myth's DMSI 3.3.x Journal

[Shannon]

My point is, there's always another way to interpret it. Sometimes it takes a lot of contemplation to find all of what it could mean, and even more to find the meaning. I didn't have the dream, and you didn't describe it in minute detail, so I don't know what it means.

[myth]

My point is, there's always another way to interpret it. Sometimes it takes a lot of contemplation to find all of what it could mean, and even more to find the meaning. I didn't have the dream, and you didn't describe it in minute detail, so I don't know what it means.

Understood. And I wasn't really posting the dream in hopes of others knowing what I'm trying to tell myself. Unfortunately, there wasn't a lot of minute detail to go into. The dream itself was fairly vague, but, since I've already put it out there, I'll elaborate as much as I can.

The "other" kept entering places that weren't his (like a nearby car that wasn't either of ours) and trashed everything inside of it. I'd try to offset the damage somehow by making it somewhat presentable again. The setting wasn't always the same, but it was mostly him following me and trashing something nearby that had nothing to do with him (or with me, I think), me cleaning it up, him leaving whatever I'd cleaned up alone, and him moving on to trash the next nearby location. And I would do my part while also talking him out of doing (some of) his part. Also, I wasn't following him (to clean up after him) as much as he was following me (as if to force a response out of me).

And, as I stated initially, I agree: there are numerous possible interpretations. Me promoting order to offset the universe's chaos, me taking responsibility for other people's actions, me exerting my influence on an outcome in the face of external circumstances, him trashing beliefs that were neither of ours (while I left something personally acceptable in its place), me cleaning up other people's messes, me promoting respect for others in the face of disrespect, me defining for myself what I think is (or isn't) "the right thing" to do, me being pressured to respond by something else turning the heat up, me being protective of someone who wasn't there to defend themselves. I'm not even reaching to come up with the list, as the dream could apply to any crossed boundary, trespass, interference, etc where some opposing presence played a role.

Applying it to DMSI's goal, it could be things like me seeing other people as nearby things that someone else has messed up, me somehow seeing prospective partners with a past as used goods or as something to repair (not sure that I do, as I seem to get more interest from the ones whose past has made them wiser or more attractive, not abused or broken), me seeing relationships as something that other people and circumstances are easily able to pollute in the present or future. I could go on. I'm not even sure that there's only one single answer. I could've been trying to tell myself 50 overlapping things at once, as my mind would love the geometry (poetry?) of that kind of multi-layered message.

I don't presume that consciously knowing the meaning, if there even is one or only one, is necessarily significant. If it really were, that part of me could've easily put more detail to the dream when I'd had it. If the dream recurs or precedes a sequel, maybe I'll discover more.

Since I didn't have much to go on either, what I was reporting was that the dream had a very atypical theme for the person having it. I know that saying that isn't much more detailed than saying that something happened without describing what it was, but that one element was unusual.

[myth]

Been meaning to post this since Sunday, if only because the last few posts seemed like a can of worms left open:

On some level, I think that I'd felt wronged/cheated by a past relationship and didn't know it. That may have been the lesson in opposition that the previous posts' dream had been trying to teach me, if Saturday night's dream was a heavily reworded sequel. And, no, I'm not intending to turn this thread into a dream journal, but this one actually had a clearer (but somewhat similarly-themed) message to it.

The first part of the dream involved moving past the fear of 1) a person who'd wronged me wronging me again and 2) a person who believed me to have wronged them repeating their accusations at me indefinitely. They'd both wanted to see me, but I didn't want to be anywhere near them. I did so anyhow, mostly because I'd felt that I'd lacked alternatives. The first person, who I'd felt wronged/cheated me, drove me to a junkyard where a self-animated truck (more Christine/Maximum Overdrive than Speed Buggy/Cars -- I think, as I've never read/watched any of these books/movies/shows) held me captive on behalf of the second person, the person who had thought that I'd wronged/cheated them.

I thought that I'd been taken there to be judged and tortured by the truck for having wronged/cheated the second person. But, in the end, it became apparent that I'd really been taken there to be taught a lesson that the second person had (unbeknownst to me) already learned, escorted by the person who'd most benefit from me learning it myself, a lesson that both people were trying to share with me: That everyone feels wronged/cheated by someone sometime. And feeling wronged/cheated isn't really about whether that someone truly wronged me/cheated me out of anything. It's about whether I believe (and, due to that belief, feel) that they wronged me/cheated me.

As soon as my dream self had figured out that I was the one determining that I'd been wronged/cheated (all based on my personal point of view and values, a source that I already know is my personal corruption of reality's data) and that everyone feels wronged/cheated sometime (no matter what the other person's intentions and values were), the animated truck that had me at grill-point and was holding me hostage smiled, blinked its lights a few times, saluted me with a side mirror, and drove off, honking a happy tune.

