August, 2017 - Ina Disguise

For those tracking statistics…

August 17, 2017 1 Comment

It looks as if nobody is reading the blog at all. I have 14 spammers per day, who hit the same pages without leaving a trace, and I probably know the only people actually reading personally.

Facebook and Twitter used to yield quite a few, as did linkedin, and there used to be a few direct readers checking in to whatever the blog said. Now, also because I tweet a lot less widely, there are no real readers by the looks of the statistics.

So, thanks if you have been keeping tuned in, but there looks as if this is a dying blog from the last couple of weeks or so. Youtube is doing marginally better, so I may concentrate more on the audio blog once I have filled in all the blanks that are worth filling.

I am having pretty much constant anxiety attacks due to the extended attack on my mother and I, and I am not sure how much more my health will tolerate, so everything is now very unstable here.

Am spending a lot of time de-cluttering as a result. I have nothing to prove in terms of my care for my mother, and I am not really in a position to carry on fighting to make myself ill.

Not a great period, and certainly not a productive one as I am worrying about how I will store all this stuff and pay for everything in the near future.

creativity, motivation

The Quest for Quality

August 14, 2017 No Comments

The Quest for Quality

Today I am considering the matter of quality. As I have previously written, perfection is for failures and people who don’t try. Today I want to consider the matter of finding your degree of excellence and reaching for that.

If you wish, you can check out my work so far. You will notice that the work for David Wolfe is more experimental and less perfect than some of my previous work, and that the colours are fairly vibrant, depending on my mood at the time. There are also a lot of word games involved, and a fair bit of whimsy.

I now look at this work and think it is intermediate. This is no reflection on Wolfe, I was really seeking to demonstrate the time wasted on pointless emotion whilst creating something new out of this wasted time. I do not like waste. Having feelings for somebody I don’t know is a waste, therefore something had to be created. Between the books and the pieces of artwork I have spent a lot of time on Wolfe. It was something that I never thought I would actually get done, so I am kind of grateful for the misery.

You don’t get to seek quality unless you take a risk on your experiments, if you are trying out something new. Therefore in order to be a master of your new direction, you have to be prepared for lemons. I will probably sell these off at less than their value once I hit my true pitch. I will put out the Boris collection next year probably, which is rather different and more British/rural than the Wolfe stuff, and then perhaps work on some of the more advanced Wolfe pieces if I have not found a new point of interest by then. I think the Mrs Wolfe piece of work is likely to take up most of the next two years, as it involves a lot of changes of habit which really need to be permanent at this point.

In terms of my own public speaking, I have put out a lot of very raw readings on youtube, which I am not happy with. My justification for this was that I don’t have a lot of time, and the audio versions are really just to get more thumbnails of my artwork onto people’s screens. I do not think this is a good reason to put out half-assed recordings. I think I should redo the lot and start an audio channel elsewhere to make the most of the time spent.

It is really up to you what level you want to end up pitching at. As I was discussing earlier in the month, your popular online writers often expect to put out several articles a day on their chosen topic, therefore the weight of content and level of information dispensed is likely to be quite low. This is more digestible, acceptable and attracts more interest, but if you are not happy to put out pulp, you might want to consider condensing your material and drawing from it later, in the same manner that I have done with the original book. I have not really used the material, but I think I probably should as it is quite interesting work.

I wanted to be the Lalique or Tiffany of carpets, therefore I am less than halfway to my goal. I am happy with the extent of the Wolfe phase development, but I think I could take it a lot further. That is more about me than him, I could get serious but I was so ashamed of having human feelings for a long time that I kind of feared taking it further. I will see if my personal reinvention on the Mrs Wolfe project improves this somewhat. (for those not quite understanding this, I had this picture in my head of what I would have to look like to stand next to Wolfe, and I am now laughingly thinking I should shoot for it for the sake of my health, even if she is a monstrous bitch!)

I am considering attending Wolfe’s event in a niqab. This would certainly solve the smiley problem and not be at all distracting. I will see how I feel later next month. I could do with the stimulation for the sake of the game also, since I am currently relying on American reports of his events for information, and this is unlikely to be strictly true in the UK, since he is in more of the upper-middle delusion (too posh for Icke) market here.

The horrible meeting is tomorrow. I may just avoid it altogether.

