I have a block, a writer's block but also a sex block. My sex toys are gathering dust, my thoughts aren't lingering on any eroticism, they are gathering dust too and I can't decide if that's a bad thing or in fact a very good, freeing, thing to be happening. It feels particularly pertinent to be writing that in May, 'Masturbation Month'.

I had planned to write a set of pieces this year about ageing (I just hit fifty-five) and my sex life. I've written a lot about sex, about my trans body and my trans genitals. I'm probably quite good at writing about it as I don't get embarrassed talking about sex or talking about my body. I long to be painted or photographed naked.

As a freelancer, I have lots of time on my hands and a beautiful private courtyard to feel erotic and sexual in. Two or three years ago I was always naked in my courtyard, always touching and feeling my body, my yoga sessions would easily ascend into pleasure with me wanking under my olive tree. So much was self pleasure a part of my yoga routine that as well as my mat I'd take sex toys and lube into my garden with me. Once, one of my dogs ran off with my most beautiful soft vibrator in his mouth and only dropped it when his teeth had depressed the on button. A quick rinse in Milton and it was soon back in use. A good toy is a good toy.

I imagined that over this year of writing commitment to Life & Love With HIV with all the time in the world to self pleasure and far greater confidence to meet a partner or partners, that I would have a growing set of narratives about my sexual explorations. I thought juices would flow.

They haven't.

My sexual narrative has withered, if I'm honest. Over the last six months or so, it's just petered off to an occasional fingering and, quite frankly, on one level, I couldn't care less. And that horrifies me.

I love my body. I love the feeling of letting go to erotic and physical pleasure here in the warmth of the Spanish sun. So I'm really confused as to why it isn't happening. Is it age or could it be hormonal? I'm trans. I assume my hormone levels are consistent and steady? I honestly don't know what happens to an ageing trans body and hormones. There's such scant interest and research into trans sex lives and trans sex positivity. I should do some research.

But on another level, I'm not horrified at all because the pleasure I'm getting from the world right now, as I relax into my mid fifties, is immense. Literally, fucking immense.

The pleasure I'm getting from my inner sense of self confidence and self belief is a thing of delight that I never imagined I'd have or experience.

I realise now at fifty-five that I've spent about fifty of those years not feeling good enough when all I had to do was to stand still, silence the noise and make my own cup of Chai tea from scratch. Blending cardamom, fresh ginger, cloves, pepper and Assam and then allow it to brew for an age to let the spices infuse.

To make my own flatbread, to grow my own vegetables and herbs, and to take real time out to enjoy these things. To breathe my success at being a long term thriver in deeply and to exhale my pleasure at being here. I know it sounds corny but this is a very short life that rushes by at its own speed, not yours and not mine. We don't own time we just have to try and live in the moment.

We move through our lives constantly trying to be perfect, perfect in the way we look, in our careers, in our sex lives and even perfect in our fucking orgasms.

We move through our lives constantly trying to be perfect, perfect in the way we look, in our careers, in our sex lives and even perfect in our fucking orgasms. We are programmed from birth to not take quality time out for ourselves, in which we can focus on the stuff that we grow or make; be that a beautiful room, a love of reading, a career that gives enough, a tree or perhaps just herbs in a pot by the front door. Herbs matter.

Just stopping, standing still, breathing in deeply and not wanting to be anywhere else in the world in that moment is a radical act of pleasurable self care and self love. Its sex by any other name.

We spend years seeking out idealised, perfect relationships, rejecting or nitpicking those ones in front of us that don't instantly satisfy our hunger to create perfection. We constantly plan ahead how to become perfect and how to lead more perfect lives, so much so that we stop seeing the brilliance of the lives we have at any given moment. We stop being in our lives in this moment.

I'm not claiming that my life is some kind of utopia. It's not.

I'm single. I wish I wasn't. My body has mounds and crevices in all the wrong places. I wish it didn't. I'm far financially unstable. I wish I wasn't. And I still get copious amounts of sexism, transphobia and ageism. I wish I didn't. But, and it's a huge but, I recognise now that being perfect, or being anymore perfect, is a myth created to keep us on a treadmill which, step by step, takes us away from ourselves. Letting go of seeking perfection is the most pleasurable thing I have done. The most defining act of self-appreciation.

But this has been a tough journey to this point, a tough year.

My bedside drawer, my sex toy drawer, has grown full this past year as I have sought to firmly root myself back in my old quest of trying to feel perfectly sexual and trying to remain sexual even when my sex drive was waning. Those toys, bless them, now represent a punishment, a constant reminder that I should be trying harder to seek out pleasure from my body and not from the things around me I so love growing and making. We have elevated sex and sex positivity to a place where it is yet another every decreasing shelf of potential perfection that we seek to climb onto, like being wealthy or beautiful or youthful. Being sex positive doesn't mean having sex. Being body positive doesn't mean being naked.

Twenty six odd years ago I was told that I was HIV positive. At the time, it was a diagnosis of full blown AIDS. The expectation was that I wouldn't live very long. I remember feeling that if I was going to die then I must live. I went to university and studied Fine Art and Philosophy because, at the time, that felt like living. Philosophy felt like life to me.

I did live in the moment then but not for the moment, I didn't allow any time to be wasted because I assumed that every experience might be the last. Reading books about philosophy felt important not because I thought I'd become anymore than I was but because it allowed me to stand still and take it in.

To breathe it in.

So, my commitment now to myself at this time in my life is to try and get back to that point again. To simply stop, be still, let go and receive pleasure from everyday activities, from the apparently mundane; cooking, eating, sitting, writing, walking, reading and thinking.

To stop berating myself for not feeling sexual in this moment.