In feeling wronged (due to believing myself wronged), I'd been holding someone else up against my value system, making them "the other" who'd done what I'd (supposedly) never do to them while (conceptually, if not specifically) doing that same thing to someone else: I'd been judging others as having broken my rules, wanting to hold them accountable for breaking rules that weren't really their rules to have broken. All while feeling misjudged by different others for having broken their rules that weren't really mine to have broken. In a way, feeling unfairly judged is an interesting clash of values: one person's values' concept of what's fair and the other person's values' concept of judgement.

The only one who might be able to play by all of my own unshared rules (unless they self-contradict) is me. The only one who might really be able to play by all of someone else's unshared rules (unless they self-contradict) is them. Boundaries can't be observed if they're unclear, since it's difficult to play by rules that one doesn't know, and, based on their own rules, others could (and often will) still choose not to observe mine, crossing those boundaries anyhow.

Even if they knew what those boundaries were and wanted to observe them, people are still fallible; they make mistakes and, from time to time, fail to achieve their goals. If they put any effort into unrequired compromise, judging them harshly (even as a single individual in a single instance) for its failure isn't a terribly compassionate way of thanking them for trying. Some might even give up on that compromise, if their efforts are repeatedly met with harsh judgement instead of compassionate gratitude or encouragement.

[myth]

It took three weeks of almost no libido and no sexual dreams or actions (which is noticeably low, by my standards), but, finally, this week, I've seen signs from within myself that I'm actually listening to a sub whose goal has something to do with sex. They're back, stronger than before.

Despite having executed during past versions of DMSI fairly well, there's plenty of things that could explain this delay on the sexual side:

• 11 months since the last DMSI version that I ran (3.1).
  
• New instructions since 3.1 (disconnecting from negative stress, the Wall, etc) to learn and execute.
  
• A reworded responder demographic in the goal that, I presume, required me to reset/re-clarify my own definitions for the new (yet, in most ways, previous) responder demographic -- like the difference between being asked what one wants to eat for dinner tonight versus tomorrow night, where the two might not be identical (even though they could be) and where the person still has to decide definitively against what they don't want (even if they don't want it, never want it, or are completely allergic to it) in order to cross it off the list.
  
• Having taken the instructed 5.5G break for DMSI in mid-September, pre-FRM in USLM, rather than having taken the semi-popular route of spending weeks on USLM2/USLM3's respective FRMs in October and November. (Fewer weeks of FRM exposure/practice than others had.)
  
• Having started with a lot of fear that I'd been very good at sidestepping, overcoming, ignoring, etc for decades... with, by comparison, little to no previous experience in trying to remove those fears. (Also, ignoring just about anything tends to be quicker, if less permanent, than taking the time to remove it. Plus, I have to stop habitually ignoring that anything so that I can see that it's there to need removing.)
  
• More things, but this list is too long and meandering already.
  

Even so, finally hitting a sexual mindset again isn't the same as executing everything, and I wouldn't expect it to be, as I don't measure a successful departure or successful travel solely by whether or not I'm sitting at the final goal. That's not measuring travel or progress at all; that's just measuring arrival. But, assuming that I haven't just learned to ignore the fear removal instructions (like I learned to ignore several fears themselves in the past), what I've seen has been a good start for a version that's asking me to do more than I've ever done before.

Yeah, it's a lot slower to ramp up than older versions were, but I'm asking myself to do more work to achieve a better result, so there's a potential trade-off in speed for consistency and performance. I'll always prefer however long it takes to reach the destination that I'll most enjoy over a quicker arrival time at a less sufficient destination. Faster would be nice, but not at the expense of the place that I really want to reach. Or, to put it another way, visiting the Japanese restaurant across the street from my home may be significantly faster to do, but it's not likely to be an equivalent substitute for visiting Japan itself. The latter would take a lot more time, effort, and resources to achieve, for a different result.

[myth]

I'll briefly break from my aversion to anecdotes, but I'll still stick with summarization over play-by-play.

Last night was my first night out since starting 3.3. I don't know if the aura (or even the celebrity effect) ever left standby because an old (female) acquaintance who worked (or used to work?) at the venue threw a woman at me as soon as I'd been handed my first drink. And that woman and I chatted the entire night away.

The bartender (another acquaintance) was also pleased by how well we were getting along, an occasional FWB claimed that we'd spent the night looking like we were on a date, and the interaction was lamp-shaded enough by others to bother mentioning here. Despite the spectators' point of view, nothing particularly sexual came up (not that I would've objected), unless you count mutual sartorial compliments, but it was just a nice, easy connection in that "We know a lot of the same people and places and seem to like more of the same things than the people that we both know do, so how have we never met before?" kind of way.