Ina

creativity, health

Status Seeking

August 13, 2017 1 Comment

Status Seeking

I had a very lucid kind of dream this morning, featuring an ex-boyfriend I would rather forget.

I have had this dream before, if you are into dream interpretation, you may have some fun with this:

I am in a coffee shop in a holiday town. I decide to buy a piece of their super expensive white chocolate and raspberry cheesecake for my mother, as it is apparently the stuff of legend. Notice that I have no intention of actually having any myself, as apparently this is important to the dream. A fight breaks out in the coffee shop as the punters are aware that I have a slice of it.

I then return to my job as a chef in a large and rather industrial kitchen, where I work for a head chef that has considerably less knowledge and experience than I do. Nevertheless I am aware of feeling quite happy as I dodge the Victorian pipes and other workers in the course of doing whatever it is that I am doing there.

After a lot of exploring the staff accomodation, which appears to be a rabbit warren, I come back to work and go through the wrong door into the public area, which is in the form of a bar. My ex, who was Raymond Blanc’s head chef many moons ago, is standing teaching a small crowd of rather daft looking people how to make sandwiches. He is waving his arms around and pretending that this is very complex, and of course with a French accent, it sounds rather more technical than putting cheese and lettuce between slices of pan bread.

He sees me, stops and then tries to belittle me. I am aware that he is jealous that I am allowed in the kitchen and he is not. This relates to reality, as when we were together he was jealous that I was getting better jobs than he was on the grounds that I was a)cheaper b)more flexible c)not famous d)unlikely to stab anyone.

To me, this dream is all about status. I have actively avoided status throughout my life. I like responsibility, but I have no interest in status. I am not sure why this is? I am very keen on seeking knowledge, I am happy to work to gain even small amounts of that, but status is not of interest.

Not only has this seriously affected my income, it has been rather sad in that I spend a lot of time thinking that people are not terribly competent. Competence certainly doesn’t relate to success, as far as I can see, at least not as much as wanting status really badly.

The cheesecake issue is about quality of care. My mother has no regard for my well-being, she has actually said as much, however she literally gets the best of everything, even whilst she complains about it. I tend to think this is her idea of having fun, since her life is rather limited. The fight in the coffee shop is people who would rather she did not have this care because they arent getting any. Therefore I think this part is me worrying about aging and how my life is going to end up as a result of caring for her.

The kitchen work element is about resolving this resistance to status, and wondering if knowledge acquisition really matters at this point in my life, since nobody is interested in knowledge anymore.

Rene turning up is likely to be about becoming a greedier and more forceful person, as Rene suffered from a kind of enforced narcissism as a result of his more genuinely narcissistic mother. I actually felt quite sorry for him even as he stamped all over my life for his own gain.

I do wonder if I have been chasing Wolfe for years because of this fear of status and willingness to drown in work for the joy of doing it. If it recovers my health, so much the better but I am a rather disruptive child when I want to know something.

I am thinking that Mrs Wolfe, the fictional character that I am creating, will not be complete by October and that I would be better to complete this project and write about it rather than bother to speak to him. To hell with the original book, nobody cares about the planet or their own welfare anyway, even the people that pretend that they do.

business

The Great Thing about Nonentity

August 12, 2017 57 Comments

The great thing about being a nonentity is that you don’t have to worry about what you say. You can say anything at all, nobody is listening. I had to take the website over from the website manager a few months ago, and since then have had to try to figure out how websites work from scratch. It has only been close to back to normal for the last week, so I have no idea when it plummeted in numbers between then and now. There was quite a serious gap, so basically Ina had to be restarted from scratch.

Whilst I am quite fond of some of my old posts, I see that I waste a lot of posts talking about personal stuff. I tend to think it might be of use to somebody, but perhaps it is just a bore. I actually got more retweets than readers for the last post!

Facebook and Twitter seem to be phasing out the free sharing of posts altogether. To make things worse, Twitter are banning authors, in particular, from promoting their posts. The ‘eat shit and die’ blog entry about healthcare was mistaken for hate speech, and so Ina is no longer allowed to promote anything at all on Twitter.

