I’m an expert at time management

If you lack in time management skills, consider hiring an addict to coach you.

Addicts are, almost universally, masters. We have to be. To spend as much time as we want, as we need, pursuing our drug/behavior of choice, we develop a facility with multi-tasking, prioritizing, and efficiency most non-addicts can only dream of.

At my peak, I juggled relationships with as many as eight or ten women (or maybe even more) – women I saw regularly, whose lives and careers and friendships and relationships I followed. I had multiple ads running on Craigslist at all times. Managed multiple profiles on various dating and commercial sex web sites. Maintained a database tracking my opinion of the quality of service provided by some two dozen massage providers at eight or ten different “incall locations.” Or more. Managed three or four e-mail accounts other than the ones I used in “real life.” As well as two phone lines in addition to my “regular” one. “Acted out” – had a sexual interaction with someone other than my wife – multiple times a week, or even multiple times in a day. I managed a database of women in various cities to which I traveled, women I had met, women I hoped to meet. And I managed to do all this out of view of those who were close to me – itself, a fairly arduous task involving history-deletion, call log management, account hiding, furtive showering and all sorts of other techniques.

And the porn: I managed paid memberships to multiple sites, and tracked a number of unpaid sites as well. That I checked every day. Religiously. I knew when each site updated, which ones updated daily, which weekly, which multiple times a week, and I even knew roughly at what time they all updated. And I checked them all. The first thing I did when I got to my desk, if I wasn’t traveling, was to check a litany of sites to see what had changed.

AND, I had a demanding job that featured extensive travel, long hours, hard work. And a family. That I deceived. Even as I checked my various e-mails and phones and profiles and web sites nearly constantly.

Not to mention, through it all, a fairly demanding schedule of psychotherapy. (I knew I needed help.)

Every addict I’ve ever met was this way. It’s a skill we develop as our dependency, our powerlessness, grows.

2 comments

  1. maybe that’s why i wasnt a more successful addict.
    i was terrible at that stuff and pretty quickly i didnt give a shit who knew what.
    i guess i kept my drug habit hidden for about a year, but i really wanted attention, so keeping it hidden wasnt serving me.
    i still wanna be rescued in my own way, but i play it out in less destructive ways these days.

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