If DMSI helped, great. If not, that's great too. We'd almost certainly have met eventually anyway. Things like this have happened many times before, but, as I can't recall being thrown at someone and had them thrown at me so forcibly on those occasions, I'm reporting the aberration, just in case it's relevant. It may not be.

It could also be argued that the conversation was a form of resistance against all of the other women present having an opportunity with me, a mirage-like form of sabotage that only looked like social success while really just being a public-adjacent place to hide. The variety of plausible hypotheses is why I can be difficult to convince that any one unproven hypothesis is "the truth" or is "the answer" to any question. I'm not very inclined to rush to just any plausible answer in fear of not having one, later defending it as if it's true because I've turned that hasty conclusion into a belief; there are just too many plausible answers to most questions, in my opinion. for that to be a trustworthy method of drawing conclusions (and then forming beliefs based on them). Especially since some questions can have more than one answer, multi-part answers, or fishing boats full of red herrings. I have trouble seeing impatience ("need it now!"), laziness ("can't be bothered to think of anything else"), lack of creativity ("can't think of anything better"), blind trust ("so and so said so"), or a need for completeness ("can't be left unanswered") as a good reason to declare something fully answered when it hasn't been. I'm not omniscient, so my current guess, however good, is almost always probably incomplete, if not inaccurate. Whatever guess I choose (if I choose one so soon) may do for now, but I'm not going to declare undying loyalty to it or get upset if it's as wrong as it has every reason to be. Hmm. That turned into an unintended digression, but I'll leave it.

Additional social observation from last night: The female friend who thought that I hated her while I was on 3.1 was back to being concerned (again) that I hate her. That would seem to rule out 3.1's anti-sniper as having been the cause, but, if that's the case, it may suggest that she's interested in holding my attention, even if she's not specifically interested in the same type of attention that I turn toward others while on DMSI. Or it might be other changes in me while I'm on DMSI. I'd ask her directly, but she doesn't seem to know why she perceives it that way herself.

[myth]

Haven't posted much in a while, so these may be my last posted observations before 3.3.1 lands:

• Work productivity and creativity is still flowing. I'm tackling formerly daunting tasks at work that I wasn't sure were possible (despite having done many "impossible" things throughout my career) or within my capabilities in a matter of minutes/hours, and I'm seeing opportunities and solutions (that were formerly not even on my radar) with ease. Opening one not-quite-impossible door often led to solving others beyond it, ones that couldn't even become not-quite-impossible until after the first door was opened. Haven't been this inspired in at least a year. Setbacks haven't really been setting me back as much as they've given me something learn from, adapt to, build on, and expand from. The only downside is that I keep discovering more opportunities for enhancement before its parents and grandparents can be put into production use. When the changes finally see the light of day, it'll be a sea change, not just a facelift.
  
• Had a week of moodiness last week. Otherwise, I haven't had an unpleasant mood that lasted more than a day long. But there haven't been many of those. Not that there have been an abundance of joyful days either, but there have been some. Mood-wise, my best comparison would be how I'd felt on E1, as the highs and lows on E1 were more pronounced for me than on E2 or other IML subs. It's mostly been a lot of emotional neutrality with the occasional-but-strong positive peak or negative trough.
  
• Noticed that wintertime affects my progress. Last week's moodiness seemed very much synchronized to signals from my body that I was both 1) dehydrated and 2) low in water soluble vitamins (notably, vitamin C). These are seasonal deficits, not DMSI-induced. My daily routines are fairly consistent, but I do run low on supply in certain areas at this time of year, possibly due to increased demand. My body's very clear (in physically visible and tangible ways that others can see) about when each of these things is lacking and is very responsive when balance has been restored. This year, I noticed, for the first time, that my thought processes (emotions included) are also influenced by these seasonal shortages and improve greatly when they've been replenished.
  
• Tinnitus has been noticeably reduced for me during 3.3. I should clarify that the subs have not been responsible for my tinnitus, as I have night-time jaw-clenching issues and typically wear splints to minimize the symptoms, only one of which is tinnitus. Symptom-wise, only tinnitus has improved, suggesting that the tinnitus-suppressing module in the sub (rather than reduction of any fear and stress that might induce clenching) may be able to claim some credit.
  
• Joking more, unintentionally. This strikes me as an indication that I'm having a little bit more fun than I've had in a while.
  
