Too much Internet porn? Let me help.

My problem: I watch too much internet porno. What to do?
Trav-ass (via Myspace)

You know what your problem is, Trav? You don't love yourself enough.

I've had that told to me a million times in my life, that I didn't "love myself" and needed to start doing so ASAP. I never knew what it meant. Don't get me wrong, the concept of self-hatred is well-ingrained in me, having taken the baton from the kids at school who used to taunt me relentlessly. Now those kids are in my head and I'm the one who does it to myself.

So if hating yourself is running yourself down with insults about your looks, status, etc., then loving yourself would have to be the opposite, right? Instead of making yourself miserable with putdowns, looking in the mirror and telling yourself how great you are.

I saw this in the grid at the CSU (undisclosed location). I had just returned from a twenty-month hellride in Los Angeles, depressed and anxious. I was terrified to see people anymore, and I needed help. Over the course of six days, I spent a lot of time in group therapy on the grid, and the women were given tips on improving their self-esteem by looking at themselves in the mirror every morning and reciting words on a sheet about all their positive virtues. It was an alphabetic fill-in-the-blank.

I am Amazing
I am Beneficial (?)
I am Carthage, which fell in the Third Punic War (146 BC)

It's kind of hard to fill-in-the-blank when you really think about it. The men were given written exercises to do about self-esteem repair. The point being, I believe that the concept of self-love is a woman-generated one, and as such is difficult for a man to grasp. If women are abstract, men are concrete. I probably have this all wrong, and as yet I still haven't even mentioned your internet porn problem, Trav. So I'm going to give you five words, Trav, and please make a note of them.

1. Don't
2. Shit
3. Where
4. You
5. Eat

Don't shit where you eat. I first heard of this phrase when I bought a Ween album with that as the last song title. For years, I never knew what it meant. If you go to Urban Dictionary

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=don't+shit+where+you+eat

...you'll find that it means to not have sex with or date co-workers. In other words, don't make yourself uncomfortable in a vulnerable situation, such as the workplace.

Now, Trav. I'm going to assume that like most Internet-savvy folks, you do a little bit of work at home. Maybe you're a self-starter. And if you're watching Internet porn on your home/work computer while masturbating, you're pretty much dropping a deuce at the Quizno's checkout counter. Savvy? Savvy.

How can you stop watching Internet porn? Well, it's not the watching that's the problem, it's the jacking off that's the problem. All the compressed air in the world can't vacuum out the dried jizz under the spacebar. Nope, you're gonna need to get in there with toothpicks and tiny screwdrivers, because it's matted in with stray hair and food particles, wrapped snugly into a nice dustball.

I say, convert the porn files over, burn them onto a DVD-R and take that tranny porn into the bedroom where you keep your TV. You don't have a TV in your bedroom? What is this, 1985? Get with the times, Trav. You're a grownup, you can eat ice cream whenever you want. And you might as well have a TV set in your bedroom, if only for DVD watching.

When you sit there, in your office chair at home, pulling your pud to something on YouPorn or PornTube or whatever, you're not really loving yourself. Do yourself a favor, kick back in bed with clothes off all the way (not even the underwear around one ankle...who would you be fooling at that point?), get out the lotion and go to town. Stop making off-jacking a job and really enjoy it when you get a chance. That's the closest thing I can think off to "loving yourself."