100 Posts About Pleasure

An Index

Photo by Marcel Eberle on Unsplash

Hello, my pleasure-loving readers! This is my hundredth post at The Pleasure Principle! An essay on pleasure almost every week? Really? How long can I keep it up? I truly don’t know. Sometimes I worry that the bucket has hit the bottom of the well. And then I scoop up some more water.

I do know that this writing practice has been personally transformative, helping me understand myself and pleasure better, increasing my writing fluency (and unleashing metaphors!), and sharpening my focus.

To say nothing of shaping my week. With my self-imposed Tuesday publication schedule, I often think and write on Sunday and find a photo and schedule the piece on Monday night. Then every Tuesday at 11:11, I get the piece back to me in my inbox, knowing that all my subscribers are getting it, too, which still seems miraculous. On Tuesday I get some reaction, which I love, though I don’t get a lot of it. Apparently, people in my demographic are less likely than others to “heart” or to comment. I’m developing the “liking” and commenting habit myself, knowing how happy just a heart can make a writer.

On Wednesday morning, Substack gives me my stats (likes, comments, opens), but my readers are likely to open and comment days and sometimes weeks afterwards. I love that. It means that they’ve saved my posts to read later. It would be all to easy to simply delete them!

The Tent of Pleasure is capacious, and I’ve written about all sorts of things, usually discovering my thoughts as I write. These posts fall into different categories, and I’ve provided links to some of my favorite posts . . . though they may not be yours! Within each category, they are listed in the order I wrote them. All 100 posts can be accessed at:

https://catherinehiller.substack.com/publish/posts

There, you can put any of the titles below into the search box and click to read the whole piece.

PLEASURE, GENERALLY

The Pleasure Principle Explained

*** Too Much Pleasure: https://catherinehiller.substack.com/p/too-much-pleasure

Strange Pleasures

Pleasure in Danger

We Need Pleasure

The Problem with Pleasure

Vicarious Pleasures

Enchanting Act 1

SPECIFIC PLEASURES

Mind Games

The Pleasure of Clothing, Part 1

The Pleasure of Clothing, Part 2, with Chat GPT

The Pleasure of Reading a Newspaper

Marijuana 201

The Pleasure of Pockets

The Pleasure of Accents

Ignoble Pleasures

The Beach Car

Word Games

Why Women Love Lingerie

*** The Pleasure Dogs Bring

https://catherinehiller.substack.com/p/the-pleasure-dogs-bring

A Recipe for Pleasure

Nitrous Oxide

What’s in a Nickname?

The Pleasure of Cursive

The Pleasure of Playing with Kids

*The Joy of Running: Really? Oh, Come On!

https://catherinehiller.substack.com/p/the-joy-of-running

The Senses

Playing with Fire

Ah-choo!

Watching Water

Getting Into Hot Water

*** The Pleasure of a Pedicure

https://catherinehiller.substack.com/p/the-pleasure-of-a-pedicure

Skin Hunger

Human Beauty

Three Massages

The Sounds of Silence

Watching Birds

SLEEP

The Body in the Bed

The Silent Bed

Sweet Sleep

SEX AND LOVE

Biological Fireworks

The Gray Affair

*** Sex at Dawn

https://catherinehiller.substack.com/p/sex-at-dawn

The Big O

The Orgasm Gap

Love over Fifty

Humor and Eros

Do You Miss Making Out?

*** Is it Love or is it Adrenaline?

https://catherinehiller.substack.com/p/is-it-love-or-is-it-adrenaline

The Lost Art of Flirtation

*** Sexual Fantasy

https://catherinehiller.substack.com/p/sexual-fantasy

PHILOSOPHICAL/OTHER

Surprise!

Treasured Objects

*** The Pleasure of Virtue

https://catherinehiller.substack.com/p/the-pleasure-of-virtue

Transgression

Escaping Your Comfort Zone

Laughing About Old Age

Pet Peeves

Final Pleasures

Treasures from the Past

Anticipation

Waxing Nostalgic

The Incurable Optimist

Vindication

The Pleasure of Changing Your Mind

The Pleasure of Paradox

More than Pleasure

Just the Right Challenge

Damsel in De-Stress

*** Adult Children

https://catherinehiller.substack.com/p/adult-children

The High Contrast Life

SOCIAL LIFE

*** Shall We Dance?

https://catherinehiller.substack.com/p/shall-we-dance

Hello Neighbor

People Watching

Compliments

The Pleasure of Being Known

Flaunting Your Flaws

No Face-Time

*** Dinner Parties

https://catherinehiller.substack.com/p/dinner-parties

The Anxiety of Giving

Pleasure, Meet Patrice

Who Am I?

WRITING

The Pleasure of Creation

A short story at the end of Nitrous Oxide

*** Poem: 13 Ways of Looking at an Eclipse

https://catherinehiller.substack.com/p/13-ways-of-looking-at-an-eclipse

Confessions of a Word Geek

The Pleasure of Fiction

Generosity at the A & P

*** Writing and Editing

(In his newsletter, NY Times columnist Frank Bruni cited a sentence from this post in his feature, For the Love of Sentences. I don’t have to tell you which sentence: as a friend said, with disdain, “It’s very showy.”)

https://catherinehiller.substack.com/p/writing-and-editing

META: WRITING ABOUT THIS SUBSTACK

Introducing the Pleasure Principle

The Year of Writing Dangerously

The Pleasure of Writing a Substack

Why I Write About Pleasure

100 Posts about Pleasure: this very post!