Good news for more mainstream advertisers, but what use is Twitter to me now? It seems that unless you are posting several tweets, with a variety of hashtags, you will not reach very many people. Between the two of them, Twitter and Facebook are streamlining more visible content to reflect bland material. I am sure that this is very helpful to the producers of bland material, but it does not seem to me that it is particularly diverse.

I guess the answer is to be more bland and less quirky, which is a crashing bore. Perhaps it is time Ina died a death and became Brenda Bland?

I will use this slow phase to catch up on building the Youtube channel, and considering more of a strategy for the blog. Wittering on about a niche author that hates me anyway would seem rather pointless.

Am up to 5 miles per day, which is amazing considering my first walk, of a mile, was incredibly hard. Evidently there is some stiffness that you resolve simply by doing it. Pretty sure I will not be going to Wolfe’s event anyway as it is probably pointless and will just get me annoyed.

Spoke to a woman in the market today who told me that there were 200 kinds of dementia and that there was nothing you could do about it. She laughed at me when I said I had kept mother going for this long by pretending there was no problem and constanly rehabbing. Her sister, who has dementia, is 58. It struck me by this woman’s disparaging anger towards me, and the illness, that attitude is very important to remain well as you progress with the disease.

creativity

Hounded by the fictitious Mrs Wolfe

August 10, 2017 56 Comments

Hounded by the fictitious Mrs Wolfe

She has tired me out today. She insisted on a 3 hour trip to the hairdresser, which I have never done in my life. I look very different, but I notice, because I am actually looking people in the eye, that they are viewing me more positively.

I have never considered just letting my whackiest thoughts guide what I am doing before. This is a queer sort of fun. Progress so far is a weight loss of 36lb, radical new hair and two almost nice items of clothing.

Pending radical decisions include completely changing the way I dress – I tend to wear men’s clothes. Not sure I will let her away with that one as for one thing, it is very expensive, and for another, it is over-egging the pudding to wear women’s clothing when your breasts could easily knock someone out regardless of what you wear.

Now I am to walk sixteen miles a day. I am tired just thinking about this. Two weeks ago I would have said a swift no way to that one as it would have involved intense pain. Today I am just thinking – yeah maybe next week. This week I might do five. If you don’t like it that is too bad, Mrs W.

It is probably time to start work on the next book whilst I slowly work on these games. I also have a very unpleasant meeting about my mother coming up next week. Mrs W can take care of that I think.

In the meantime I shall just have another look at this weird hair she gave me.

She does have moderately good taste, I guess, for a crazy person.

motivation

Thoughts on the David Wolfe UK event October 2017 issue

August 8, 2017 No Comments

Today I had to drive down to Carmichael, a village in Lanarkshire to pick up a new lawnmower. The old lawnmower was not very old at all but was designed by Germans who apparently believe that lawns consist of only one type of grass, not much use when you have three lawns on a hill. When the self-propulsion pegged out, I heaved a sigh of relief and got rid of the Einhell junk. Who designs a lawnmower that cannot cope with grass, and cannot collect it?

Anyway, I got to thinking as I drove down, as my satnav redirected me onto some horrific ring road which involved circling my house in ever increasing circles about three times on the way there, about what I really wanted from the Wolfe event, were I to move heaven and earth to actually get there.

Apparently my first priority was to establish that I am very funny via a series of hilarious and pointed greetings. Who cares? I can be quite cruel too, especially when you are being a total dickwad. Wolfe is well aware of this, so if he responds that he does not want me to attend, it is my own fault as well as his for being a plonker in the first place.

I spun this out in my head, to the point of actually having the conversation I have been waiting to have for the last seven years. That conversation is actually about work, what his aims are, and how my unused academic material could be used to give him the kudos required to make more of the European market. Why do I even still care about this? He certainly doesn’t. He is quite happy, good for him. He probably still sleeps on Shazzie’s floor when he is over here and is incapable of moving on to adult life anyway.

I then got to imagining setting up an actual meeting, and when I got to the imaginary meeting, he turned up with at least one dry looking hippy chick with the intention of humiliating me again. (hahaha the fat chick is here to see me) When I took this idea further to making my gooseberry departure, I realised that my wanting to see him was nothing at all to do with lugging on his lingam, and everything to do with recovering my face. This, going by past experience, would not suit him at all as he has a great love of being totally disrespectful right up until it turns out that you are a lot smarter than he expected you to be, at which point he runs. If this is how I think of him, why am I wasting my time on this?

