creativity, health, motivation

Things people say

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The election is becoming tiresome, with Theresa May displaying some pretty weak communication skills and a crippling lack of charisma, versus the idealistic Jeremy Corbyn (he reminds me of my dad)

I still wonder if the Conservatives even want to win?  They don’t seem to?

Anyway a couple of things from today:

A foolish consultant who does not know that the social work department is inherently corrupt insisted on us having carers to help with my mother.  I realise those of you who do not understand what the social work department really do will think that this is a good thing, and that I should be grateful, but here is why it is just another way of ripping you off in much the same way as good old Theresa has tried to rip people off in the last week:

I managed my mother by myself through sundowning, through endless infections, through her own children trying to rob her.  Just before she went to hospital this time I was carrying her to the commode, letting her sit up for an hour when she could, she was washed and dressed at times to suit her and she could sleep when she wanted and chat at 4am whenever she felt like it.

Now that we have carers, I am a freak if I am not out of bed at 8 and feeding her, which means that I am not very happy or able to work as much at the moment, my sleep is destroyed, and she is noted as being inappropriately asleep if she is not wide awake right after her vat of porridge and honey.

They were brought in on the basis that it should take two to move her rather than me carrying her due to health and safety concerns.  The carers have refused to move her and have written off our handmade disabled chair as not suitable – they are now unable to rule it suitable without an expert decision so she is not allowed out of bed, putting her at risk of bedsores.

In addition, I have already been threatened/visited by the social work department who asked such delightful questions as

  • Does she even recognise you?
  • Who has power of attorney?
  • Can we use your toilet? (this last is used as an excuse to gain entrance to your house so the answer is no)

So we now have 4 visits of two people per day and she actually has less appropriate care, all in order to put us at risk from the local council.  People in nice houses do not invite the social work in, especially if they have been directly told by a social worker that the social work department are not there for the carer, they are there to gather evidence in order to seize the assets of the patient.

Naturally I am not impressed by this service and I am not sure why I am judged incompetent to wipe her bottom, since that is all that the carers actually do.

So, today they were asking about the carpet for Boris.  The nurse and the carers have separately expressed great interest in the carpet for Boris, so evidently this one is a winner.

How much are they?

Well, the last one I did was in Tatler, and it is nine and a half

Why is it worth that much?

Well you are paying for storage, the studio, the fact it is a niche product, twenty years of skill and the fact I need about 200kg of wool in stock to make a product like this, which has also cost every spare penny over the last 22 years because I refuse to ask for a grant for a creative wank, so to speak.

 

The other conversation I had was with my ex, who noted that I appear to be quite bright.

Men don’t listen at all, otherwise he would have given up years ago and I would have written a world shattering book.

Lack of confidence is tiresome.  Maybe it is time I tried staggering self belief.

 

Hey Theresa,

There aren’t sufficient care home owners in the UK to win the election for you on the basis of your dementia tax social care policy. And frankly, as a carer in a nice property, I cannot afford your corrupt system of social care as it is, never mind your diehard  conservative voters who will also be bullied repeatedly by the social work department.

Just sayin’

 

 

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creativity, motivation

Fun with status

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Here are three people, each believing that they are very very important:

  • One believes she is very, very important, because her mother did not inform her that she is not. Her only achievement in life was getting married and driving her husband into making a lot of money.  She now believes that every word she says is automatically true and that everything she does is correct because her bank balance and spending capacity tells her so.
  • Two believes that he is very, very important because he managed to land a job paying twice as much as his last job, despite both of these jobs consisting of doing nothing apart from wearing a suit and signing documents as if he knows what he is doing.
  • Three does not believe she is very important, but does what the other two tell her to do and spreads malicious gossip on their instruction to gain approval from them.

They are, I am told, members of my family, who decided when I was working in England for ten years that I was born to serve them and that they need not participate in their parents’ care because I would do what I was told.

They have apparently not noticed that their refusal to pick up a paintbrush, be even basically polite or assist at all with the work that is necessary to keep my mother’s house and gardens going means that they have declined to have any status when it comes to the care of their mother or this house.

In the last twenty years, I have cleaned, maintained, cared for both of their elderly parents whilst working up to five jobs at a time.  I only gave up working round about the time of the first referendum because the Scottish Government stopped funding research for a period around that time, and my job ground to a halt.  It was expedient to do so because my mother was requiring more in the way of care at that time.

