journal entry

10 Journal Entries from 2025 on Sex, Love, Improv Crushes, & ChatGPT

Kate Sloan
Journals from 2025! As ever, my faves are large hardcover ruled Moleskine notebooks, which I’ve been using since 2007 (!!).

Yep, I’m doing a Girly Juice throwback post and sharing 10 of my actual journal entries from my actual journals this year… Here’s some juicy stuff about my sex life, love life, romantic philosophies, creative adventures, etc. in 2025!

March 11th

One of the ways I know these [musical improv] classes actually WORK is that I literally didn’t feel nervous at all for the entire show tonight. At no point was I less than certain that I could make something up in the moment. That’s so fucking crazy, considering that I was pretty damn nervous for my first beginner CLASS, let alone the showcase. I felt in control tonight. I felt like there was time to think of what I wanted to sing next and how to sing it. Whatever neural re-wiring happens when you start to practice improv regularly, it literally changes the way you experience the passage of time.

The things giving me the most joy and comfort in these bleak times all have to do with creativity and connection. Part of me still doubts as to whether I “deserve” to or “should” spend time, energy and money on these classes. But they feel like church and the gym and high school and university all rolled into one; they feel like where I go to be my bravest, best, most open self; they feel like a direct pipeline into connection, fun and laughter with people who somehow just understand me, despite barely knowing me, because we share this passionate, goofy interest in making up songs together on stage.

May 3rd

In any case, this feels notable: When I think about what I would do if I found out that I had [a terminal disease], the things that immediately come to mind are that I would sign up for as many musical improv classes/troupes as possible (and probably even some non-musical ones) and I would tell all my crushes that I think they’re cute, because WHO CARES.

I would also want to organize a concert where I could play all my favorite songs of mine and/or have my loved ones cover songs of mine. I would dress weird every day, unless I didn’t feel like it. I would go see comedy and theatre and live music any nights I was free. I would haunt Civil Liberties (…meant that in the alive-haunt way, but also it would be fun to dead-haunt Civ Lib too). Might give some money to Rosedale if I had any. Or for CB Pro scholarships. And I’d kiss as many cuties as I felt like (with their consent, of course) and masturbate and have sex up until I couldn’t anymore, and still try to find pleasures even after that. Cura te libitum; memento mori. Both.

May 17th

…Anyway, idk idk idk, but it kinda seems like my improv crushes might be into me, which is CRAZY. It really speaks to the way that this art form makes me into my best self. I remember the wild sense of transformation around grade 10-11 when Rosedale helped me come out of my shell in a big way, and how it suddenly seemed that everyone and their mother was attracted to me and was secretly confessing their limerence via Honesty Box or broadcasting it with their big gushy eyes. It was not just that so many people were into me, but that I could see/tell and usually even BELIEVE they were into me. I was so regularly and deeply in touch with the best and most attractive aspects of my me-ness (not to be confused with “penis”) that it seemed plausible that folks could like me. I liked myself. Hell, I finally WAS myself, period, and not an amalgamation of all the shy-meek-sweet-good-girl things I had terrifiedly striven to be until then.

I feel similarly now, like I have rediscovered the parts of myself I like most and am wearing those parts on the surface of my skin every day like glitter body paint. It’s interesting that so much of improv training is about learning to “get out of your own way” mentally – which I largely take to mean, reduce your anxiety/self-criticism/self-censorship to a point that your improv flows directly from your weird brain and is thus more organic and just better overall – and I am feeling similarly about my own attractiveness-or-lack-thereof lately, in that I actually MAKE myself less hot and more invisible when I let myself act like an anxious shy little kid in the corner – whereas, even though I have the same face and body (well, more or less) as the times when I act more confident and gregarious, people respond to me TOTALLY differently in those two states.

I used to think it was like, if maybe 20% of the population would find me attractive based on my looks alone, then maybe another 5-10% might start to find me attractive as they got to know my personality. But I think it’s significantly more than that, actually, especially the older we get. Conventional physical hotness fades, and also it just isn’t enduringly interesting (at least not to me). I want to know if we can make each other laugh until 3 a.m.

May 30th

Kind of beautiful to show up in a new setting as the best, brightest, most new-and-improved version of yourself, and to get to be witnessed and noticed and liked by someone who is similarly in their newest and most exciting form yet, and you see each other the way you each most yearn to be seen, which just adds to the eroticism and safety of the connection, and you’re both obsessed with and committed to this shared crazy art form which cleansed you both alive again from the inside out, and the wonderment and gratitude you both carry about that still burns within you and sometimes gets messily (but not inaccurately) aimed at each other, and you are exploring a body that’s new to you from WITHIN a body that’s new to you, and you are still learning to pilot a brain drunk on dopamine fumes, and you carry middle school like concrete in your bones and high school like glitter in your blood, and you know how you used to kiss and you know how you want to kiss now, and you know how you used to fuck and you think you know how you want to fuck now, and having a crush in your improv class is like finding a diamond tiara mixed into your lottery winnings: you quite literally cannot believe your luck, and you didn’t know this was a possibility, because why dream of delights beyond those that already saved your life?