• A third of my primary goals of DMSI are still barely anywhere to be found, so far. By that, I mean as far as my attention to its main goals go, not by measuring how often I'm being hit on, IOIs, lay count, or similar popular measuring sticks that others seem to be using. And I'm definitely executing, changing in leaps and bounds daily. But, focus-wise, it feels more like I'm executing 5.5G than 3.3-D. There's a difference between feeling like I'm sexy and feeling like others think that I'm sexy, and, while others may or may not see the distinction, I've spent a good portion of my life feeling a satisfying amount of the latter while experiencing very little of the former. To be clear: This is simply a report of my 3.3 run so far, not a criticism of DMSI, and I fully understand that most DMSI users prioritize external sexual response above internal sexual self-image. It takes as long as it takes, what's in my way sets the pace, I'm enjoying the scenery along the way, and 3.3.1 may change the entire landscape yet again. But, having said all of that, from a purely conscious perspective, you could tell me that I've been running USLM4 or E3 for all of this time, and the visible changes could make at least as much sense to me as they do as the result of DMSI. For me, previous versions of DMSI have brought sexual thoughts to mind a lot more often than 3.3 has.
  

[RTBoss]

Do you still run 1 week on, 1 week off, like you did with other 5.5G subs? Or are you following the SASRB Shannon set?

[myth]

Do you still run 1 week on, 1 week off, like you did with other 5.5G subs? Or are you following the SASRB Shannon set?

Excellent question. And pertinent, as I'd been comparing this run against past DMSI runs in today's earlier post. Thanks for pointing it out.

When I was running those past 5.5G subs (including prior DMSI versions that I'd run), there was no SASRB yet, modeled or otherwise. All that I knew at the time was that I was stuck in input mode and not executing anything until I took time off. So I set my time-off schedule for myself.

My SE, PTPA, and USLM1 runs were closer to my old instinctual "Am I stuck in input mode?" determination, but I also wasn't really documenting those, so I wasn't concerning myself with tester reporting. I took personal responsibly for that and was pleased with the results. I did run those with the recommended number of loops and without breaking primary ASRB. It was only SASRB where I was running on my own schedule.

For 3.3, though, especially since I didn't want to break FRM's momentum, I'd adhered strictly to the directions for the first few weeks, up until socializing became a scheduling conflict. My option was to go to my first social event since starting 3.3 or not to go out at all. I chose to go out. That delayed my break by one day. That following week was the moodier week that I'd described in my last post. To get things onto a more convenient schedule in the future (although 3.3.1 will probably saddle us with different loops and SASRB), I also spent an extra day on, pushing my days off to Friday and Saturday for social convenience ahead of this weekend.

So I've mostly stuck to the SASRB instead of following my pre-SASRB input/execute instincts. By my past standards, I may have been stuck in input mode longer and executing for fewer days than on previous versions, which could explain some of the difference in my execution. But, 3,3 is a different level of 5.5G than 3.1 was, so it may be apples and oranges at this point, just like it was when I first started needing to take breaks to execute. I could rely on my instincts, but, for this run, generally speaking, I haven't been.

[myth]

So I've been quiet on 3.3.1, as there wasn't much to report and as I've spent most of February buried under 12-hour days of make-work at work.

As Shannon appears to have recently relaxed his need for SASRB strictness in DMSI users' reporting, I've since decided to stop ignoring my pre-official-SASRB instincts on the subject.

Strictly adhering to the usage instructions on 3.3 and 3.3.1 has apparently made my past pacing markers even more glaringly obvious to me than ever before, mostly due to their notable infrequency in 3.3 or total absence in 3.3.1 before [changing my listening patterns] now. Whether RT meant to do so or not, I think that he may have underscored the value (for me) that following (only one of) these past signposts had in contrast to having ignored them completely during the first couple months of 3.3 and 3.3.1.

Even more interestingly, I'm finally starting to formalize (for myself) in concrete terms what those "instincts" really were. I think that I've identified more of what these signposts are, what they indicate, why they apply to me as they do, and how, through them, I might better regulate how I personally process the subliminal data (any data, regardless of goal), not in denial of or in fear of the goal nor in indifference to how I personally process data. I suspect that there may be even subtler signs that I've missed because I was never expecting any additional signs to be found, to mean anything useful or distinctive if they were, or to fit structurally into a larger context. Not that I wasn't vaguely following one of these signs before, but, with a greater understanding and awareness of them, there's a chance that I can apply a level of precision that I couldn't previously see and that I can hopefully sharpen with further practice.

These are action-based signposts too, not emotional ones (nor title-specific morphine drips, aura sensing, etc), so they're either plainly observable or not. They don't rely on how well or poorly I merely think I'm reacting to certain sub instructions as much as where I am in processing, storing, and acting on any sub instructions. I'd seen them on previous subs, reliably and sequentially, but I think that I'd greatly misunderstood their meaning, often having viewed some aspect of them as an inconvenience or irritant rather than as a status update.