It is interesting that they associate status with money – number one made a false statement to the police because she believed that I had escaped from the house at one point (I kid you not) and gave a statement indicating that the slave had escaped and was to be returned to the house forthwith so that she could dump her sick mother there.

None of them are either capable or emotionally equipped to have dealt with any of the problems associated with their parents becoming ill, and they attempted to deprive my mother of her money entirely seven years ago on the basis that I had gone out for an afternoon.  They apparently still believe that this is justifiable behaviour.

Fortunately I got them out of the prosecution that would have followed this activity by putting my foot down, however I am now feeling considerably less sympathetic as they are currently attempting to interfere with my mother’s medical care at the hospital. The last few years have consisted of them running to the nearest authority figure at every opportunity to have me punished for refusing to acknowledge their imaginary superiority.

Frighteningly, everyone I have spoken to in the caring profession says that behaviour such as this from absent, lazy and toxic relatives is actually normal.  No help is available for carers in terms of protecting them from their own family, and if you accept help from social services for any other reason, such as care or respite, anything such people say is used as grounds for action against your sick loved one, in the form of removing them to a Conservative Care home and making you homeless.

So, if your family owns anything, you are left with little option to protect it than trying to avoid being in the care system at all, effectively putting you in a situation of modern slavery, just as my deranged sister described in her false missing person’s report.  I was fortunate, the police officers involved knew me and simply ascertained whether I was being held against my will or not.  Other people may not be so lucky.

It has horrified me that my parents early life apparently led them to instruct their first three children to be grasping lower middle class scum that I would not want to be associated with under any circumstances.  I am guessing that these are the ‘ordinary working families’ that Theresa May is so fond of referring to.

I am not sure what kind of mentality you would require to sit and gloat over your paycheque and begrudge every penny in tax, since prior to taking care of my parents, I used to work up to 20 hours a day as a normal routine.  Even when I was studying, I was working three or four part time jobs.  At no point did I have time to even look at my paycheque, never mind consider that my tax and national insurance was something to be grudgingly given.  I just loved working.

So then, are we to believe that the majority of voters are small-minded, lazy, grasping scum that would rob their own mother given half a chance, and who begrudge the less fortunate a means of eating or heating their house?  If this is the definition of an ordinary working family, I would suggest a cultural change is in order.

Taxes paid are just that, they are paid.  What is left over is yours.  It is then up to you to budget around that.

Status is earned, and it is up to you how you choose to earn it.  If you choose to earn it via piles of cash, then naturally you should seek validation from other people who believe the same thing.  If you choose to earn it via malicious gossip, then you should partner yourself with people who are idle and stupid enough to listen to you.

If however, you choose to earn it via actual work, you will swiftly realise that other people, such as the above, are essentially worthless and should really be the first ones to go in the event of mass extermination, since all they seem to be capable of doing is hurting other people and consuming goods which would be better to be sent to people who are actually worthwhile.

I noticed when I was interviewing a cross section of the population that worthwhile people are often the least valued, and who are repeatedly told that they are not entitled to status on the grounds that they are poor.  It got to the point that I asked my dear brother why people earning 50k or more so often know considerably less about the world around them than people scraping a living.  Are they stupid or just cheats, I asked?

“Thoughtless” he said.

Nice to see some self-awareness.

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creativity

Work and Play

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Today we took a trip down to Troon beach and enjoyed watching some dude kitesurfing whilst I dug a large hole.  For some reason this was extremely therapeutic.

Waiting for my mother to come out of hospital is a big worry as apparently carers are supposed to go to the jobcentre when their charges are in hospital, and find extremely short term work to prevent them visiting their patients or catching up with house related work.  Eating is apparently unnecessary according to our benevolent government, as is keeping up your property since you are also deprived of any income for the property holding patient.  I wonder if anybody in government considers that since they already spend more on lunch than people who are ill get in an entire week,  perhaps they might like to consider those of us on a 24 hour commitment for sixty pounds per week?

Once I had enjoyed all of an hour on Troon beach, I returned to work and prepared the materials for the Theresa May piece, which I will be unable to work on until my income is restored, provided my mother makes a recovery.  Iain Duncan Smith is proving to be a fairly complex piece of work, since it has rather operatic overtones and a fairly deep level of expense.  I also need to test part of it to see if the ink will survive the process, although I did find a rather nice glass eye for it earlier this week.