Incase you were wondering, my current favorite pens for journaling are Pilot Precise V7 rollerballs and Beiwo 0.5mm gel pens.

October 8th

Strange to fly away from Toronto feeling sad to be away from improv friends and my mom for 10 days, as if that were my “real” life, only to be welcomed open-armed by New York City once again… [Most] pressingly to me currently is the date I went on last night with the person I refer to by the moniker “hot they/them Q___” when talking to mb about them. They are this devastatingly hot nonbinary heartthrob from L.A. who is a long-time listener of The Dildorks and a big D&D nerd… They were wearing a red velvet/corduroy blazer that they’d just gotten recently for a friend’s wedding, and I was in a red dress (also incidentally bought for a wedding), so we matched, which I remarked on: “We look cute together!”

We had good conversations for hours, about all kinds of nerdy shit – Mel Brooks, the Adventure Zone, comics, musical improv, etc. They were touching my leg a lot under the table (and earlier at the bar, stepping closer to me every so often) and I suspected it was starting to make me wet – which honestly has been hard for me lately… [Some experiences] had made me feel so enduringly “meh” about the prospect of sex with anyone other than mb. It just didn’t seem appealing/exciting/like it would be any good. But this self-described dom and top (as per when they filled out my Date Me form about a year ago) was touching me under the table and it was turning me on.

Eventually I asked if we should find somewhere to go make out… [Then, outside on the sidewalk] they suddenly stopped, shoved me against a wall, and kissed me right there. Once again, I felt myself getting so turned on. It really is strange how much self-doubt/impostor syndrome I still feel about being a bottomy submissive, as if it’s a fake identity that just disguises fundamental sexual selfishness/laziness or something, but it is laughably obvious how submissive I am when the ways doms kiss me, touch me and talk to me make me so goddamn wet.

Anyway, they were a really good kisser. Like I was moaning and melting and sighing and starting to drop into subspace already… [Later they fingered me and] they gave me a lot of pleasure and made me feel a lot of things… Then they sucked their fingers clean and said, re: my flavor, “I’ve been wondering about that for a while,” which made me blush harder than I’ve blushed on any date in a long time. I asked them if they’d maybe wanna leave a mark on me, which is like… pretty damn romantic, from my perspective. They said they would’ve liked to bite my ass, but in the position and location we were in, it was easier for them to just bite my neck where it meets the shoulder, one of my favorite spots. (OMG, I am getting wet as I’m writing this!! Yikes!) They gave me a mark that I love, a wine-dark hickey right in the spot where my bag strap sits, so I was reminded of them for much of today.

Then they walked me to the subway, holding my hand for some of that time and guiding me with their hand around my waist for some of it, as I teetered in and out of subspace. I felt really taken care of and safe. Never once did I get that cold stab of adrenaline like “Oh god, I’m in a compromised state, alone, with a stranger.” I just wanted to stay longer, to keep kissing them, but I was getting tired. So eventually we just made out in front of the subway like horny teenagers. It was really kind of wild. It is so rare that I feel this kind of attraction for someone these days. And it wasn’t just sexual but romantic too. I felt close to them and it felt safe to open up and let my walls down, which has been so hard for me lately. I felt nervous and starry-eyed on the subway home, and the whole next day, feeling (as I sometimes do after an important first time with a new person) that somehow my body was all new, renewed, remade afresh by the experience. Like my own body felt unfamiliar to me because it had been transformed by the way they touched it, the way they wanted it. Oh god. I might be in trouble, huh.

October 9th

Oh hi, it’s me again, the pain slut who gets fingered on park benches. I am crush-brain garbage today and yesterday, meaning I felt hassled and haunted by my own intrusive romantic fantasies. It’s tough sometimes being both a chronic romanticizer who aims to find delight wherever and whenever possible, and a pragmatic bitch with a kintsugi‘ed heart who believes it’s a dumb waste of time to fixate on, as one random example, a nerdy nonbinary heartthrob who lives across a continent from me.

I mean, both can be true. It can be dumb and potentially painful while also being fun and worth doing, like drinking too hard on a school night at your buddy’s going-away party, or dancing for 3 hours at a wedding even though you have fibromyalgia. There is no “right way” that things are “supposed” to go. I can have a big dumb long-distance crush if I want to, dammit!

November 26th

Me: Just really wanting you to leave so many painful marks all over me and fuck the shit out of me but in a romantic n cute way, ya know
Them: Oh absolutely. brutally but romantically
Me: I want that so bad 🙁
Them: Meeeee toooo

Thinking a lot lately about what “romantic sex” even is to me, because it sure ain’t vanilla missionary in the dark or what [my dommy ex-boyfriend] F___ referred to as “slow stuff & eye-looking,” and yet some of that stuff is at least somewhat appealing with the right person…

