Month end review

Well, today is only my fourth consecutive day without porn or mb, but the trend is looking OK:

January - 48.4% free
February - 67.9% free (01.01.06 - 28.02.06 - 57.6%)
March - 67.7% free (01.01.06 - 31.03.06 - 61.1%)

There's a very slight dip in performance since last month, but that's more to do with MB than porn, so perhaps could be worse.

My immediate goal is 7 clear days, then 13. I know that's an odd number, but I've not made more than 12 this year. And I'm not even superstitious.

I'll be back on Monday.

The Rules

Again, in no particular order:

• Get up earlier. Check the support board, blog, and do other non-work stuff, and maybe some work too, before work officially starts at 9am.
• Start the day with a prayer. It's important I concentrate on my relationship with God over and above quitting porn use. The one will lead to the other.
• Change task every hour. Whether I need to or not. Getting bored of the same task is a major trigger, not necessarily to do porn, but to procrastinate, waste time online, and venture back to the top of that slippery slope.
• Have frequent tea-breaks. OK, so substituting porn for caffeine may not be the wisest thing, but... we have de-caff. And it's the getting away from the screen that's important.
• Go out at lunch-time. Walk to the shop. Buy a Mars bar. Walk back. Just get some fresh air in my lungs!
• Don't stay online. Unless I have a legitimate reason to be surfing, I will go online no more than 3 times during the day to send & receive e-mail, check in at the support board, blog, etc.
• Add to the 'blocked sites' list. The majority of porn sites are all blocked already, but any that slip by need to be blocked
• No random surfing. Any number of technically porn-free sites may include provocative images, text, or any other possible triggers. These must be shut down as soon as this becomes apparent, and if appropriate, blocked. A closer look 'to check it out' will definitely be a slip.
• Remove all trace. Any potentially triggering sites will be deleted from my surfing history, not to cover my tracks, but so that I can't go back and find them at a later stage.
• Reward myself. My £1 a day reward system was abandoned a while back, but maybe it's time is here to reinstate it. I just need to think of a new reward I wouldn't otherwise get.

The Aim

I've decided that, while I'm tweaking this page to be a more useful 'one-stop shop' for what I need to kick this, it would be a good opportunity to restate my aims and the rules I need to follow in order to meet them.

In no particular order, the aims are:

• To stay away from all porn and other sources of temptation.
• Not to indulge in MB, sexual fantasy, or any remotely sexual activities without my wife.
• To explore the causes of my addiction.
• Not to think of it as just 'avoiding porn', but to fill the gap porn has been occupying with more positive things. Hence:
• To get my prayer life back on track.
• Write something.
• Read - the Bible, and some quality fiction.
• Spend more quality time with my family.

Thought for the day

It's amazing how much work you can get done if you don't waste time looking for porn.

No porn or MB today.

New stuff

It's getting a bit crowded over there on the sidebar, but I've just compiled a list of key posts from the life of this blog.

They are purely for my benefit; I need to use my experiences to motivate my ongoing recovery, so I've pulled out some of the posts that, for various reasons, I think will help me do that. I'll be continuing to revise this bit for maximum benefit, as I've reset my homepage here now; online devotionals are all well and good, but this is the site of my sins, and as such not the best place for a one-on-one with God. (I guess there could be the opposite argument, that using the PC for this purpose is exactly the way to end its association with porn, but at the moment I'm too weak to do that.)

New visitors to the blog might find the selection of Key Posts gives a useful precis of where I'm coming from, but I've not intended that, and it won't give the whole story. Feel free to dip in though :)

I suck at this.

I truly, truly suck.

The annoying thing is, I don't even know why I sucked today. I've no excuse. No triggers I can identify at the moment.

I just wanted to look at naked ladies... so I did.

I'm just too pathetic and weak.

I feel like crap now for giving in, and suddenly the future is hidden under a dark cloud... will I ever be able to rid myself of these desires?

Which way do I turn next? What can I do when I'm just too weak to do anything?


I'm logging off. I'm leaving this infernal machine for the weekend. Feels like if I never see it again it'll be too soon.

But I'll be back Monday.

Grrrrrr.

Love, forgiveness and odd things.

This is an odd thing.

Christians generally accept that they cannot do anything to earn the love and forgiveness of God. Certainly I know this is true.

Why then do we (by which I mean I) convince ourselves we can do something to lose that love and forgiveness?

Another wasted week.

Well, perhaps not entirely.

But, to start with the bad news: I did wipe out 6 of the last 8 days with either p or mb.

Then good news: I've figured out that being ill is a trigger (like I needed another one!). It's a really annoying one, too: even when I'm so under the weather I can't be bothered to work, to blog, to pray, I can still find the energy to punish the monkey.