Prior to my having this reality check, I was thinking optimistically that he might actually be quite pleased to see me, he may have grown out of being a plonker, and that things might end up OK between us. Not in a grand romantic sense, but at least he would understand that my attention seeking novels are just that and I do not actually bear him any real ill will. He seemed to have big difficulties with that. Most of my rather acerbic material prior to the books was aimed at getting his attention rather than harming him in any way. (it is all removed now, so don’t bother looking)

Now that I have realised that I am trying to save my face, and this is still about Facebook blocking and me feeling small, I feel like an idiot. Why do I even care? If I want to write my tiresome book, which still will not sell as Ina is still pretty much a nonentity, I have to write it regardless. He will soon lift anything useful if he bothers reading it. (highly unlikely)

It is all extremely tiresome, and getting me nowhere. Why go to all the trouble of getting there, with a no refund policy and the likelihood that he will freak out? There has been no acknowledgement from the organizer that they even have my enquiry, never mind a response, so I am thinking it is likely that they will not respond until it is way too late anyway.

See how reality differs from positive thinking, anyone? It would have been nice if my imaginary friend wasn’t imaginary, but he decided against it some time ago.

motivation

Change is sometimes sad

August 7, 2017 No Comments

Well, in my quest to improve myself, I booked myself into the hairdresser only to find that I had no time to actually go, so my radical change of hair has to wait until Thursday. I am in the middle of applying for some transcription work, and I realised that I not only don’t have time for that, I don’t even want to do it anymore. I will probably have to do it, since I applied and do not want problems finding work in the future. This is the fourth time this has happened, so I am really out of practice at taking tedious jobs just to pay the bills.

It is not that I am not motivated. I just feel that there is very little time left to do what I want to do, and I should not be spending that time typing when I should be busy growing. A little extra money, and the cap taken off my savings, would be extremely helpful at this point. It also resolves the issue of Ina actually selling anything, since I would already be self-employed. I am not quite sure why I am so averse to promoting myself at present. Perhaps I have quality issues with my work? If this is the case, I had better snap out of it because time is a-wasting.

I think it is the idea that I am doing this because there was something wrong with me in the first place, and I am not at all sure that there was. Not in terms of work anyway. My health was awful, my situation continues to be awful, otherwise I was a relatively happy, cynical and studious individual. Now I feel kind of cast aside, with my efforts to change things becoming harder and more futile by the day.

Everything designed to benefit my mother seems to be based on the premise that she cannot get any better, which does not help. I have actually stopped energising her in the form of massage in the last week because she just seems to want to sleep all the time, which is very sad and probably not good for her health. I have been pestered before on the basis that improving her health is somehow abusing her – this was when I was still doing mental exercises with her to maintain her brain – and I have found the last couple of months similar in that other people’s expectations of her are so low that she is grinding to a halt.

Still too stressed to sew, so I cannot finish the carpet that I was making for the Boris collection, and I am wary of doing any work on the furniture until things calm down. There is still a legal battle to fight so everything feels very much up in the air.

Wrote to the organiser of the David Wolfe event to ascertain if Wolfe is likely to become furious if I were to turn up. No answer as yet, but I am expecting a no, do not come to the event. Referred to myself as author/artist and felt a complete fraud. I wanted to do other things before all this started. Now it seems out of reach and very far away.

Have taken 5 inches off my waist so far, we shall see if this improvement continues. It is perhaps because this was started because of undervalue that I feel such a lack of confidence in my decisions.

creativity

The Best Romance Ever explained

August 7, 2017 No Comments

I have been asked for an explanation of Best Romance Ever, as it breaks every rule of the romance genre. Here are the rules of romance, from Elizabeth Grayson, although you will find I have broken every rule of every romance ever.

1) the readers care about the characters.
2) the readers identify with the heroine.
3) the readers fall in love with the hero.
4) the readers believe that the hero and heroine are convincingly united at the end of the book.