I think to me, romantic sex is sex where you both bare some of your soul by pursuing and reacting to the things you authentically desire with each other… sex where you feel absorbed/immersed in sensation and connection and it gets you out of your own head and into someone else’s… sex where you feel strong sensations both physically and emotionally and it feels safe and celebrated for you to feel those feelings… sex where you feel able to truly be yourself (or at least a significant part of yourself), and you know you are not judged or disliked for that but in fact desired for it… sex where your partner seems focused on your pleasure not just because they find it hot but also because they think you deserve a more pleasurable existence because of who you are as a human being… sex where trust acts as an aphrodisiac… sex where effort is a currency of caring… sex where you are both on the same page about what it means and what it feels like… sex without the need to censor yourself, your desires, or your reactions… sex that feels deeply informed by the non-sexual knowledge you have about each other… sex that feels like a shared playspace where your souls can touch and merge for a time… sex that encourages play, fun, and getting what you really, really want… sex that feels like a great conversation… sex that helps you remember you deserve pleasure and are hot… sex that is intentionally scheduled, skilfully practiced, and consistently prioritized… sex that scares you a little with the heights it takes you to… sex that leaves you wanting to say “I love you” when the pleasure overflows out your mouth.

Gotta put stickers on the back covers too! My favorite one here is the Pokémon-inspired one from Namesake.

December 9th

I put up a carefully crafted but admittedly lengthy personal ad on the [redacted] subreddit, honestly probably because all these sweet polite shy Canadian monogamous boys are making me feel frustrated, lol. I think I got about 20 responses, with maybe 5-8 being so short/low-effort that I deleted them immediately, 4-5 being decent but not compatible with me in some key way (e.g. they’re not dominant, or they really want me to sit on their face – I am seeking the pillow princess treatment in this case!), 3-5 being good enough that I’d consider messaging back (and I did message some back)… and the remainder were very obviously ChatGPT-generated, at least partially if not in full.

What is UP with men and outsourcing delicate, intimate human connection to a fucking LLM! It makes me blindingly angry! Part of me feels compassion for their struggle, especially the neurodivergent ones, because men really don’t have social skills drilled into them from birth in the same ways… I would understand if they wanted to consult the robot for advice on how to approach a particular piece of tricky communiqué (and I have even done that myself before), but to copy-&-paste the hollow words of a text generator into your texting app and hit ‘send’… I don’t know how they live with themselves. If you’re that desperate to avoid human connection, why are you nonetheless play-acting at pursuing it?

Some women would vehemently argue that the reason is simple: men only want sex from women, and will do everything they can think of in service of that goal, including lying, misrepresenting themselves, and even stupider shit like expecting women to be too dumb to notice these men are not nearly as articulate or sensitive IRL as they are in their suspiciously verbose messages. I don’t think I believe that the average man is that simple-minded and singularly focused, however. I am of the controversial opinion that men have feelings, longings, and needs in relationships which go beyond the sexual, and that sex is often at least partially the outlet and analogue for their deeper emotional desire for connection and closeness. But one also wonders why these men are constantly shooting themselves in the foot by refusing to learn basic conversational skills and lazily allowing a famously shitty robot to pick up their slack, which it doesn’t do believably or well.

December 15th

I’m low-key disappointed that I probably won’t get to make out with any of my comedy crushes before I leave, because it’s honestly a demisexual’s wet dream to suddenly/finally get sexual with someone you’ve done one zillion improv shows with. Like, I’m hard-pressed to come up with something I’d find hotter and more exciting, both emotionally and sexually. They’ve seen your most embarrassing blunders and your most thunderous successes. They’ve co-created silly art with you night after night, both contributing in total earnestness to this shared ship we all sail together. They’ve seen you when you get dolled up and when you’re just bumming around. They know what makes you laugh and maybe even what makes you scream. They still like you even though they’ve seen you laugh so hard you snort.

To then add the layer on top of that that they additionally want to kiss you, that they have indeed broached that line despite it being unprecedented in your connection, despite the fear that you’ll mess up this thing you really value… It’s just such a sexy proposition to me. There haven’t been many times in my life when someone kissed me for the first time AFTER they already knew me decently well, knew me enough to know they really liked me and wanted me, specifically me. It’s such a hot and validating thought.

And it doesn’t hurt that I’m sure some anxiety and dissociation would be prevented by doing these things with someone you already feel safe with, someone you can relax around, someone your body has a lot of practice feeling relaxed around. I wonder if the kissing would accordingly feel different temporally, in the way that improv scenes seem to give you more time to think of your next line the more that you practice, because your bloodstream is no longer pumping with breakneck adrenaline every time you step on stage. Would kissing T___ or C___ have a certain naturalistic slowness to it, unlike the frantic and forgettable nervous-AF kisses I’ve had on first dates etc.? Would I have time and space, mentally, to marvel at who I was kissing – perhaps even to smile and laugh about it together? Would that laughter be sexy in its own way because it’s an expression of intimacy, of both being simultaneously shocked and delighted by the same thing, almost like the intimacy of watching (or doing) a great improv scene together?