I've come up with a couple of reasons for this:

1. Plain old boredom, a trigger at times anyway, exacerbated by lack of energy.
2. Conditioning from way back: since I discovered mb the best chance I had for experimentin with it would have been when everyone went out but I was too ill to go too.
3. The fact that I can't be bothered to blog, pray, go out or do anything else that might get my mind off it leaves me more vulnerable.

The fact that I was getting grief from work and from my wife on top of all this just pushed things from 'mb as a boredom/stress reliever' to 'afternoon of porn & mb'.

I've not really binged on porn, though there has been some. But I am concerned that mb has become part of the daily routine again. I hope I can break the habit before it really settles in again. Which, of course, leads me to the immediate answer: new habits, primarily the good ones that fell completely by the wayside while I was not at my best - prayer and Bible study.

First step in that direction is to reset my homepage to remind me. Not sure how good these devo's will turn out to be, but it's got to be better than nothing.

Ah, $#!+

Not one but two bollockings from my boss, the missus chucking a strop at me and a bloody foul headache to boot.

What was there to do but say: screw you, reality, I'm off to porn world.

Bugger.

Here's a thing...

It's been almost 3 weeks since I last popped a porn pill, if only a few days mb-free.

But maybe that's enough to make me more aware of other things. Like... well, there's this young woman. Not somebody I know, but a passing acquaintance of my wife, and someone I may well have cause to be within leering distance of once or twice a week. And, yes, she ticks all my boxes, so to speak. Which is kind of unfortunate.

Essentially, there's nothing more to this than the fact that this person is quite attractive, to me at least. I know I'd never act on it, but I am increasingly aware of the fact that I notice her. Whenever I'm within leering distance. And I am concerned about this, not in case I get noticed noticing her, although that would be embarrassing, but because it means the lust monster in me has found (or is at least trying to find) another outlet.

Well, at least I'm onto him.

Still on the borders

Again I found myself at the borders today. And again I ended up mb'ing.

I've cut porn out, but I've just replaced it with something 'clean', but which serves the same purpose. (I've been here before, too.)

I need to replace it all with something constructive. I've tinkered a bit here, adding a couple more links to the 'Good clean blogs' section - hopefully some of them will get updates to keep me busy during bored moments (I hope you're all listening?). I've got some more ideas to make this page more useful in my struggle, which I will implement in due course.

On top of which, I will endeavour to make amends with God, and carry on my walk with Him, although it seems tough, and he seems very distant at the moment.

I can't do this alone, as I keep proving to myself. But something in me keeps wanting to try.

Withdrawal

Even with my recent minor slip, I think I've entered the fog of withdrawal.

A recurring problem for me is lack of sleep, and last night I just could not turn my brain off. Stupid thing. I think it's part of withdrawal. I alos know I can reduce its effects by cutting caffeine, so that's what I'll start doing until I remember how to sleep.

Progress report:
Tuesday was fine - largely stayed away from the PC to avoid temptation turning a minor slip into a serious binge.
Wednesday: so far so good, but I did just catch myself venturing towards those borderlines. But I did catch myself.

Securing the borders

Well, let's get straight to the point: I've backslidden a little. Not right back to square one, thankfully, but enough for me to feel bad.

The boredom I was feeling when I last posted didn't fade. Instead of dealing with it constructively, I toyed with the edges of acceptable behaviour. I ventured into the grey areas, the borderline activities. End result: mb.

I'm not going to dwell on it. It's happened, and if I worry about it too much I'll just end up doing something worse.

But the lesson from this is clear: I wasn't being hard enough on what is acceptable behaviour for me. I need to cut those borderline activities right out from here on.

So maybe I've taken a backward step. But if I can recoup and take two steps forward, it doesn't matter.

Progress this year:
January 48%
February 68%
2006 60%

Boredom & conditioning

It's a struggle today because I'm bored, and I've conditioned myself to do porn when I'm bored.

Cleanzilla

At the risk of surprising Somebody with another mention so soon, I thought I'd mention his Cleanzilla contest as it opens today.

Basically, Somebody over at pornwar.info has had the really quite good idea of a contest to encourage putting open source PC utilities, specifically the Firefox browser, to good use by optimising it for porn-free surfing. How good it is to see someone actually doing something positive about the internet porn blight.

Unfortunately I now zip about coding so I won't be having a stab at it myself, but I can promise any would-be entrants a customer :-)

I am slightly concerned, however, about how the entries will be tested... will Somebody sit at his PC, tirelessly typing in those long-remembered porn urls in the hope that they're blocked, or just randomly google more and more obscure fetishes?

Well, Somebody, I commend your initiative and wish you success, but I hope you've thought about it....