Some of my earlier misinterpretations were a lot like having heard a kitchen timer, dinner gong, doorbell, or ringing phone and brushed it off as noise pollution or, in annoyed ignorance, yelled for someone to stop the noise from ever happening again. Or like failing to turn down the heat when a pot's clearly about to boil over and then insisting that boiling is too messy a thing to do ever again. Or like taking a pain reliever without ever considering the cause that the symptom was calling attention to. Or, conversely, like answering the phone when it isn't ringing (or answering the door when there's been no knocking) and wondering why no one's there.

And the nice thing about them being action-based is that, even if I were to schedule listening relative to the indicators' appearance (rather than simply inclusively around their appearance, as is closer to what I've done in the past), it would still be easy to enforce listening schedule consistency without making it into an emotional decision or misusing it as an escape tactic.

I can withhold further reporting during my 3.3.x run (obviously, as I hadn't posted a word in over a month) if this is too much of a deviation from the instructions to be considered useful reporting, but I'm very curious to see if scheduling with these signposts in mind returns me to my past execution or better.

[myth]

I'm finding that the adjustment to my listening schedule seems to be working better for me.

During the old schedule:

• Was highly irritable in a self-sustaining or snowballing manner, at least partly due to blind or unanchored focus of that irritation. Put simply: encounter a situation while blindly irritated, make it worse by being irritated at everything (instead of focused on the cause of the irritation), get more irritated at the worsened situation, make it worse by being more irritated, etc.
  
• Existing FWBs got sick, forgot me (and do I mean that literally), or chose others instead of me. Mostly on 3.3.1, but partly on 3.3 too.
  
• Started with sporadic-but-notable work productivity on 3.3 and became disruptive emergencies, make-work, and backfires on 3.3.1.
  

During the new schedule:

• Have been diffusing any current irritability with (what I believe to be) cogent rationale behind any irritable feelings, followed by addressing the concern.
  
• One FWB (who's never ever texted me to contact me before) did so at her I'm-drunk-and-need-to-party timing, not that I was awake for it.
  
• Another FWB is now merely awaiting my recovery from the last month of work exhaustion. Which would be great, if work didn't keep piling things on.
  
• Another (remote) FWB has been more actively (almost daily) pushing to schedule her next trip to see me. Also great, if work didn't keep piling things on.
  
• Work productivity, while exhausting, is back to being proactive, cross-inspirational, timely, and satisfying. And far more so than it had been on 3.3: I just released all of the technological advancements at work that I'd made while listening to 3.3, plus other ideas that I'd had since altering my 3.3.1 schedule, and I still have even more ideas for improvement. I'm getting what should be a week's worth of accomplishments created and completed within a day now.
  
• I'm meeting newly-proposed make-work with repeated debate over the mutually exclusive options of 1) monopolizing my time where the learning curve alone would take weeks to be even slightly useful or 2) spending that same time furthering the company's progress with long-pending, valuable, quick, and easy improvements and contributions that only I can perform. For me, when it comes to two equally important sets of tasks, there's no question that the most useful division of labor is in using me where I'm uniquely more helpful than anyone else, not where I'm arbitrarily less helpful than anyone else.
  
  As far as the make-work situation goes, I'm not against expanding my existing horizons further and trying to become a master fiddler, but I see faulty reasoning in doing it while Rome's actively ablaze. (That is to say: To me, new challenges are more appropriate when the existing challenges aren't abundant, rampant, or neglected. They're also more appropriate when they're my challenges to overcome and not someone else's, as other people often seek help with -- or salvation from -- certain personal challenges where, for better or worse, they're still the best/only ones suited to overcoming them. I'll help others in their attempt to overcome their own challenges, if I have time and resources and if they request the help, but I'm not free to join -- or, worse, lead -- someone else's white whale hunt when I need to clean up the pile of dead fish rotting on my own doorstep first. Finding new challenges is easy, both optional and necessary ones; accepting the right optional challenges at the right moments is a bit trickier, as is remembering which challenges are optional, which are necessary, and whose challenges are whose.)
  

So far, I'd say that scheduling based on my signposts may be working even better for me than scheduling inclusive of them (on past subs) had been. And it seems to allow more listening days than its inclusive-scheduling predecessor and more execution than adhering to the usage directions did. As well as more passes through (what I see as) bootstrapping per time interval. But it possibly conflicts with "generally known" concepts and what's often taken for granted as fact, and parts of it may only apply to how I personally absorb information, so I'm still likely to keep how I'm scheduling (and why I suspect that it works for me) vague.