December 20th

Current baseline requirements for a romantic partner:

  • Treats me well and respectfully, always.
  • We make each other laugh a lot.
  • Asks me questions, is intrinsically curious about me, and inspires that same type of curiosity in me. Can carry a conversation.
  • Feminist, leftist, vehemently pro-LGBTQ+ rights.
  • Kinky, communicative about sex, into a lot of the same things I’m into, entirely chill about sex toys and period sex and sometimes having non-penetrative sex.
  • Nerdy and enthusiastic.
  • A good flirt. Makes me feel liked and desired.
  • We share an undeniable mutual attraction on every level that matters to us.
  • Good manners, good hygiene, basic life skills.
  • Smart enough to keep up with me.
  • Polyamory-competent, emotionally intelligent, and in therapy if they need to be.
  • Entirely chill about my line of work, including being written/talked about publicly (anonymized is fine).
  • Creative-minded and interested in the arts.

Part of me thinks these requirements are too stringent. Another part of me thinks they’re not stringent enough.

12 Days of Girly Juice 2022: 6 Journal Entries

Kate Sloan

Dear friends, I didn’t write in my journal much this year; one of the occupational hazards of being someone who writes for a living is that sometimes you don’t have enough time/energy to write for yourself. A lot of the writing I did do in my journal was the many many pages of notes I tend to take during solo shrooms trips; usually I put on a movie (or sometimes 2-3 in a row) and sit in front of it with my Moleskine and pen, noting all the thoughts and feelings that come up as I watch Hercules or A Bug’s Life or Cats Don’t Dance or whatever.

So, some of the journal entries I’m sharing in this post are extremely condensed/curated excerpts from those trip notes, and some are just regular journal entries about thoughts and feelings I was having at the time. A lot of these entries also contain reference to the trauma healing work I’ve been doing this year in Internal Family Systems therapy. I hope you enjoy, and that you’re having a good December.

 

March 12th

Some notes from a solo shrooms trip:

All of us (all the “parts” of me) can rally together inside. Working collaboratively on a big task (like healing trauma) inherently builds intimacy. And hopefully trust. Like how Chuck Nolan (in the movie Cast Away) needed to be the guy looking for rope and also the guy who sent him to look. It can save your sanity to be multiple selves.

No one’s there to care for you if you’re just alone. You have to be able to split yourself, see yourself and your life from two angles at once, yours and hers (your inner child’s). It’s the only way you both can be cared for, protected and healed. The way I “trip-sit” myself is such good training for being simultaneously the passenger and the captain. It needs to become almost instinctual, like psychological muscle memory, for me to separate from and care for my inner bbgirl like this.

The hardest part is realizing: as a kid, you thought adults had all the answers and were never afraid, but in reality, you can be afraid and only know what you know and still decide to helm the ship. Having to calm her helps summon the most adult, nurturing parts of me to the surface. I never need to worry I’m a bad “parent” to her as long as I am listening to her, affirming her feelings, and helping her do what she wants to do next.

I spent a lot of time alone in my room as a kid because I wouldn’t trigger myself, wouldn’t monitor my own behavior for badness, or yell at myself. It was very resourced of me to be in my room alone with books, journals, dolls/teddies/stuffed animals, music, my tape recorder, my cute clothes. I found peace in solitude. But crucially, this strategy REQUIRES that I only be nice to myself, and not be the exact kind of terrorizer that necessitated my self-regulating alone time.

 

April 14th

Free-writing because mb told me to:

[My high school] was a place where queerness of all definitions was accepted and encouraged. It was in some ways a culture shock after 2 years at [my middle school], where social hierarchy mattered so primally, so fundamentally. What is it about middle school that brings out the meanest, darkest streaks in young people’s psychology? Is it the underformed prefrontal cortex, the impulse control issues, the lack of emotional experience that turns pimply dweebs into monsters?

There are two girls I regret having shunned and gossiped about rather than befriended in middle school. One was [N.], widely regarded as the sluttiest girl in school. We were all 12-14 years old, and there were constant rumors that [N.] dated men in their late teens or early twenties. I wonder now if she was okay, if those men were taking advantage of her; any way you slice it, they almost certainly were.

The other girl we were mean about was [K.]; she was meek but deeply funny when you got her going. She was into anime and other “nerdy” stuff like that. There were also constant rumors that she was a lesbian, and the popular girls would sometimes claim that she had been staring at them or making them feel uncomfortable. In retrospect, the homophobic anxiety was off the charts at that school, which made [my high school] seem even more utopian by contrast.

[My therapist] says it makes sense that I would latch onto the structure of “popularity” in order to prop up my damaged self-image after the emotional mistreatment I’d endured elsewhere. We naturally look for ways to feel more empowered when we go through a disempowering trauma – that’s how shame first evolves, as a way of coping with unpredictable dangers by positing that we can theoretically protect ourselves from those dangers if we behave a certain way because the problem is that we are bad – to believe otherwise would be to have to accept the terrifying truth that danger can strike at any time, for any reason, or for no reason at all.

So I can see why I got so obsessed with winning/maintaining the approval of [B., the most popular girl at my middle school] and her cronies, even though I didn’t even like them that much or want to be their friend for reasons other than social status and avoiding loneliness + ridicule. There were rules I could follow – I thought – that would help me stay safe: wear this brand of clothing, carry this type of purse, talk this way, mock these girls, express derision toward the “right” things (gayness, nerdiness, fatness, etc). I was trying to follow all the protocols and even that wasn’t enough, ultimately, to keep me safe from having my social status destroyed. But it was a lesson I needed to learn.