I don’t think either Sam or Kira are particularly appealing characters. One writer that had a look at Best Scandal Ever found the fact that Kira was fat and had a lot of boyfriends unbelievable due to her own weird hangups. They are interesting, but not particularly heart wrenching people. Another early comment was that referring to Sam as a womanizer was an insult. I replied at the time that it was descriptive. Sam is not a bad person at all, he just likes women, preferably briefly.
See above. Kira is a weirdo, who would rather hide in her house than attempt to disengage with her feelings. She uses them elsewhere as impetus to do other things.
Sam is not the sort of guy that anybody sensible would fall in love with. His entire life is devoted to avoiding such encumbrances. The only reason he nearly achieves romance is to improve his status.
Sam and Kira do not end up together at the end of the book. Quite the reverse. It is a comedy of manners, in which their respective nationalities plays a huge role. Kira is shy and completing a project, regardless of money or status, whilst Sam is very keen to be seen as very successful. This gives you a further insight into their characters, and is a development on Best Scandal Ever, which posits Sam as a business genius, whilst Kira is a faintly evil academic/artist who doesn’t care about people, money, or anything much apart from Sam, whom she wants nothing to do with.

So, although the principle of romance is there, there is no actual romance. All it establishes is a link between the characters, in the form of his turning up at the music festival when he is upset about the failure to sustain his romance with the famous actress. In terms of the series, it makes perfect sense, but in terms of the rules of romance, it is entirely rule breaking.

Nevertheless, men have particularly enjoyed the book, as it explains a lot about women. That nagging old fuck standing in your kitchen loves you very much, in fact, she is just busy maintaining your preferred level of boring old life. Love is not necessarily about flowers and pretty things. Sometimes it is about being extremely tough and withholding affection for wider reasons.

Some men, Sam included, misunderstand this as being stuck in a rut, or hen-pecked. So, for the more intelligent male reader it gives a measure of insight into why you would still be madly in love after thirty years, yet having a relatively grim day to day life. Best Romance Ever is my attempt to capture why your relationship unit may look shaky, but actually be performing extremely well.

There is a measure of almost autistic denial about Kira. She has little to no self-confidence, but I have forced her into situations where she copes remarkably well. She is horrified by her feelings about Sam, and yet flogs her dead horse persistently throughout the books. This in itself is more romantic than the average romance, since she has no expectations at all and does not forsee anything good or positive coming out of her feelings.

Sam, on the other hand, is blissfully unaware, and even if he was aware, would choose to ignore it, or brand Kira as insane.

Best Adventure Ever, the game in production at the moment, expands on this. Players selecting Sam as their character will get a very different experience, expressed through food choices and choices of date, than players selecting Kira and her choices of date. The romantic element between them is still there, however this piece of work is created around them rather than about them. It is really a piece about the quality of your relationships, how your looks impact/do not impact on your life experience, and how happy you end up as a result. It is also a comment about men and women generally, since Sam and Kira exemplify the ‘inny/outy’ nature of genitalia itself.

Finally, the pieces of work relating to Sam and Kira are about people who despise convention. The one thing that Sam and Kira share is that they have no real interest in conformity. If I ever put them together, I am sure their adventures together would be just as interesting, because of their opposing perception of the world around them.

I would argue that the Best Romance Ever is as the title suggests because there is no concluding ‘happy ever after.’ The Best Romance Ever, is a period of endless negotiation, therefore it is infinite.

Still free at this location – The Best Romance Ever

health, motivation

Appearance is everything

August 6, 2017 26 Comments

Appearance is everything

As regular readers will know, I have had a hard time over the last couple of months, with complete strangers entering our home to tell me how I should live according to them.

At one point, one of these worthies even asked me if I left the door open when I went out, such was my perceived level of stupidity. It was intensely annoying. It is amazing how your dishevelled appearance leads strangers to believe they can say whatever they like to you. I was reading a rather emphatic article about this last night. It doesn’t matter how hard you work, smaller breasted and thinner women are always perceived as more competent than you. Personally, I was a psychotic over-worker, so it did not affect me as long as I managed to get the job in the first place.

This is probably not over yet, so as I am doing a bit of an overhaul anyway, Mrs Wolfe has again reared her slightly better looking head.

Normally, since I looked after dad, then mum, on occasion my friend, it does not matter what I look like. Nobody is looking and I have no sense of time or capacity for looking in the mirror. I would rather think about anything else than what I am doing, as what I am doing is rather tedious. As a result, it is often months before I even notice that I have a problem.