Bordello Rhetoric may require some professional help for the hinges, as I have tried two types now and they are not working as well as I had hoped.  I polished a couple of lovely Georgian handles for it, and they have also rebelled, so it will be some time before I can consider this a success.

Boris without artifice,  which will probably be called Al once it is finished, is coming along nicely, but even when the design is finished, the work will only be a third of the way along as it is a technically complex and very novel piece of heavy textile engineering.  It is fascinating that textile artists will spend hundreds of hours on something that people maybe take 20 seconds to look at and write off, or on depending on how they feel.  I remember reading about another artist that had forgone her alternative career of being a GP to earn six pounds an hour messing with textiles and agreeing with her Indian relatives that she was probably making the wrong decision.

Two massive boxes are awaiting my attention, so I am certainly not short of work, despite not really having a hope of making a living out of it for another year or two.  I am not sure if Wolfish is really worth pursuing as it is a good three months of work to finish, for an animated and yet functionless bit of spectacular fun.  It might be worth doing for the sake of future Wolfe books, but I cannot help but think it is really just a nice picture, which I should then remake into a carpet.  I also have a chair to do for the Wolfe related work, which is going to be pending for at least another year.

So, things are coming along in their usual juggled and complicated way as I seek to create entirely new products which may or may not capture somebody’s imagination once they are finished.  You basically have to cling to the idea that somebody, somewhere will look at it and decide that you are a genius.  In the meantime you suffer messy clothes, messy hair and a messy life as you stagger about scraping together the money to do anything in the first place, in the absence of hope of the life you worked for before your loved one became ill.

I did manage to get the shoes for the shoe collection, so I hope to release them later in the year.  I think I should probably make them a priority for this year, as the prototypes will at least pay for some materials  if some mere mortal likes them.

In the meantime, I have enough to keep me working for about a week. Thereafter I will be seriously struggling to keep everything going, since I am responsible for making sure my mother has a home to come back to if she does not die.

Enjoy your bollinger.

 

Ina

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creativity

Why versus Why not?

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Emotions are very odd things.  Back when I was escaping misery caused by my family by indulging in misery caused by the unpleasant backstage behaviour of Wolfe, I stopped writing my original book as I constantly asked myself why.  Why should I write the book, why would anyone read the book, why would I assume that I was the right person to write the book?

Whilst you can waste a lot of time on pointless projects, world events since then have indicated that I should have been arrogant enough to go ahead and write the book anyway.  Apparently few people have tackled the agricultural history of America with a view to the impending disaster of GM, and even fewer people care about it.  The history of marketing has been covered by a few people, but nobody has seen fit to link it to the history of psychology or the effects on the modern population, to the point that we now view survival as entertainment on TV and we are increasingly being encouraged to look on creativity as madness by a variety of corporate sponsored research studies.

Looking on creativity as madness is a particularly dangerous and limiting viewpoint.  It does not benefit the world, it does not benefit the creatives.  The only people it benefits are the companies that would much rather you wanted to buy something.  If we allow this to continue, alongside the view of science being superior to nature as justification for destroying the very efficient natural resources we have left, we will be unable to make progress and the planet will be destroyed.  It is no coincidence, for example that our Victorian ancestors used their free time to indulge their whackier ideas with the additional benefit of a liberal view to products from the colonies dispensed by the local chemist.

This book has strayed back into my to-do list in the last few days as I consider how to go about dealing with my Boris Johnson book.  I have a fairly complex plan for this book, which is a bit more literary and a bit more fun than my previous comic strip style books to alleviate the Wolfe melancholy.

Hence, I am considering the matter of how different people, neither of whom I have met or plan to meet, have a different effect on one’s confidence and general sense of self.  Wolfe turned out to be a thoroughly depressing and very limited person whose obsession with money and women rendered him very boring unless he was speaking.  His speaking, which is technically fascinating, is limited to what he believes will extract the most in terms of immediate sales, at the expense of long term respect, which has left me with the feeling that a potentially great man has rather sold his soul for the gratification of the immediate.

Gratification for the immediate is all very well, but as aims go, it gets boring.  Boris has a different set of limitations, and in many ways he is also trapped by ambition, but not in the ways you might expect.  I shall explore this alternative way of viewing Boris in Lucifer Ogilvie, but for now it is producing a new development in my work which I am finding quite challenging.

I think overall that there is a long way to go with my work before I am happy.  I am doing something original at least, which presents its own challenges in terms of setting the bar I am happy with and taking it further.  Several of the existing pieces will be modified shortly, and a completely new set added as I throw a few ideas around and develop the product.