I'll also say that the schedules' difference in execution seems to be less about my "personality type" (or about FRM being/doing X, Y, or Z) than about the manner in which my mind generally processes most tasks it performs (including, as one of many other relevant tasks in this context, the assimilation of information). I may, of course, be wrong, but, for the moment, that's my current assessment. If this theory doesn't continue to prove useful, then it's only my own time having been wasted, not anyone else's. But a handful of seemingly disparate observations do suddenly fit together if my thinking makes as much sense as I think that it does.

Having said that, I hadn't identified all of my signposts just yet. Found another important one that I serendipitously hit during last week due to circumstance and, unfortunately, overshot during this week due to vestigial direction-following habits. That should hopefully be the last of the big signposts. Apparently, missing a signpost devolves back into what I observed on the old schedule, albeit with a slower-growing snowball of irritation and with a slower replacement of thrilling triumphs with appalling backfires. I humbly admit to having felt like I've been missing the nose on the front of my face every time that I've spotted each signpost for what (I now think that) it is.

Even with the altered schedule, however, 3.3.1 has been a far more conducive soundtrack to areas like confidence, productivity, success, and health than to its titular goal. Sexual and social interest in me has seldomly been rooted in impressing people with my achievements, efficiency, blood panel, wallet, etc, so, while I fully appreciate these improvements on a personal level, my most attractive and appealing qualities have gone virtually silent. Throughout my social and sexual history, people have typically shown interest in who I am, how I am, and how they feel around me, not in my belongings, awards, or test scores, and, really, if a prospective partner's only interested in my on-paper self, I'm tempted to hand them a resume/CV, a condom, and a styptic pencil (or should that be an online bio, birth control pills, and an insulated phone-case?) and then go spend time with someone who wants to have sex with a human being, not with a stat sheet.

My accolades, descriptive statistics, and property are not me, and no one truly meaningful to me (socially, sexually, or romantically) has ever has seemed to value or treat me as if they are, nor have they been given much reason (by me) to do so. These are not the worms they're looking for (or the worms that I've ever needed). I'm quite happy and grateful for the improvements that I'm making while on 3.3.x, but, so far, I seem to have been neglecting many of my most attractive qualities (to those that I find most attractive) to make them. Still hoping that those areas will come back into focus eventually.

[myth]

Pacing my listening schedule according to my signposts still appears to be helping. The recent observations:

• Work is still highly productive. I'm waking up with fully-formed ideas after having spent the night cooking them up in my sleep, and some ambush me throughout the day, before I've even finished making the last three ideas into a reality. I'm still disproportionately better at solving work problems than at solving my own personal ones, but there does seem to be a little bit of movement on the latter.
  
• Attending a social event over a week ago finally seemed slightly more like what I've experienced on prior DMSI versions. But I should be clear: It was while on a non-listening day. And, while finally more similar, it wasn't as intense or as consistent as on past versions. Not yet, at least.
  
• A friend insisted on buying me a drink during her birthday, only to have the bartender buy it for me instead, when she'd realized that I was the one being treated. Still not sure that "it's the thought that counts" applies very clearly to freely-gifted toxins. It may say that they like me, but in what condition?
  
• A platonic and uninterested (albeit physically attractive) female friend seemed to get a bit territorial when another woman started dancing with me and, to my annoyance, successfully drove the woman off.
  
• The FWB who'd forgotten me recently (on multiple occasions) finally remembered me and showed mixed interest. Not that I didn't too. We're both agreed that we're incompatible in many ways, but we still enjoy each other enough to fool around as a way to pass the time.
  

Overall, if I'm seeing anything from women at all on 3.3.1, I'm seeing more of a competitive vibe than the more precedented seductive one, and, based on my prior experience with competition and cooperation, I'm far more fond of women going after me together, cooperatively, rather than fighting over me. Especially if they're not really fighting over me in order to get the me that they're fighting over.

Healthy-minded fans, from what I can tell, enjoy me together, just like a crowd of music and movie enthusiasts going to see their favorite band or movie. You like that? I like that! Let's like it together. They don't need other people to stop enjoying what they enjoy too. It's not a mutually-exclusive thing. If we mesh, I might say yes. If we don't, I don't. No Highlander tournament necessary. There can be only... as many as there are? I don't make my friends battle to be the only friend either.

Also, I get self-esteem from how I estimate myself, not from how many people are focused on outdoing each other in my name. If a contest is actually required for someone to find me socially attractive, I don't think that I want to find out how lousy the social is going to be, much less the sexual.

[myth]

And some more observations from this past week:

• Had some sexual dreams, for the first time on 3.3.1. For a couple nights in a row, no less. And then things returned to the same emotional childhood stuff that usually hogs and clogs my REM cycles.
  
  
• My response to work requests has been changing on 3.3.x. I get very few requests, these days, given my tendency toward pre-solving problems before they come up, but, of course, despite my best efforts to head my own work stress off at the pass, I can't expect to predict and invisibly pre-address everything, so requests do inevitably come up.
  
