I just realized how important what I do is to my emotions.

I'm an... interesting person to describe when it comes to emotions. I experience things - physical touch, sound, internal feeling, so on - more sharply, more clearly than most people; apparently, it's known as being an HSP (Highly Sensitive Person). At the same time, I have no direct access to what I feel: the emotions affect me, but there's no straight way for me to understand what those emotions are. I just feel stuff, without internal labels. Because of the latter, I had to dig deep into psychology to learn it consciously; I like to compare it to the emotional core that theoretical human-like robots might have, because it's not an internal part of their psyche but a mechanism of comparison through various heuristics.

As you might guess, it's not always apparent to me what it is it that affects me. It can go on for days before I figure it out. Thankfully, I got much better at it with practice and being honest with myself. Still, it's a reactive practice, and it takes conscious effort. So, when I do something that upsets me - often enough because the idea of doing it is overwhelming - it drags my mood down without me knowing what the heck happened.

So, when I masturbate, I give away both my energy and my mood in exchange for a quite pleasurable, but ultimately desctructive in nature few minutes or hours, because now I'm on a lower cognitive and emotional level, prone to the whims of the ego as well as reinforcing the idea that I'm no good to have sex with a real person. When I skip exercising, I give away both my mood and my motivation to go on, because now I worry about not performing as well as I would had I done the exercises as well as feel general pity for myself. Hunger (when I clearly can, and have stuff to, eat), denying myself things I'd enjoy or those that would make me feel good and other such states do the same for me.

Basically, I'm stuck with a low energy level unless I expend energy on stuff that should logically tire me. How peculiar is life at times.