My friend is at pains to tell me that I should view all work as finished and ingratiate myself with potential dealers, that my pricing is nonsense and that I should not be too concerned about development.  My response is as follows:

  • The pricing is at cost – cost of labour, cost of material replacement, cost of storage – were you to purchase my items in a shop it would have to be at twice that price – yes I am flexible on prototype pricing, but the prices as they are reflect an accurate costing of the effort and are in fact quite low.
  • Ingratiating myself with dealers when I am not totally happy with my product is a waste of time – I am not so vain as to assume that everything I do is marketable or in fashion. That isn’t what the work is about anyway – this has been a period of self development in which I have been forced by circumstance to look for validation via something other than money or other people.
  • Making 3d objects has its own reward in the form of developing a range of skills that you do not get by buying things or even learning them.  I have previously complained to the BBC about this very topic as they seem to prefer encouraging children to buy the things they want instead of making them.
  • Writing as a form of expression is also useful and makes you more confident about other things.

So, despite my lack of funds and pension, I am certainly a well rounded person these days, with an aim in mind.  I now have to figure out why musing on Boris makes me feel so much more validated than musing on Wolfe, which made me laugh a lot, but also made me feel very damaged and unhappy.

Such is the adventure of the imagination that is being stuck in the house, wondering what happened to the twenty hour days and the burning ambition you used to have, wondering how the hell you will survive with no family, no money and no pension because you were kind to your parents and left with nothing but your lust for obscure carpets.

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creativity, economics, motivation

General Election blues

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In a shock move, Theresa May has decided to call a general election in 7 weeks. This after saying that a second independence referendum would cause instability. The only instability she refers to, of course is the instability of losing the collateral of a billion barrelsworth of oil that Andrew Neil blatantly denied the existence of only a few weeks ago.

Whilst I am grateful to Andrew for circulating my every tweet on facebook in addition to promoting me to his own fans by openly denying the truth that we in the village of Scotland already knew before the 2014 referendum, I am thoroughly pissed off with the hypocrisy of the English war against my country.

After conducting a small survey a few months ago, I ascertained that the Scottish electorate were not particularly clued up about economics and that even the most diehard supporter of managing our own destiny was not playing with a full deck of cards, I seriously considered leaving the SNP due to the hostile and rather hysterical response of the members to my short and comic survey on the attitudes of yes and no indy voters to the issue of brexit.  People are easily shocked, confused and inclined to crap behaviour, and since the class war is alive and well, particularly in central Scotland, there often seems no point in considering anything beyond your own nose, since inevitably someone will try to cut yours off without actually hearing anything that you had to say.

In any case, our feeling is that we have a hope of scouring the last Conservative from our fair country, leaving the rabid killers of the disabled few choices in their war against Scotland.  As someone with quite a pedigree in the long term issue of Scottishness and the crushing thereof, with feet in the communist and conservative camp due to my odd but extremely healthy gene mix, I am hopeful that we will get the issue of a more realistic attitude to the management of Scotland cleared up.  We simply do not need to be paying for more bridges in London or killing disabled and long term unemployed people to sustain Scotland.

I still do not agree with SNP policy in regard to immigration before job creation, and the word is that I am not alone, however, as a voter, they are on safe ground.  It is only backbiting, status seeking and rather sickening empty headed mortgage victims that need persuading as far as I can see, so rather than fighting with each other, I would suggest that cybernats concentrate on actually constructing arguments for Edinburgh types.

What I, and many others who remember and have actually bothered to study Labour Party history wonder, is whether Corbyn will actually remember that Labour was supposed to support PEOPLE WHO GO TO WORK in addition to bleating about diversity a la Common Purpose.  Immigration is still a huge issue, particularly for people in Wales, Yorkshire and Cornwall, some of whom have even less hope of ever working than people in the more obscure areas of Scotland.  Grants for computers and internet access would go far further towards making work available for such people online than persistent starvation, but apparently it is preferable to force people onto useless courses, run by recruitment agents that have gone into the welfare punishment business.  Making an extra tenner available for carers, which would in any case be removed from the accompanying benefits, is not a vote winner and so I am unsure as to why this was the chosen carrot this morning.

