voluntary celibacy

cluelessly then, i wonder what choosing a celibate life entails. does one suppress one's desires constantly, such struggling representative of one's moral strength? or perhaps the feelings go away, like when one fasts from food or some activity, the lack of which reinforces further estrangement from said activity? or perhaps one begins without these compulsions at all, emotionally spayed from the start?

or does one develop a fetish for young boys in white frocks?

involuntary celibacy

admittedly a selfish chauvinist, i remember a rationalised bout of self-pity during a half year's lack some years back of what is arguably mankind's most essential social activity, feeling deprived of an entitlement rightfully earned through and immediately embraced on advent of statutory legality - too old not to be getting any, so to speak.

celibacy

because the appropriate finger didn't display a relevant relationship accountrement, and because my marital status is often ambiguous, a pious colleague asked if i had the gift of celibacy - a term well understood by the right circles as fulfilling a higher calling.

i can't think of a gift i'm less likely to have from the bounteous list in the holy book.

personality testing 2

banal truth-seeking of the lowest denominator, when all we want is a reduction to cliche and type, in order to give us a context to communicate and to relate, in neat polarities and congruences. the same is true of star signs, body types, humours. we am, therefore i am.

personality testing

we like personality tests. self-affirmation by ritualising our most familiar choices in a mechanism designed to re-state our identity, or more accurately, what we'd like our identity to be. That's why everyone always affirms the veracity of the results after being plesantly surprised by them. Why shouldn't we affirm? Why surprise? It's a closed system of questions, answers and feedback. A foregone conclusion.

personality

just got an interpretive report from the Institute for Personality and Ability Testing - part of employee analysis fully paid for and subscribed to by the company.

my highest, most extreme scores should be cause for their concern: 10 (of 1-10) for self-reliant (as opposed to group-oriented), and 2 for rule-conscious (as opposed to expedient). exactly what they want - the only maverick in their demographic.

yet another cliche to have fallen into, even when different.

the grind

back to the grind today. never gets easier. not after 10 years, not after 30. this must disprove the theory that all human beings need some sort of work to give meaning and purpose to life. at least for me anyway.

a hard personal question, that.