Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Erstwhile

erst·while (adjective):
former; one-time. "she looked forward to reconnecting with her erstwhile companions at the reunion"

I changed my tagline today, from "the blogged life of Galiana Chance, phone sex operator" to "the blogged life of Galiana Chance, erstwhile phone sex operator"

And then I cried a bit.

Thankfully, a good friend was here, helping me do the tedious copy/paste part of updating all my listings. I wanted to state clearly that I'm no longer active. I wanted to include a link to some Flirt friends who can be trusted to take good care of callers. I can't update all my listings without confusing myself. Thankfully, in addition to being unafraid of HTML, he gives amazing hugs. I was well-held.

It's been over a year since I was able to sustain the concentration to take phone sex calls, even from people I know, even from callers I connected with deeply and enjoyed tremendously. The realization of my inability to perform came quickly. The acceptance of it did not.

So over the past week, I've directed my excellent friend to clean up my contact info, check my recommended Flirt friends to make sure they were still active, update my listings, fix broken links. Y'know, stuff that needs to happen when you go inactive.

Erstwhile.

I love the word, erstwhile. It's elegant, isn't it? A little dreamy, even. It seems so much softer than "former" or "one-time" or "ex". It's certainly better than "can no longer be a ___ no matter how hard she tries". No. That's a terrible tag line.

It's bizarre. I thought I had come to terms with the loss. Well, probably I have, but it's one thing to admit it to yourself, another to admit it to people close to you, but it's another thing altogether to make it official.

If it were someone else going through the same thing, I would almost certainly tell her, "Oh, darling, the day you change your subtitle to 'erstwhile', it's totally okay to cry."

I will try to update again soon with a far cheerier post. But I needed to mark the occasion here.

/mark

Well then. Erstwhile it is.

Friday, September 6, 2013

Just Keep Swimming

I've been super busy, which is a good thing.

I can't seem to figure out how to write - not blog posts, not summaries of really intense scenes, and not updates to rules to parties we throw in our home - not without spending massive amounts of time and energy to do so, which isn't such a good thing.

I've been running a multi-factor experiment, though, so it's impossible to isolate the effect to a single cause. Here are the factors:
  • Since January, I've tried three different protocols of neurofeedback in hopes that it may help my vertigo, and I think the latest one has ended up being the winner: it seems like my recovery times are a little better (yay!), although my concentration doesn't seem to have improved (boo!)
  • Since February, I've been avoiding wheat, rye, barley, and gluten, in hopes of dropping my gluten antibody count down out of the celiac range, and my gluten antibody levels have indeed now returned to the normal range (yay!)
  • Since March, I've been on thyroid medicine to correct recently discovered hypothyroidism, and my thyroid levels have now returned to the normal range (yay!)
  • Since March, I've been seriously on the go - I have attended 5 kinky events (even taught two classes at one), gone home to Houston twice, went to my lover with sugar daddy tendencies twice, met a different lover on the west coast once, and spent a day or two in Chicago / St Louis with friends at least 8 times (yay!)
  • Since June, when Barak Broke My Brain, I have had less fear of vertigo crashes - after all, I gathered a ton of data about what it felt like to be close to my edges, and the resulting overall reduction of fear has, I think, helped my neurological balance, which allows me to do a bit more, because I'm not fighting that particular layer of anxiety (yay!)
So all in all, my sense is that I'm better at physical stuff like travel, motion, and activity, but worse at cognitive stuff like writing and concentrating on complex conversations.

Thus, no phone sex. Phone sex is cognitive. It takes massive brainpower for me to match the energy, pitch, speed, interest of the person I'm talking with. I change a little when I'm on the phone with each caller, and those changes require subtle concentration that I wasn't aware of until I suddenly couldn't sustain them anymore.

But I'm still having fun, still playing at kinky scenes at parties and privately, I just can only have fun as me (no role plays, no scenarios which are outside my primary interests), and not for long periods of time.

Eventually, I'll write again, I'm sure - about some of the fun scenes I've done, about the things I've learned about being a host and munch leader in a kinky community, about my marriage drifting from non-monogamy to full-on polyamory for both of us. It's all good stuff. I'm having an amazing life.

I just ... can't ... brain ... all that well most of the time. And when I can brain, I'm talking instead of writing.

It'll come back, I'm sure. I'm too much of a writer for it not to come back. Some day.

In the meantime, I appreciate emails asking how I'm doing, catching me up on your life, asking for advice for your kinky situations. I'll do what I can to respond in a timely manner, and I always love hearing from you.