  My long-standing response pattern has been to say no to most requests, find safe ways to turn the no into what sounds like a yes, and then counter-propose a reasonable and equitable compromise. This negotiation strategy is particularly useful when dealing with someone who's conflating experience with having a specific problem and experience with solving such problems, as the difference between knowing the problem and knowing the answer can be worlds apart. (And, thanks to desperation, people who know the problem can often be very insistent and impatient about exactly what they believe needs to replace the problem, no matter how much of a boondoggle their solution would be.)
  
  But, more recently, instead of trying to mitigate request pitfalls with objection and compromise, I start with more of a maybe (rather than my usual no) and stop trying to protect everyone from their own mistakes. I've stopped seeing myself as the hammer who needs to stop them from hammering their own hand into a bloody pulp, if that's really what they're heck-bent on doing. But, by extension, I'm also not seeing myself as the hammer that's preventing them from hammering everyone else's hand into a bloody pulp either, so I'm not so sure that this is a positive change.
  
  On one hand (no pun intended), I've greatly reduced my personal stake in others' decisions, which means that I care less about saving them from (or, more accurately, controlling) the outcome of their actions; on the other, I'm giving them the latitude to make decisions (unchecked or, at least, less checked) that could negatively affect myself and others. Similarly, on one hand, I've stopped presuming that my predicted outcome will be the likely outcome, while, on the other, I'm taking the chance that the requesting party's opinion has equal or greater value than that of the person with information and practical experience that those who made the request simply don't have.
  
  I'm guessing that this dichotomy may relate to disconnecting from negative stress, from not taking the actions that I perform at another's request as my personal responsibility. My problem with that seemingly positive shift in thinking (and the crux of the dilemma) is that these are cases where I am still responsible for my actions and my micro-decisions within that other person's larger decision. I'm still personally involved, no matter how disconnected from the stress (or the accountability) I may want to be. "Just following orders" has never seemed to be an adequate excuse to abdicate personal responsibility or a reason to blindly agree without compromise before, so it's difficult to see why it should be now. Subs themselves are an easy example of how my decision to execute someone else's idea, however helpful or harmful their idea may be, is still my responsibility.
  
  I also wonder if FRM or PTPA might play a role, possibly resulting in me feeling less concern for the potential negative outcome of questionable decisions. While that could be a positive in the long run, it may (in the short term) lead me to stand idly (or, worse, actively contribute) as many suffer the consequences of someone else learning the error of their mistakes. They may need to learn, and they may need to fail to do that learning, but, when their decisions affect others and not just themselves, the consequences do seem more important than whether they learn not to make the mistake a second time. And it only complicates where I fit into things if I've been tapped to be the instrument of their mistake because they're incapable of making that mistake without me. (If, in fact, it's the mistake that I believe it to be.) My past compromises were where we previously met in the middle and negotiated something mutually acceptable, not where I just checked out because it "wasn't my decision" or because they "needed to learn their lesson" or "needed to fail on their own." The compromises were about damage control on a group decision, not me denying others the right to learn from their own decisions.
  
  It's almost like unconditional surrender by way of IDGAF, and apathy has never really been the badge of honor for me that it appears to be for others. I don't need to do as others do or think as others think (which is good, as a lot of it confuses me anyway), but, as long as what others do and think affects those around them (including me), I still need to GAF about what others do and think, if only to adapt successfully to the consequences of their thoughts and actions, to their responses to my thoughts and actions, to my environment, and to the situation. No (hu)man is an island. Ignoring a genuine problem that someone else has caused (or insisted that I cause) doesn't make it un-happen, nor does it make me impervious to its real-world repercussions.
  
  My hope is that this is just me trying to distinguish left from right in one of 3.3.1's suggestions, find a balance between opposing suggestions, and/or learn to be more motivated by my knowledge of likely consequences than my past concern for likely consequences. I don't mind that this is unlike me so much as I mind that I'm suddenly disowning responsibilities that, whether on not I ever wanted them, are still mine, just as much as they were a few months ago when I was unquestioningly owning them then.
  

[myth]

Taking time off from DMSI after what, according to the calendar, looks like around four months on 3.3.x.

Executing on 3.3.x has resulted in months of life improvements, particularly at work, and that's been great, but, as far as either sex or sexiness goes, I've had a greater sex drive and sex appeal on other subs or without subs than on this one. I reason that, if 3.3.x is only tuning up my life (which, again, is still a great result, albeit not the program's advertised goal) and if I'm sexier and more interested in sex while running absolutely anything other than 3.3.x, I may as well run LTU (which is actually intended to tune up one's life) and see if I can return to my non-3.3.x sexiness and sex drive as a bonus. As LTU isn't an experimental sub and already has a multitude of users reporting, I don't expect to journal my time on it publicly.