 

July 27th

Part of why this songwriting challenge has been so good for me is that I always wanted to do more gigs but so much of my best material (especially the more crowd-pleasing stuff) was from when I was in high school or my early twenties, and I feel like a pretty different person now, with different things to say and different feelings and stories I want to express (though some of the same ones as well). I’m really proud of the songs I’ve been cranking out this year and excited to have so much more stuff I can perform whenever that becomes a possibility again.

I’ve also loved observing how naturally well-suited my brain is for songwriting: little melodic, lyrical or conceptual ideas come to me all the time, like a tumbleweed blowing on down the road, and my job is to pick them up, examine them, shine ’em up and make ’em sparkle. My songwriting process now is much more adult and fleshed-out than when I was in high school, because 1) I’m a better writer now in general and 2) my spiritual beliefs around creativity now are less about accepting and reproducing exactly the rudimentary or strange ideas I hear in my head and more about using them like whispers from the universe, as a jumping-off point, an improv scene suggestion, a nudge in the direction I need to go in. I’m fascinated by the process of honing a metaphorical block of marble into a beautiful, compelling sculpture.

 

September 10th

Some notes from another shrooms trip:

3:07 p.m. Have to once again remind myself: you don’t need to narrate this or explain/describe your experience to ANYONE later, just enjoy it – BUT if imagining a future audience/listener is useful as a framing device or narrative theme, of course you can still use it when and if you want to.

3:15 p.m. Keeping grounded during scary scenes [of the movie I’m watching, Hercules] by writing about them. But is this always what I do? Distancing myself from the experience by documenting it? The loss of control/connection to reality that many people fear from drugs (myself included) is noticeably lurking around the edges but I am comfortably holding it off – the movie and writing about the movie are both pleasant.

3:26 p.m. Reality is bending and becoming less sure to me but in a way that’s still comfortable. Indeed, narrating this as if for a future reader (even if it’s only me) is a helpful organizing principle but also something I wouldn’t even know how to turn off in myself. What notes am I supposed to make in a NOTEbook if not for a future reader? Why am I shaming myself, bullying myself for a natural human impulse that has existed since the beginning of time itself? I am a creator, that is very core to who I am, and so parts of everything I do will be done creatively or as if they are meant to function as fuel or fodder for further creation. To pretend otherwise would be kidding myself.

4:12 p.m. Literally have no idea how many pages I’ve written this trip. The writing is less about its output and more about the actual action of it – it’s a guiding principle, a way of steering the ship, but also it is the ship.

 

October 29th

Some notes from yet another shrooms trip:

5:47 p.m. Watching [the YouTuber QuinBoBin] play Twilight Princess. I love him he’s so funny and wholesome. I’m laughing so hard that there are tears rolling down my cheeks.

Quin has taught me a lot about HOW TO ENJOY PLAYING VIDEO GAMES! This connection to my nerdy childhood. It’s like I was too scared of social self-judgment for being nerdy and I didn’t even let that path of my life develop. Reclaiming video games and other nerdy shit I was shamed out of. Being that nerdy boy I always wanted to impress and connect with.

5:57 p.m. VERY emotional. Shrooms is not easy or passive; do not expect it to be. But nothing is scary when I know Quin is here with me and we’re fighting the big boss together. I have to let the gay nerd inside me out. How much of my personality and style have I let [my middle school bully] shape? Who would I be without her laugh aimed at me in my own head? I’m mourning wasted time and who I could have been.

In the game Link transforms and I can transform too. I can be anything I want. My life is mine to craft now. Slicking my hair back with my tears lol.

I always used to run from Lynels [a difficult enemy in the game Breath of the Wild] or chip away at their ankles and Quin showed me I can fucking mount them and slap their cheeks til they’re dead. Nerdy boys showed me a way out of the hell of social hierarchy and I chose to swim away. I chose the hierarchy. Every mean thing I’ve ever done has been in service of trying to look cool and disaffected and like I had the upper hand. That was all an act, a crutch. I know that now.

6:21 p.m. What a wild drug, lol.

 

November 21st

Was just looking at some of Gaby Herstik’s incredible selfies and felt a strong sense of wanting to lean back into the side of me that would post provocative thirst traps on Twitter, dress slutty and weird every day, flirt with randos, etc. I think I have lost touch with that girl partly for reasonable reasons (fibro, pandemic, concerns about being kicked off PayPal/Instagram etc. for being too porny) and partly for dumb reasons (wanting to “seem more professional” and “be taken more seriously”). The disembodiment of trauma has also played a role.

But I wonder how much of feeling embodied and deliciously sensual is about making the effort to feel sexy by any means necessary: wearing lipstick and perfume to bed, posting late-night lingerie pics, upping my heart rate by telling cute people they’re cute.

