The Prospect of Free Time

Another year has gone by. I have no resolutions. I'll probably find other ways to disappoint myself this year.

I just read through my last two posts from back in September and a good deal has changed since then. My wife has been in her "new" job as a pharmaceutical sales rep for about 6 months now. It's clearly the best job she has ever had and she'd doing really well at it. It was exactly the sort of challenge she needed in her life and I can see how it makes use of her best qualities.

As for her headaches, a local neurologist prescribed her some nasty anti-seizure medication which actually started making her pass out. It was pretty scary. When she reported the side effect to the neurologist, the neurologist first suggested raising the dosage. Then she tried to prescribe a different anti-seizure medication. My wife didn't agree to either. I researched treatments for her type of headache on the Internet and found another option which doesn't have any harmful side effects. Between that and her watching her diet to avoid any products with MSG in them, she's back to leading a more normal life now.

Our sex life has been about the same as it has been. We have a decent amount of sex when she's in the infertile phase of her NFP chart, but her interest in sex kind of stops there, while mine persists.

Shortly before the holidays she had an abnormal period which led us to get a pregnancy test. The test was negative, but we're rather certain that she miscarried. That made her extremely sad, of course. Me too, but I'm obviously a little more removed from the situation. Up until now, we have been completely successful using NFP to hold off having kids. Even so, we still would have welcomed one with open arms. We really only want to wait another year or so more.

I've been uncertain how to help my wife work through the sadness. Do I try to talk to her about it incase she's bottling up her feelings? Or would it be smarter to just let her bring it up if she wants to talk and let time move us forward? I don't feel like I've done anything but last night she told me that I've done a good job of being supportive.

I've assumed that this event has temporarily killed my wife's sexual desire, but I can't say it has affected my own. The holidays afforded us about a week at home together over which we haven't fooled around at all. I tried to get her turned on a few times in the morning but without any luck. She even wore the sexiest black dress and red boots out on New Year's Eve, but I didn't get to help her out of it. Given the recent events, I've tried to be a gentleman and not even bring up my so-called needs. I only mentioned that I wanted to have some fun once, to which she suggested it was my fault for falling asleep so early. Really? That night she fell asleep early.

There was a time, maybe back in November, where I felt like I had freed myself from wasting time looking at pornography. I replaced the habit with drawing, and if I wanted to draw a girl, I printed it out so I wouldn't be stuck in front of the computer. I had some simple rules I would follow to limit my opportunities to look at porn and they were working. Now I can't remember what they were. Maybe I wasn't using my computer when my wife wasn't home.

So much for that. Now I feel as though the part of me that draws in his free time is one clearly defined alter-ego and the part of me that enjoys pornography is another. Yesterday my wife returned to work after her holiday break and I was somebody else all day. I looked at pictures, videos, I even voice chatted with two different girls on SecondLife. By the time my wife got home, I just hated myself.

I have to go back to work on Monday and my wife will be home for the weekend tomorrow, so today feels like my last chance to accomplish anything over this entire two weeks off from work. Mind you, many of the days went into preparing for Christmas and celebrating Christmas with family. But today, I could do anything, and I'm just here feeling frustrated and anxious.

My hope in starting this blog initially was that I would stop living day to day and see the bigger picture, see the negative scripts that I replay over and over. Maybe I could see through them then and replace them with something constructive. This one that I have lived so many times before is the "Prospect of Free Time." Leading up to it I have gradiose visions of all that I will achieve with a block of time to do whatever I please. Inevitably I get mired in visiting or being visited by family. And then when I do get time alone to myself, I feel so anxious with so much hope and so little time, that I end up wasting the opportunity just trying to alleviate the stress. Often I try to do it with porn, but I've also wasted entire days over this vacation playing video games. I don't even feel like I'm enjoying myself with either. I just can't bring myself to do anything else.

So this is it. Today's the day. And I've already wasted half of it writing this.