As far as parting thoughts about 3.3.x, two areas stood out:

• My imagination. I've had very few sexual dreams at all on 3.3.x, and the few that I did have were swiftly interrupted. My sexual fantasies and mental visualization of sex became less frequent and less important. My sexual fantasies motivate me to have sex, and, in a way, on 3.3.x, my desire lost a lot of its fuel. Yes, my work creativity went through the roof, as my imagination suddenly had a lot of free time and free space, and great things were inarguably achieved in my work life, but my imagination is a big part of my motivation.
  
  What I imagine is where I build reasons to do something, where I build reasons to do something is where I build desire and motivation, where I build desire and motivation is where I focus, and where I focus is where I go. Unlike 3.1 or earlier (never ran 3.2), 3.3.x accompanied feeling like I should aim for sex while leaving my reasons for wanting sex in the past. But I don't do things "just because." I do them as a consequence of current reasons (either selfish, selfless-by-way-of-selfish, or both) to want to do those things. And because those things and those reasons have current meaning to me. If I stop imagining those reasons or that meaning, I lose them and the motivation that they inspire. Losing sexual inspiration was a jet engine for my work life, but it was a flat tire for my sex life.
  
  
• My memory. I'm unsure if this affected all memories, some memories, or just sexual ones, but I've lost (or at least achieved a more dulled) sensory, emotional, and experiential connection to my sexual history. Recalling it is like recalling a story that I was told, a movie that I saw, or a book that I'd read. While I can remember fragments if I make a concerted effort, I rarely feel like I was ever really there anymore, and, additionally, those emotionally-divested fragments are quickly dismissed as if they're thoughts that I don't want to have. As with the changes to my imagination, these are de-motivating changes toward the idea of having sex. Much of my motivation to have sex is knowing and remembering how good it feels to have it, and, unfortunately, the ability to recall those feelings (as feelings) has diminished. They're not completely gone, just... muffled.
  

While these areas of imagination and memory might simply have been suppressed because other things were being worked on (or just diverted by following new neural pathways), this isn't a tenable option for me for a six-month (or longer) run unless I'm aiming to let my existing sexual relationships fall by the wayside. If, on the other hand, this is an aspect of the script not being clear enough (or polymorphic enough?) about the difference between which fantasies are and aren't an escape tactic, then it's even more important to me (for my own version of sexual motivation) that I work to preserve the reasons and feelings that fuel my libido.

I'd be entirely unsurprised by reflexive reactions of "must be/sounds like" reverse resistance or "must be/sounds like" some fear of sex or interest or success, but, while becoming more of a workhorse has cut down the frequency of sexual encounters due to time constraints (constraints which have been prompted by co-workers, not by me), nothing during 3.3.x has stopped me from having/enjoying sex or caused me to reject desirable interest; it's merely (seemed to have) reduced my ability to enjoy sex unless I'm currently having it. And that's just not a result that I'm looking for. Especially from a sub that I'd been running to help increase my desirability to other people, not to change how or why I enjoy sex myself.

I'll admit that making sex into the only time for sexual enjoyment could be an academically interesting change of both carrot and stick, needing to experience it in the moment to enjoy it at all, but, if I can't easily recall the enjoyment of sex before or after the act, that appears to leave the binary options of never stopping sex (to remain capable of recalling why I enjoy/want it) or never fully remembering how good it actually is (enough to have reason to want it when I'm not having it). And that sort of ultimatum, whether present in the script directly or created by my own warped interpretation of the script, just doesn't fit well with my life. It also won't fit well in my twilight years, when circumstance and physical function could preclude the possibility of having sex in the moment. For me, how I execute is almost as important as if I execute, and, even if it's solely due to my misunderstanding of the script, continuing to reinforce that misunderstanding isn't my goal.

3.3.x accompanied several good changes in my life, as mentioned in previous posts, so I hope that this doesn't sound like a complaint about the experience or about the sub. I'm simply mentioning two aspects of my own experience that I hadn't mentioned in detail previously, aspects that don't really appeal to me.

[RTBoss]

Great post, Myth. It's interesting to see how The Wall affected you. It makes sense that fantasizing motivates some people to have more sex, while others potentially use it to resist the goal. "Plugging the holes" to get more users to execute properly seems to have unintended consequences for others. You were successfully executing and regularly experiencing the design goal on 3.1, no?

Since switching to USLM4, the power level with the completed Magnus Engine makes me wonder if The Wall is necessary anymore. It (ME) seems to bulldoze anything in its path. It'll be interesting to see what the next version of DMSI does when it's installed.