Anyway, I am unsure as to where things have gone wrong in terms of Theresa’s lack of actual mandate, since it has never bothered the Conservative Party before.  I can only assume that your vote in the General Election refers to the willingness to starve part of the population to death, blame them for pisspoor economic management, the sale of the NHS and the continuation of the totally fucking useless trickledown policy that makes the luxury goods market the only growth sector worth being in.  Show me the jobs, show me the quality industry and show me the poor that sustain their local shops by actually eating, and then we will discuss my vote.

 

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creativity

Boris Johnson Experience Progress

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I have finally given up on the Gamebia Project, as the flannel continued from the apparently bemused project leader in The Gambia.  The last straw was his failing to identify his own phone number on the email account central to the project.  I am usually more stubborn about forcing things to work, but this was too tiresome.  The last thing I need is another person who apparently thinks feeding himself is some sort of big favour to me.

So I am back on track with the Boris Experience.  Biographies have been read, philosophy has been skimmed, furniture now has resin to finish the first pieces.

So then, Jemima Khan, Darius Guppy, and Bordello Rhetoric, the first furniture pieces will be complete in the next month, enabling me to concentrate on Iain Duncan Smith, Theresa May, and a few other surprises.

I have also started work on another epic carpet, which is provisionally entitled Boris without artifice.  Boris has apparently reawakened my subtle side, although Bordello Rhetoric is as flash as I get, which is extremely blingy.

I am considering an application to Four Rooms once I have got to the point of doing a press release and released Lucifer Ogilvie, the alternative Boris Johnson.

I was laughing rather today, as I considered that not one but two ex boyfriends over the years had thought they were being disparaging when they asserted that I would much rather be shagging Boris.

“Any sensible red blooded woman would.” was my rather bemused reply.  “Apart from his lack of responsibility with women, and his horrible sister he is approaching perfection.”  I see from one of the biographies that Rachel is friends with the Earl of Glasgow and family, which figures given my experience of them.  The biographer referred to them as qualifying her as linked with the blue-blooded, and the Glasgows are not a particularly good example of that.

In the real world, Boris is probably too scruffy for me. I share his love of scruffy vanity, and so I appreciate a snappy dresser.  I rather like to see a chap dressing beautifully whilst I shuffle about in rancid plimsoles and glue covered clothes.  I avoid brushing my hair and tend to have at least one bit of wool and some paint stains.  Two vain scruffs do not a pretty sight make.

Anyway, that is the news, currently.  I am considering turning the blog over to doing reviews of luxury goods, since that will inevitably put the website on a better footing for future work, so perhaps I will take a crack at that in the near future.

 

Ina

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creativity, economics, games

The Gamebia Project Update 2 and Boris Johnson

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I know I haven’t been posting a lot recently.  Mother has been in hospital and I am a bit stressed about a forthcoming court appearance as I continue to attempt to run a family of exceptionally stupid and vindictive people who seem intent on making people unhappy just because they can.

The furniture is significantly held back by lack of funds at the moment.  The hazard of making more expensive items is that they require more money to develop.  So far I think I have the new principle about half right, but it will take another £600 or so to finish the first few pieces and free up space for the next six, never mind finish them.

The distraction of the Gamebia Project has meant that I have not started working on the book for Boris as yet.  I have some background reading still to do, although some of the biographies are less than flattering so far.  I can see why Boris withdrew authorisation from one of them, as I find myself liking him and Stanley, in particular less and less as I read it.  Not my cup of tea at all, but then I am wildly unsuccessful at social climbing or making money, unlike them.  It apparently pays to be a cold and selfish fish.

I am selling off the detritus from the Gamebia Project as progress seems to be exceptionally slow.  I am still being updated by my former friend, although I suspect he is only bothering because he thinks he will get more stuff that way and I have lost interest entirely due to the very slow pace of development.  People often think films have to be epic slogs, but when you need to put out two a day you have to be a little bit more pragmatic.  At the rate he is working, he will never make any money from youtube, and he has not even attempted to create the project on fiverr, which on my schedule would have started paying for his rice by now.

So much for trying to help people that cannot be helped.  The subject of the project apparently only sees one word in ten that I write, and so he has no idea how the project has to be managed.  As he has now stopped pestering me online every time I am on, as he did before he got the equipment, I cannot even repeat the same information ad infinitum to put him on the correct track.

So, I think the next affordable bit of product development is going to be the range of shoes I was planning, which has an initial outlay of about a hundred pounds or so.  The Gamebia has, due to cashflow issues, left me without even that for the forseeable future, so I am understandably nervous about going ahead.