Through therapy I have become aware of the aspects of my former sluttiness that I felt pressured into by society and people I’ve hooked up with, or felt lured into by my own trauma-borne desperation to be liked and wanted. But I wonder if now it’s time to let the pendulum swing back in the other direction a little, in the hopes of finding a happier medium. I want to feel even sexier in my thirties than I did in my twenties, and when I do, I will have earned it. This body, this confidence and this proud sexuality were hard-won for me and I intend to enjoy them. But in a way that respects my demisexuality, my trauma history and my boundaries.

During fibro flare-ups I feel so disconnected from my body even as the pains and discomforts of my body are all I can think about. I want to feel in touch with my body again and that includes being in touch with its softness, its sexiness, its allure to others and to myself.

12 Days of Girly Juice 2021: 6 Journal Entries

Kate Sloan

Content note: There’s some depressing stuff in here about climate change, fascism, etc.

 

February 7th

A Spiritual Practice for Quarantine

wake up, take your meds
stretch & pee & check your phone
stretch & sigh, ignore your phone
brew some coffee, clear some cobwebs
set some goals & test your brain
watch the news, turn off the news
feel grateful you’re not on the news

don some ruby lipstick no one will see
take butt selfies in bed
suck cock every lazy morning
scribble notes to future selves
let haters tire themselves out
slither into slim-cut sweatpants
comb your hair for no one
read a book for pleasure
drink a boozy revelation
squint your eyes until you see
a pale unfocused vision
of the You you want to be

 

April 19th

Life all feels so absurd when you’re living through a global pandemic and a fresh wave of fascism and the end of the world due to climate change. I really don’t know how we are supposed to deal with it. There’s not even a frame of reference, a touchpoint in human history we can point to and learn from where we idiot’ed ourselves out of being able to even inhabit this planet anymore. It’s all new and a lot of it is bad.

I think one of the only things you can do to cope with all this is to do what the existentialists did and accept the liberating but terrifying meaninglessness of it all. I can’t affect humanity’s problems on a scale that would be effective, so I may as well feel pleasure and create joy where possible. I don’t mean it’s okay to be selfishly hedonistic all the time. I mean that we’d go nuts if we never allowed ourselves to be selfishly hedonistic. We’d be squandering the best parts of the very world and civilization our anxieties are trying to save.

 

May 29th

Lately I keep looking at real estate listings of 2- and 3-bedroom houses and condos in Toronto and New York and dreaming of what it would be like to furnish and decorate my own office in my own home. There would be lots of framed photos and art. An altar featuring citrine, blue topaz, and perfumed incense. Big white bookshelves displaying books, old journals, striking sex toys, and a rainbow of vintage typewriters. A smallish piano and my ukuleles and guitar. A luxuriant daybed for lounging and naps. A big plush armchair for reading in. Stacks of empty notebooks waiting to be filled with thoughts and ideas. Organized drawers containing my entire sex toy collection. A sex toy charging station à la Piph. Sophisticated coasters for having drinks at my desk. An array of fine pens and pencils. Tons of natural light, plus several lamps for atmosphere. Ahh, bliss.

 

June 9th

I bought a secondhand digital piano yesterday. Been wanting to get back into songwriting. It has been about 3 years since I’ve written a song. It’s just so weird because in high school I wrote multiple songs per month. It no longer feels like a skill I can access. I try playing and singing improvisationally but everything sounds terrible and doesn’t flow out of me the way it used to.

I think if I asked younger-me for advice on this, she would advise me to spend more time just idly messing around on my instrument(s); inspiration can’t show up if you’re not there to greet it. But I can’t shake the feeling that I was connected to some divine source of musical ingenuity and I no longer have a stable connection to wherever that came from.

I guess part of the reason for this is that my life now is fairly settled and content – I am married to the love of my life and our relationship is stable and healthy, so the main sources of interpersonal angst and sadness I used to pull songwriting inspiration from are just absent. I guess this means I have to carve out new ways of being a songwriter, ways that don’t rely on romantic drama. Writing from fictional characters’ perspectives is often helpful for this, I’ve found.

 

July 7th

Things to remember when I hate myself and feel like a failure:

  1. I will have had 2 books published by the time I turn 30.
  2. I am happily married to the love of my life, who is perfect for me on every dimension I can imagine.
  3. I live comfortably on the money I make as a self-employed person/freelancer in the sex media field. Dreamy.
  4. My work means a lot to people and they tell me so nearly every day.
  5. I am working through my traumas and flaws with a therapist, and I’m making good progress.
  6. I have a cozy home that I love and have put a lot of effort into making it feel as comfortable as possible.
  7. I achieve an amazing amount every single week for someone living with an invisible disability/chronic illness.
  8. I have made a lot of art that I think is good, and I will make a lot more.
  9. There is always more to learn, to see, to experience.
  10. Every single thing in life could change in an instant so the only thing to do is appreciate it when you have it.

 

July 26th

I’m emotional tonight, for a couple reasons. Firstly, today 11 copies of my first book showed up in the mail, and I got to hold it, and read it, and sniff it, and take selfies with it… I am truly so fucking proud of myself, and the pride feels unusually tangible to me today. It’s a really good book and I think people are going to like it.

