Getting things perfect is a big stick to beat ourselves with. Making other people get things right is even trickier. Specificity helps up to a point. Much as I love being happy and right, doing well enough is more achievable than perfection. Ambition is exhausting.

Agreeing to something with reluctance is more confusing than saying ‘No, I don’t want to do that.’ Sometimes you don't know you don't want to do it till you try it. Understandable.  Saying No has consequences. Yet frees both people to find genuine willingness elsewhere.

Free from conditioning and fear, we can choose to respond with love, choice and encouragement. We come to appreciate erotic moments without having to make fantasy love-mountains out of them. Then, instead of going into paroxysms of retreat or regret, trashing these brief encounters or experiences with our crazy craving and aversion-led minds, can we let grasping and expectation fall away? Maybe on a good day.  It’s a long road. If everything is what we make it, we can choose different perspectives.

When to lead, and when to give way and be in service, is a power dynamic worth exploring. Both have generosity. Offering clear leadership is relaxing for each person; understanding the limits and possibilities for each role allows the freedom for the leader to be creative and selfish in the cleanest way. Knowing the follower will express limits is essential. Guesswork is confusing.

Giving and receiving are a joy that can make the world go round. Receiving what we want and need is an astounding gift. As is being able to offer what we are skilled at, and have that affirmed by another’s appreciation. Yet to offer something that isn’t required, or to be given what we can’t value, is a fast track to mismatching, hurt and misunderstanding. Getting clear on detail and desire allows for a full-hearted response either way.

The people I’ve found attractive in the last few years are totally their own person, quirky, rebellious, following their own path. I find that state of misfit independence admirable and interesting, and of course, unconsciously, its an invisible part, seeking expression of it for myself.

How many ways does your character push love or dreams away? While that can be useful when you want to be discerning, or avoidant, it’s not so helpful with the folx you do actually want to love you. Whether you’re overly hardworking, helpful, success-chasing, dramatic, fearful, detached, ebullient, forceful, or passive, your response is often habitual. Be aware of its counterproductive strategies when seeking familiarity in the wrong places.

Who I think I am is sometimes interrupted by what I do. Or have done. Or have agreed to, or been intrigued by. My nice woman self-image drops away in the face of the reality of my behaviour. I’m glad.

There’s a tyranny to modern mindfulness. Why should you feel calm, or expect to have a soothed nervous system when there’s so much uncertainty, unfairness and destruction?  What if activism or connection is a decent response to despair?

Last summer, I met a man I’d given a tantric massage to once, over a decade ago. Meeting in an art gallery, we talked about colour and dead bodies as we wandered around paintings inspired by Monet. Later, en route to a cafe, he briefly told me of the impact of our first meeting on his life. I hugged him in the street. We simply don’t know the impact, or bonds, that form in the unlikeliest of places.

There’s a moment in intimacy or dance that, if I slow down, I can feel myself moving as an object in a vast universe. I can be aware of myself in space in relation to another. I’m connecting to me, rather than to them. An awareness of skin, movement, breath and closeness, a slower trancey state of enhanced perception and joy. Of feeling close and free, to notice another body, skin, fabric, mass, warmth, beard, thigh in a wordless connection in the present moment. Enough permission to share aspects of myself that don’t usually have expression, a way for another to allow that in themselves. It’s spacious, generous, and rare. It’s taken time, a long time, to be in that momentary bliss, to let go of grasping, and to see the moment as a gift and only that. To override meaning-making and longing for more. To let go of the want to hold on to this beauty, attention and permission. There’s an eroticism and sensuality to it that’s missing in my Greek exile life. These solar flares of remembering are precious.

People are trying to get their needs met, just like you are. They want what they want, just like you do. The gift of compassion is to believe that everyone is doing their best in their own struggle and strategy. Each person has a different personality, motivation, parents, trauma, and experiences. There’s no earthly reason why someone might want exactly what you want in life or in the bedroom. However, it might not be what you need, and then the relationship presents dilemmas. So a great way to work it out is to check rather than assume or guess. It doesn’t ruin the magic. It saves you time, dignity and sanity.

There’s a great revelation in how much gets done in a period of intentional celibacy. My swivelly head has a rest, there’s peace of mind, and time to focus on projects and individual creativity. Being single is decisive; fewer pulls on my time in the absence of drama, deceit and the seemingly endless focus on ‘working things through’ in relationships going nowhere. There’s a simplicity to my energy, body and mind being my own. My love and intelligence are freer, a cut glass vase returned from conflicting mush. It’s a compelling choice, a place of satisfaction, direction and purpose rather than lack, criticism and longing.

I talk to queer friends and folx younger than me who so much earlier felt or saw being queer as an option. I come late to most things around sexuality. It's a time lag in possibilities. My sexual identity as a given has crumbled. I don’t feel like I have to know who and what I want to call myself now. In responding to whoever I meet and new ideas, my potential in any given moment is piqued by something unknown. A desire to explore what might be mutually longed for, to create something between us that is unique in that encounter. Leaving the heteronormative escalator, experimenting with different relationship models and erotic styles, stopping conforming to unconscious roles, straight or tantric versions of polarity. Rather than an identity crisis, it’s an invitation to freedom, to possibility, to fluidity.

Shame is a sneaky motherfucker. I’d thought I was mercifully shame-free. Recently, I realised hidden shame had entwined itself into my anxiety. They have a co-dependent relationship, a pooling spiral of goo, hidden beneath and entangling worry. Caging expression while gagging me from sharing joy, freedom, sexiness and lived experiences.

Can you bring attention and awareness back to yourself? In intimacy, instead of wondering where touch is going next, or aiming for the T-zone too soon, can you slow down enough to notice what’s happening in your own body? Pull back, take a breath, be centred in yourself in the presence of another.

How do we open up and listen to each other, to share our sexual experiences, innocence and hopes? And to get educated about what’s possible in the realms of healing deep wounds around sex, to opening up to different ways of seeing eroticism for self-awareness, as well as sensation. It’s helpful, if not vital, to find teachers, connections, and closeness, so that sexuality can be a natural part of conversation, community building, personal growth, and belonging. Find your way in and don’t look back.

Self-exile is easy for a lone wolf. Belonging takes time, and the willingness to be wrong about where we believe we’re welcome.

Avoidance gets a bad rap. I like it. It saves me from getting into all sorts of situations I wouldn't be happy in. I’ve been anxious too. That was worse. At least avoidance feels familiar. Anxiety took me places where I didn’t know myself or like who I became. Intolerable vulnerability, obsessive rumination, mitigated ineffectively by attempts at control. Discernment plays a part. Give me avoidance any day; it's less ruinous.

I don’t swear much. Though a well-placed ‘for fucks sake’ pleases my profanity censor. Usually, as she rolls her eyes, wondering what century we’re in.