Supermix also makes you rather lazy, since you know you have something that will have you looking and feeling significantly better within about four days.

Anyway, since my friend was potentially dying and liked eating, it made sense to indulge him, especially given the risks involved in not indulging him. Oddly, during times when he was not staying with us, I found myself reverting to raw within a few days, so evidently I preferred it. I still ended up very large and looking very ill after three years.

For anyone considering doing a raw diet plan, the positive effects last a lot longer than you would think. You do not look ill for months because your raw or rawish diet is still hanging around. After this, however, you can expect to age about ten years in addition to the unpleasant smell and decline in your performance. (waking up is not at all the same for cooked food eaters, for example)

I am happy to say that my unachievable weight loss is proceeding well so far, I am looking a lot better today. I will have to watch out for my liver, however, so it looks like green smoothies will have to replace any ideas about water fasting for the moment.

The curls have fallen out of my hair in the last couple of years. I am not sure why this is, I have tried tweaking my diet, but still I can no longer simply rub my hair and expect it to look ok. This is extremely tiresome, since I will now have to actually think about it rather than staggering through life without having to worry.

My clothing is mostly covered in resin and glue, especially since I started work on the furniture collection. I am not going to bother replacing it, since I do not know how big I will be in ten weeks. As I have gone through so many rapid changes in appearance over the years, I have a lot of clothes in a lot of different sizes. It was rather telling that I started buying the biggest size in the shop fairly quickly after the Wolfe drama. It had not been quite as obvious before.

Actually attempting to speak to Wolfe in October would be a logistical nightmare. I would have to get employed carers in for three days, a housesitter, and I would have to notify the people who have involved themselves with our life, none of which I am happy to do. I will have to revisit the idea in a month or so, as I see how things are going. In the meantime, I am recreating the character that rescued my mother seven years ago in an effort to avoid future regret. There is literally no point in my doing this unless I look bursting with health as I will stick out in that crowd like a sore twinlike thumb.

health, motivation

David Wolfe’s Uk dates 2017

August 5, 2017 30 Comments

https://treeoflifemagazine.co.uk/october-2017/oct-7-david-wolfe-full-day-masterclass-best-ever-birmingham/

So, in the spirit of punishing myself further by attempting to reverse my current health problem in nine weeks, I sought thinspiration by taking a look at the material for Wolfe’s event in Birmingham – if you are seriously obsessed, you can get near his greatness for £90.

I thought about doing this briefly, and then decided that the sight of me giggling and ranting into my notebook might put him off. We can’t have that. I nearly went to see him in California a couple of years ago, but decided that Marrakech was a better idea. Given the blockings and the reputation for turning people away because they aren’t smiley enough, not to mention the actual fans that have emailed me over the years, I thought better of it.

Then I took a look at the pictures of the audience, which appears to consist of well-built young men who go to the gym, and slightly dry looking hippy chicks that are a little bit too serious looking for the context. They are wonderful looking fans though, but this ain’t my bag.

No, I thought, this is not for me at all. I look a whole lot more like Wolfe than they do, and I know where the funny bits are. Leave him to his harem and his glory, and stay well out of it.

It is not fun at all, hating what he does for a living. I need to get out more and find someone who doesn’t have quite such an extensive line of misquotes-by-meme.

So, another year passes, I still feel the same way, and I still don’t want to go anywhere near him, particularly not in a crowd scene. I can do the whole public face thing, I just don’t feel it is appropriate or necessary. This was just a random emotional aberration, it doesn’t need to define my actions.

It is as my mother says, never try to have something you cannot stand losing. She is right, you are far better off with things/people that are not precious.

In any case, it is unlikely that the game will be out in the next ten weeks or so, as I will be doing other things. I would rather make that point, even though he will probably reject it on principle. For someone who has so much to say about mean-spiritedness, I can tell you that from my perspective, he takes the crown for it.

I am still looking pretty dreadful, not sure how long it will take for that to calm down, but am feeling significantly better when walking or moving. Why can’t the NHS manage to spot these things? I have gone through years of shit with my health, and the parameters that they work with apparently don’t allow for spotting things on a prevention of disaster basis?

Anyway, it is time to do something different, whilst I work on my ailing health on the pretense that I feel remotely positive or optimistic about finally seeing my beloved in person.

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