The games project and the writing then, since it costs me nothing.  I could have farmed some of the work for the game out, if my Gambian friend had paid any attention to what I was saying, but I am having to do it myself.

Getting very bored with pacing myself for normal people.  It seems piteously slow.  I guess that is how my former muse, Wolfe felt.  Nobody sees your vision like you do, and anything else seems like a distraction if you don’t pay attention to the lesson you are learning.

 

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creativity, motivation

Self Limiting Mantras

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Continuing my series on motivational topics, here are a few more backwards-ass suggestions for people delivering motivational material, often written off as smug/pompous/dishonest ‘idiots’ by an increasingly cynical and downtrodden public:

I’m not good enough

Yeah, that is a great excuse.  Nice, vague, covers all angles.  Of course you are, and if you are not, then you need to break your goal into manageable chunks and take it one step at a time. There are times when you can only spend ten minutes a day on your goal, whatever that happens to be, You owe it to yourself to have no regrets later.

I’m too fat

From experience, you probably got fat because you neglected yourself in favour of other people, or some imaginary idea that being a good citizen involved tasting every product that was advertised to you.  How often have you watched an advert and wondered how the very slim model possibly gets away with eating pizza/chocolate/take out food etc?  Every item you eat and every choice that you make is causing the problem.  I am more aware than most that speaking up for yourself, sleeping sufficiently, taking time for your health, relaxing is considerably more difficult and seems like less of a priority than whatever else you are doing, whether that is work or other people. Although it seems easier to shut up and eat something before rushing headlong towards your next appointment, you really need to get selfish to solve that issue.  Some people need to be rejected, some tasks need to be postponed and you need to stop hearing the insults that are preventing you from getting your romantic/professional/alternative goals fulfilled.  It is too easy to assume that you will lose weight and your life will change.  It won’t, so you might as well get on with it before you are sitting in a chair wondering where your life went and why you didn’t do whatever it is that you wanted to do. Most people would rather deal with a fat, considerate and thoughtful person than a selfish, thoughtless go-ahead bore.  If they can’t manage it, they aren’t worth your time anyway.

I’m too old

This situation is unlikely to change so either you disregard this thought, or take up dominoes instead of whatever you were planning to do.

I don’t have enough money

As I have mentioned in previous posts, this is a question of using your imagination to rethink your plans.  I have not come across an idea yet that could not have been off the ground cheaper and faster.

I don’t have time

Either your aim is not important to you, in which case why are you even thinking about it, or it is, and you will make time. This is the most lame excuse of the lot. Again it is a question of breaking down your plan into manageable chunks.

People like me don’t get to do that

Inadequacy is a boring excuse.  You are adequate.  Start from there.

They won’t listen to me anyway

Yeah, people are often assholes.  It is time you stopped listening to them. Get rid of them and do your own thing.

It’s too big a risk

Compared with finding yourself in a care home with no visitors?  If you rethink your plans, you will come up with a way of reducing your risk to a manageable level. If your priority is reducing risk, you need to take this into account and change your plans accordingly.

What if?

Yeah, you will be saying this a lot if you don’t do something about developing your life the way you want it.

It’s alright for him/her – He/she is better/more handsome/more intelligent/has contacts/more education than I do

They started out earlier than you.  So what?

That stuff only applies to America

While I concur that they are obsessed with money, self-development is not really about money. I don’t plan to charge for anything I do until I have a sufficiently solid core from which to radiate.  This takes time.  There are many ways to build your little castle in the air.  It is really up to you how you go about marketing and developing your particular product.  You do not have to turn into a brainwashed clone to engage in personal growth.

He/she is a scammer

Yeah this is another good non-specific excuse.  It is unclear why it is used so often, when speakers do relatively innocuous things (like selling health food or courses) This is really not a good reason to stop you from doing anything to help yourself.

Hope that helps.

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creativity, economics, games, motivation

The Gamebia doing very well

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The Gamebia Everipedia Page

 

So far, this project has cost a lot of time and money, but I believe that my efforts have not gone in vain, since I have about £600 quids worth of equipment almost ready to head out to the Gambia and another £600 quidsworth awaiting my attention.  All for as little money as possible, since I do not actually have any.

