Many things to say, but this is the most rel­e­vant right now. This also hap­pens to touch on almost every aspect of my life, and I find myself con­sid­er­ing things from a gigan­tic range of angles. Unfortunately, I can only briefly touch on each of them, in an effort to stave digres­sion.

The first and most impor­tant goal I’ve ever had was to gain a healthy amount of con­fi­dence by the time I was mid­dle-age. This was so that I could enjoy at least half of my life as a strong indi­vid­ual. I set this goal because I real­ized that I had an unhealthy amount of self-doubt, which con­tributed to a depress­ing life and lifestyle, as well as unre­al­ized poten­tial.

This meant fight­ing off the inse­cu­ri­ties that were bred into me, which amount­ed to most of my child­hood. It has­n’t been easy in the last cou­ple of years, but it’s worked. Every six months, I’d real­ize how much I grew. This time, I real­ize that I’m there.

I final­ly feel like I’m in con­trol of my life. I speak to peo­ple dif­fer­ent­ly. I think dif­fer­ent­ly. Instead of avoid­ing con­flict, I can meet it head on. For me, this was prob­a­bly the most dif­fi­cult thing to do ever imag­ine doing. I would plan my life around such an avoid­ance, from my friends to my rela­tion­ships. I had a con­flict pho­bia, an illog­i­cal fear of a spe­cif­ic sit­u­a­tion, but I fought against it and won. In psy­chol­o­gy, peo­ple over­come their pho­bias by remain­ing relaxed in the face of their fears (because one can­not men­tal­ly be relaxed and scared at the same time). I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to do this, by plac­ing myself in uncom­fort­able sit­u­a­tions over the last four months, and approach­ing them cere­bral­ly at the same time.

I also have to say that a major con­tribut­ing fac­tor to the suc­cess has been going through the D/s lifestyle with Loo. Having a sub­mis­sive as expe­ri­enced as she was, plac­ing her trust in me, gave me a sig­nif­i­cant boost in con­fi­dence. She once point­ed out to me while watch­ing Secretary, that Edward Grey’s con­fes­sion to Lee Holloway about pre­vi­ous­ly being shy was a very accu­rate detail. In Loo’s expe­ri­ence, many put in a dom­i­nant posi­tion are able to break out of their shells, and I nev­er under­stood or believed her until now.

So now that I’m here, where do I go? I’ve accom­plished the biggest goal in my life, some­thing I’d planned on work­ing on for the next ten years, and it feels like I’ve lost a major part of my rea­son for liv­ing. I feel like an astro­naut who dreamed of land­ing on the moon as a child, only to accom­plish the goal and real­ize that he had nev­er dreamed of any­thing else.

I sup­pose I still have the rest of my life to decide.