Failure rates

A new Chief Executive at Proctor and Gamble recently decided to take the issue of corporate busines strategy to the next level. To him the biggest threat to P&G was the strategic inertia that kept it from adapting and taking the innovative lead in the market. He re-structured the company, and created subsidiaries aimed at innovation and only innovation. But instead of setting a success rate for these subsidiaries, our fellow CEO decided to set a common rate of...failure.

When you think about it, it is ingenius. His argument was that if the new subsidiaries weren't failing enough, they weren't taking enough risks with their innovations. By setting a rate of failure, he ensures that his thinkers were thinking far enough outside the box to make mistakes or, when they get lucky, come up with something brilliant.

I wondered, learning all this, if we as individual should set a standard rate of failure for ourselves - just so we can make sure that we're taking enough risks in our lives, and truly maximizing our benefit from it. I personally shudder at the very idea of a standard rate of failure. Failure to me has never been an option, and when it has happened on very random and few occasions, I struggled with it immensely. Not on a self-esteem level necessarily, but simply mourned through the de facto situation.

I realized that perhaps the reason I fail so infrequently is because I take very little risks with my life. Maybe I am not really living, just going through calculated motions which are in the grand scheme of things at best circular, anchored down to a center, like the limb of a protractor. Not that I've never taken risks - falling in love was a risk, moving away from home at 17 was a risk. Still now more than ever I feel inertia, and perhaps taking a risk (albeit an intelligent one) is the answer?

Sex and Emasculation

e·mas·cu·late

1.	to castrate.

2.	to deprive of strength or vigor; weaken.

–adjective

3.	deprived of or lacking strength or vigor; effeminate.

With the gradual revival of my sex life, and with the ebbing of the tide of monogamy, I've gained a perspective on sex and particularly my sexuality that had been lost on me in the past. It is in those moments of ascending suspense, of nearing sexual climax, and the resulting 30 or so seconds of pure ecstasy by which (if you're of the freudian persuasion) the human psyche is eternally mesmerized; yes it is in those few but parallel moments that inhibitions are truly lost, as if with every physical thrust our conscious inertia loses ground and our deepest fantasies and secrets merge for the glorious tour de force.

The feeling I get during sex, uncomparable to any else, now is matched with intrigue at my own thought trajectory. As I near my own climax, thoughts rush through my head at an alarming rate. Suddenly, and though i see a beautiful male form before me, I stare him in the eye and my brain begins to emasculate him. Little by little, he turns into my beautiful, hungry...no... sex-starved...girl. I go even faster. My thoughts spiral into four letter words demeaning him, reducing him, objectifying him, all to get what I want out of him - a solid orgasm.

I lay in bed next him thinking about what just happened. Am I actually straight and in the closet about it? No. I'm fairly positive the reason I emasculate my random sexual partners to get a good kick is because, on a very fundamental level, if they retained their masculinity during sex I wouldn't feel as confident or as dominant. Society has taught me that, at least in bed, women are on the receiving end, seeking the domination of their male partners. That scenario either is natural or convenient for me. I seek to dominate because not only is it sexually pleasurable, but it also takes away any nervousness I might be going through in light of how gorgeous or 'masculine' this guy is.

The good news is, once the sex is over, any trace of such sexist animalism is gone. The human being that he is resurfaces and my sexual rants are drowned out...