The second emotional thing that happened is I went for drinks with T___, who I met several years ago because they were friends with L___ when I was dating him – and they told me that basically they never really liked him that much. They felt he was “a sad man who sucked” and didn’t treat his partners very well. (Uh, can confirm.)

My mind is honestly kinda blown. All this time I had believed what L___ said, which was that the two of them were very good friends, maybe even best friends – and I had felt that L___ must have some essential goodness or coolness because T___ thought he was cool, but in reality all this time they’ve seen him the same way I saw him on my most self-righteous and self-possessed days: as a sad, selfish, confused and confusing dude who wasn’t a very good boyfriend at all.

He was a person who frequently represented himself as perpetually right and good, as if his way of doing relationships was the best way or the only good way, and as if I was in the wrong for ever taking issue with anything he did. He was an extraordinarily bad boyfriend to me but framed himself as a generous and tolerant caretaker and protector.

Our relationship was this fraught mirage, always seeming like it had the potential to be so good and healthy and satisfying but never actually allowing that reality to materialize. He paid lip service daily to the kind of boyfriend he wanted to be, and wasn’t. He was a complete and total fuckboy, who would’ve been appalled to hear himself referred to as such. The only reason I stayed with him after he seriously hurt my feelings was that I believed deeply that he was desirable and special and “a catch” and that I was incredibly lucky to be with someone like him. That’s all it was. I mean, yeah, NRE makes idiots of us all, but I really think most of my poor decision-making in that relationship was directly related to me 1) assuming his inherent worth because he was a man who expressed an interest in me, and 2) thinking so poorly of myself that I couldn’t see how valuable and desirable I myself was. I didn’t know I deserved better, or that I was allowed to expect better, but I did and I was.

“I Could Write About Sex Literally Forever”

Kate Sloan
What I looked like on September 23, 2016

Friends, this week has been a ROUGH ONE as far as my chronic pain goes, so I haven’t had much energy to work on blog stuff. In an effort to get some of that energy back, I turned to 750Words.com, a website that lets you write daily “morning pages” (a creativity-generating practice from Julia Cameron’s brilliant book The Artist’s Way). After I wrote my morning pages today, I went back through my archive – I hadn’t been on 750Words in nearly 5 years, gasp! – and found this old entry from September 23, 2016 where I was talking about wanting to write a book.

With my first book available for preorder now and my second book in-progress and due in a few months (!!), it seemed like a particularly good time to publish this little stream-of-consciousness ramble about Big Book Dreams from back in the day. Hope you enjoy – and if you’re a writer, I hope what you take away from this is that the projects you want to work on can, and probably will, materialize someday. ❤️

I just want to be at a writer’s residency and working on a book in the quiet of the woods, surrounded by reading materials, notebooks, pens, my laptop, birds chirping, looseleaf tea brewing just as the ideas brew in my head. I want this to be real. I want this to happen. I want it so badly I can feel it quaking in my bones. The ache to work on a big-scale project has been percolating in me for months but I don’t know quite what shape this desire will eventually take. Ideas have come and gone, but the fire hasn’t stuck around in any of them yet.

I don’t know if I’m actually mature and level-headed and emotionally steady and passionately committed enough to write a book; that is such a deep and lengthy commitment and I’ve never worked on a writing project of that length and scope before. Except, I guess, for my blog. I’ve been doing that for four and a half years (that semi-anniversary comes up in just a few days actually) and I haven’t even remotely run out of juice and enthusiasm for it yet. I started a sex blog because I knew I could write about sex literally forever – all the ways it intersects with the other parts of our lives, all the ways it is informed by all our interactions and experiences and feelings and memories and histories – and that has proven to be very true. I can go and go and go. I have so much motivation to work on this website. It never runs dry. And even if it occasionally does, I always have so many posts queued up that I can coast through the dry spells, still publishing twice a week like I always have. It’s a good feeling, to know I’ve been so consistent, so dependable, such a reliable source of enthusiasm and information for my readers.

I am very lucky and privileged and blessed to make money from this, but I am also thinking I need to get another job soon because I would like to make enough money to be able to move out, or to afford to travel and go on these retreats and things I want to do. I want the money to pour in from many more sources than it currently is, even though it’s already coming from multiple sources of which I’m very proud (my blog’s affiliate commissions, advertisers, Patreon supporters, copywriting/blogging work for other websites, journalism and essays, even occasionally porn and camming and other forms of online sex work).

I feel so determined to make a career of the things I love to do, and it feels within reach, as I was telling my therapist earlier this week. It feels imminently possible and doable because I know that I am talented and my content is good and helpful and I’m constantly told that by the people who devour my work. I have the feeling of supported notoriety that I craved so badly for all those many years I was blogging on LiveJournal and TeenOpenDiary and putting my outfit photos on Flickr and writing about my life on Tumblr and putting music videos on YouTube and wanting desperately to attract people who would understand my weird brain and accept it in all its broadness and quirkiness and positivity. I wanted to find the people who would be most helped, uplifted, and entranced by the kinds of things I wanted to write. I’ve found those people now.

