paid to have sex. sex is a nice experience. i can't explain why, but it's a wonderful experience to connect with someone on such an intimate level. i don't know... it's fulfilling? it definitely calms my sexual desires down for a while and i can then focus on other things.

a lot of people find such activities very taboo. but it does wonders to my general mood. i never tried antidepressants or similar things but i think this is much better so why should i deny this from myself? and i'm talking about this just so that this idea of "sex can have a therapeutic effect" gets more widespread and is not something to be ashamed of when one reaches toward it. in fact we should talk more about it, so that the people really understand what they want and reach for the right thing.

(think of this like cooking: it's feasible to always cook at home. but isn't it nice to go to a nice restaurant sometimes where you are completely pampered? why is such pampering ok for one's belly but not for one's genitals? putting arbitrary junk prepared by strangers in secret into our digestive system is fine, but having a stranger touch us makes us feel squeamish.)

as for the effect on the relationship: i'm very open about the reasons and goals of my actions. it required a lot of discussion but the relationship works. everybody benefits: i'm more happy, better mood in general, more playful, a more pleasant person to be around (or so i think). we accept each other as we are.

# future

i had a pretty good, eventful year. i still have lots of things to try or at least write about.

if it's good now, chances are things will go sour sooner or later for one reason or another. if anything, i expect most of the problems to come from health issues because i stay at home all the time sitting and staring at a screen. but i think i'm more prepared to handle calamities than ever. modulo those i think i'll be able to maintain my good fortune for quite a while. we'll see. fingers crossed.

published on 2021-12-31

to the frontpage