Day: 20

playful flirtatiousness, virtually my calling card over the last five years, is gone--has been gone these last twenty days--this is not a conscious choice, a matter of not engaging but rather a change in neurochemistry that not only changes behavior but changes something more significant that I am at pains to clearly define--I have always enjoyed what I call the mental dancing of online flirting--it came to me naturally, easily, effortlessly--this desire or impulse or train of thought or whatever you want to call it, is simply not there--whatever that spark was, it is no more--I suppose this will get me in less trouble and offend fewer people but I can't help but feel that a fundamental aspect of my personality has been taken from me--now here is what is interesting, in person I am more playful than I have ever been but online that playfulness is just gone--I suspect that this playfulness is/was tied to the creative functions of the brain and as the meds have shut down one, so too the other--I have also noticed a change in my blogging comments--over the past five years, almost religiously, I have responded, almost immediately, to virtually every comment I ever received--in excess of twenty thousand--yet, in the last twenty days I have let comments go without a response or the response has come at a later time--why this change in attitude or behavior I cannot pinpoint, but this has been a consistent attitudinal change over the last three weeks--I also find that I do not follow other blogs as closely as I once did--again, a rather major change in my online behavior

I am reading faster than I have ever read before--almost skimming in the way one is taught with speed reading--where in the past I would stop and examine words I was unfamiliar with, now I just skip over them, or plow past them--again this speaks to what I find almost astounding, which is a hundred and eighty degree turn on the issue of plot--until three weeks ago I never cared about plot--I am at a loss to explain this change in mental outlook--and let it be noted, these are not conscious changes on my part--I have not decided to do anything differently--and it is in this way, this observing, of these changes that have occurred that I feel like a puppet pulled on the strings of pyschoactive drugs--what part of me is not capricious--what part is simply not biology and chemistry at work--and is personality simply the luck of the draw and we play the only hand we're given--or we take drugs to get a new deal

had my first post-med orgasm today--it required such a force of will, effort and concentration as to be virtually without pleasure--although when I ejaculated, the smile of victory, of the triumph of the will over the mind and the body, made my cheeks ache--I would like to think this is the first sign that my body may be adjusting to the meds and that my ability to be orgasmic is and will return