It’s so juicy and good and I wake up every day lately excited to crack open my laptop and work on something, whether it’s an article for the Establishment or an essay for Bitch Flicks or a series of erotic vignettes for my blog or a chapter of the book on unrequited love I’ve been slowly drafting and mapping out in Scrivener. I don’t know what the eventual project will be that I pour out into the world and make my legacy with, but I know it will be significant to some folks and that is a good thing to know. I have more to say, more to do. I am working toward something that will satisfy and fulfill me. God, it’s delicious.

12 Days of Girly Juice 2020: 6 Journal Entries

Kate Sloan

Ages ago, I read an article which mentioned that donating personal journals to historical archives can be really helpful to historians of the future, because it gives them a sense of what daily life was like for average people during a given timeframe. I thought about that almost every time I put pen to paper this year, because 2020 will certainly be written about in history books (to the extent that history books are still a thing in the future!).

Here are 6 entries I pulled from my journals this year. Hopefully next year we’ll have many more cheerful things to write about!

Jan. 31

mb asked me recently to what degree I want to be surprised with a proposal. I said, “I don’t want to know exactly when it’s going to happen, but I do want to know when we are entering a period of life in which a proposal might occur.” They said, “So you want to know when I have a ring,” and I said yes. I love that we have, and have always had, these meta-conversations about important relationship milestones – it’s so different from the traditional Cosmopolitan model of relationships where you never talk about anything and always have to guess what your partner is thinking and feeling.

March 3rd

Everything is really scary right now because a pandemic called the coronavirus is spreading globally and there’s no vaccine for it yet. That sounds so dramatic and crazy but that is what’s happening. People are stockpiling flu meds and face masks and hand sanitizer, and some affected people are self-quarantining for weeks at a time. My immune system sucks so I feel like I will probably get it, but who knows. Currently I am coping by leaving the house as little as possible, washing my hands a lot, distracting myself with podcasts and movies, and drinking homemade martinis.

March 15

Existing in a pandemic reminds me of a feeling I get in the days and weeks following a really brutal breakup. You walk through the world in this daze, unable yet to process that your entire reality has shifted on its axis. Periodically you find minutes or hours of respite in the form of distraction, or perspective, or positive social connection, or just a random feeling of unusual optimism and shrugging resignation – but always, at some point, your mind skids squeakily like a record being scratched as the remembrance of your true situation hits you afresh. Being alive through COVID-19 is like that, except everyone is going through it now, all the time.

It’s fucking surreal how fast everything has changed. No aspect of life can be the same now. Nine days ago I saw fit to go to a crowded karaoke bar. Today I wouldn’t dream of such a thing. We are staying home and moving all our appointments online, or canceling them. We are afraid even to walk around the block or pick up groceries. We don’t know how long it’ll be until we can safely gather in crowds again.

May 13

I’m having a lot of episodes of… feeling triggered/having a trauma response/having an extreme nervous system response/not sure what else to call it… lately. Mostly triggered by stressful things in my relationship (we worked some things out yesterday so it’s okay now) but sometimes basically random. I’ve noticed that I often go into a shut-down dissociative mode when I feel like I’ve disappointed or upset someone I care about – the world slows down like I’ve done a lot of drugs, and the inside of my mind and body feel helplessly, scarily sluggish – and I think this must be related to all the many times my dad yelled at me until I cried, for both justifiable and unjustifiable reasons, when I was a kid/teen/young adult. I remember feeling so frustrated and sad that I could never seem to articulate myself well enough to provide a decent rebuttal to whatever he was bellowing at me – but of course I couldn’t; my nervous system was under attack and I was essentially paralyzed, with nothing to do but stand there and take it. Often I wouldn’t even be allowed to go to my room and cry in private to feel safe and calm again, because that would be perceived by him as “sulking” and he hated that. I think he mostly just hated the guilt of knowing he had upset me that much, after his obvious glee in hurting me had faded.

I asked mb why they think all these trauma feelings and emotional flashbacks have been coming up so much for me lately – mostly ex-boyfriend stuff and dad stuff, I think – and they said it’s likely due to the stress of living through a global pandemic. Which, yes, that is true. I reached out to several therapists who specialize in trauma/PTSD as well as non-monogamy, because that is really what I’ve needed for years, I just haven’t been able to afford it. But now I finally can, and I want to work on myself and my dumb brain.

May 29th

Increasingly I feel like human civilization as I know it will end within my lifetime. Increasingly I find that tuning out the news and the world for periods of time is the only way I can even function. Increasingly I worry that dismantling capitalism is both the only solution to our major problems as a species and one of the only things we will never do.

July 17th

mb went back home a couple days ago after living with me for 4 months of coronavirus lockdown. It was really hard for both of us. I cried a lot and they told me that my deep emotionality is a catch-22 because it makes the hard things extra hard but it also makes the good things extra good.

My days now are much more quiet, still, and unstructured without them here. I guess this is what quarantining alone would have been like. I’m not sure it’s all that great for my mental health but it’s also an opportunity to pursue any projects I feel like, read a lot of books, and play a lot of video games. I miss mb but I like being alone, too. And I’m very very privileged and lucky to be able to do so safely, in such a hellish year.