Interesting conversations are my greatest wonderful distraction. However other Stuff with a capital S does not get done.

I have issues with authority.  Don’t you? Defiance is generally my response. Being a bratty sub is something I’d like to try. I felt a quiet, furious Fuck You when I was punished for not closing a door properly. I’m a terrible submissive when it comes to someone else’s stupid rules. I’m a terrible submissive anyway. Saying “Fuck you daddio could be fun”, I want to see what would happen. Would you put me over your knee and spank me?

Every so often on a tantric massage, clients would try to touch me. Despite the guidance that it was for them to receive, I’d feel their hands wandering under my sarong. I’d gently remove their wandering, wondering digits from my thoughts and thighs. Occasionally going off piste was enjoyably transgressive but I still felt guilty that I’d broken an imaginary tantric code. On some level, I didn’t approve of myself doing tantric massage. Another part of me couldn’t believe I was doing it. I loved the embodied sensuality of those free radical days, despite my disapproval.

If your breath had a voice, what might it say? Recently taking part in a listening pair, the answer was  “I need more space.”

My inner child is a boy. I met him in a meditation in art therapy, and witnessed  him from afar for a while. Such a cute red haired chubby innocent. He was intensely focused on his scalectrix, watching the cars go round the figure of eight track with little plastic pine trees and pit stops. When I asked him if he had a message for me, he let me know that ‘it’s okay to be fascinated’.

When I offer my (ahem) observations, suggestions or experience, it can feel critical. I know. I could put it down to my ‘right-angle cross of incarnation’, a human design concept that shows our purpose. Apparently, mine is ‘to make new laws’. Which is ironic given I grew up in a household where “Because I say so,” was often a response to my teenage questioning.

I prefer encouragement to punishment. If you haven’t worked that out, you don’t know me. If you have, I’ll do quite a lot for you.

What if there are different mes living on multiple timelines? Like a pinball machine, lighting up in different circuits. In one alter-alison I imagine being happily married to an accountant, with a spacious white fitted kitchen and kids at Oxbridge. In another timeline, I’m a brothel Madame. Or a geography teacher at a girls' school in the Lake District. Or an expat wife married to a diplomat in Asia. I hope I’m enjoying lighting up in the other timelines, being other Alis.

Ffs! I don’t know who to be madder about: the voracious billionaires buying politicians and environmental policy, the warring, corrupt presidents, or the loser rapists drugging their partners. Vainglory, I can’t have the slightest effect on. I feel helpless and furious in equal measures, and I don’t know where to express the futility and rage. So I go about making the house beautiful, supporting the next wave of sex educators, trying to stay grounded in the unease, fear and dismay. How are we supposed to pretend that conquest is ‘success’ or that it’ll all come good, or that disaster capitalism will continue unabated? I want to cry.

Allowing the parts of our personalities that we often feel are unacceptable is freeing. Giving them expression with consenting adults who want what you try to hide, and who will support you to feel the permission and experience you seek to heal, builds trust in life. Transformation happens when we can be more of who we are and might be. I’ve come away from D/s workshops feeling like a Head of Household relationship would suit me. That polyamory could get more done. That having ‘men in service’ might not be as demanding as I think. That’s my job. Whether I’ll put any of it into action isn't as important as accepting these aspects in me.

I’ve just been diagnosed with breast cancer. I’m surprisingly uninterested in having cancer. The greater question, of how to live life with some degree of generosity and radiance after having to stop my beloved HRT patches, is more perplexing. As the oestrogen trickles out of the building, I wonder what might remain or arrive beyond sadness and fatigue? As a friend reminded me, who’s just completed her cancer treatment, “Watch your thoughts, Ali”.

Defensiveness, blame, judgment, minimising or distraction have no place in a rupture and repair situation. Listening to impact is much more informative. Apologising if asked is easier than holding a grudging reluctance. It’s a big deal to learn to empathise and say sorry genuinely. And to accept an apology and move on.

I’m trying out being rude and taking a break from my responsive, capable, problem-solving self. I wonder if anyone will notice? It’s a good chance to test where my perception of responsibility meets the reality of necessity.

“Oh, I could have never done that,” is another phrase I hear when I recount my escapades. I never thought I could or would do half the things I’ve done, either. If you want to grow or get out of a rut, putting your body into pleasurable or experimental new situations often rewards the risk.

We’re unreliable narrators of our own lives, based on narrow experiences and inherent ignorance. It’s not our fault, and we’re doing the best we can with what we’ve got. We don’t know what we don’t know. How do we hold compassion for the momentary ridiculousness of enormously preoccupying, ultimately petty concerns? And how, instead, to remember to look at the stars, or the beauty of lichen or a tiny flower and take in the awe of the night sky or exquisite detail?  Even though I know this, I spend too much time preoccupied with the first and not enough on the second.

I had a realisation that I’ve spent much of my life in situations of unrequited love. I don’t know what to do about that particular existential kink.

It’s easy to recognise someone who hasn’t taken a self-development journey in conversational dead ends. The lack of experiential or emotional depth or shade, as the conversation once again steers to mundane past anecdotes. I can find interest in many things, yet this trip down memory lane via unrelated enrollment anecdotes eludes me. Call me shallow.

When I first bought the house in Corfu, I remember a moment when I looked out of the back window at a single orange on the tree, black mould blanketing the leaves. In the far distance, forboding Pantokrator, the quiet volcano at the centre of the island. My heart sank at the enormity of the task ahead. Until that moment, the process of buying had had an unstoppable momentum. While there were many healthy oranges the following year, this season we’re back to the lonely flowering. Meanwhile, the lemon trees are raining lemons, and I don’t know how to make marmalade. I wonder if it’s time to go to the chapel at the mountain? There’s a darkness to inner strength, and it might be time to pray for guidance rather than repent at leisure.

If you know human design, I’m a 4/6 generator, the Opportunist/Role Model. A design to create opportunities with friends and friends of friends. Without that focus of opportunity, the energy peters out. Although it can feel transactional when not correct, it’s thrilling when we’re helping each other out with what we individually value. I’m not here to appeal to strangers.

Doing things together is so nice, I want to live in a posh commune. Sometimes I do. Together, we get tasks done, eat salad in the sun, go to the beach, and watch the sunset. We feel less stressed and isolated, there’s progress and discovery amidst connection and purpose with heart.