 

The Gamebia facebook Page

 

At this point, the project is in profit, and has made about £100.  This is subject to change as the capital equipment gathering can be quite costly, although my salvage skills have proved extremely useful.  So basically I have saved money by learning how to fix a few brands of computer and encountering standard problems that other people do not apparently bother to learn how to fix.  You would be extremely alarmed to know how easy it is to break into your computer, for example. You might want to look at that.

 

The Gamebia google plus Page

 

Trying to explain social media to somebody who has only seen it on a mobile phone is also odd, especially as I decided fairly early on that social media was of limited use for Ina.  I have amassed a bit of knowledge along the way though, although losing the old blog was a tremendous blow as I was storing a lot of information on it.  Even if you are paying someone to manage your material, you still have to back it up because people are stupid.

 

The Gamebia linkedin Page

 

Also, trying to explain to the future owner of The Gamebia that this stuff is not actually mine, is quite interesting since I have set it up so far.  There are things I cannot do, but what I have done I have put into his name, since I will be letting go of the project once it is into a good and hopefully profitable routine.

 

In conclusion, the project is thus far going well and attracting some enthusiasm, although we cannot get started on the actual work until the first package arrives in the Gambia.  There are a few more things I can do, such as putting a cat video on the Gamebia youtube page to get the partnership sorted out, but mainly I seem to have taken up computer salvage so far.

 

Catching up with artwork for World of Interiors is high on the priority list right now – I will be in April’s edition, which will be out this month.

 

 

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creativity, economics, motivation, politics

Lack of imagination in politics

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Lack of imagination in politics

I see the ongoing battle between left and right is being won online by the right at present.

Fake news and misleading headlines are not new.  All this ‘new’ phenomenon should tell you is that you should have been reading more carefully in the first place.  There is always more than one way to read any article.

Many years ago, I was placed next to a young radical Muslim male at work, who dismissed anything I said as being ‘white cow’ and who was generally a bit uncouth.  He was brought up in a very wealthy area of Glasgow, at 19 had his own Mercedes, and although he was allegedly studying politics and philosophy, could not understand it when I said that reading newspapers should be regarded in much the same way as studying philosophy or history.  Nobody is telling the truth, because everyone is trapped in their own time with their own social mores.

You can argue that as a Muslim, he would be rather attached to the idea of ultimate truth.  That is until I mention that a far more devout Muslim that was also in the work group understood me perfectly.  A scholar is a scholar after all, and it belies the argument of all Muslims hating everyone that isn’t, when you consider that the scholars are often more open-minded than the victims of a domineering imam.

This is a good analogy for the current state of politics. Labour appear to be too afraid of offending the few voters they have left, do not seem to see that the party needs radical reform to Labour, rather than New Labour values and that being decisive is a basic requirement of forming any kind of opposition.  We seem to be trapped in this idea that politics consists of left versus right, when the truth is far more complex.

At bottom line, the difference between Conservative and Labour in the UK is similar, but not the same as the difference between Republican and Democrat in the USA.  The Democrats are still further to the right than the UK Conservatives, but they adhere to the principles of communitarianism as a method of benefitting capitalists.  There does not seem to be a party representing socialism in the USA, certainly not one we would have heard of.

As I have mentioned before, politics is not a straight line.  It is s circle, and you will find that far left and far right are closely bound if you look at the examples of history.  Both believe in a nation, both believe in the rights of people within that nation, the disagreement actually hinges on whether you are a team or an individual within that nation.  Taken further, it is the difference between opportunity and rights.  Socialism can, in certain circumstances be considerably less fair than conservatism.  My personal viewpoint is that opportunity always out performs the right to stay in your social place, therefore I am considered as being towards the right rather than left by my less interested protesting socialist friends.

Socialism, as we have traditionally understood it, has relied heavily on someone already owning the means of production, so we must rail against it to protect our rights.  This is all very well, but there is no reason why you cannot go and procure some means of production by yourself, and support someone less able in earning a living.  Here is where I differ from your average Conservative, who says that they already have their piece of the cake, and you aren’t getting any.  For a society to survive under either political system, it would be a whole lot healthier if Conservative thinking was a whole lot more about pride in concern for others and the dignity of work, no matter what level you happen to be at.

This is now considered very old fashioned thinking.  Who on earth reveres the cleaner?  Communists would very quickly tell you that without the cleaner, the system breaks down, so you must show some respect to your comrade no matter what task they have been assigned.  This now starts to look like a class war, when in fact it is all about resources and social values, an entirely different prospect.  Having worked for old and new aristocracy, I can tell you that old school aristos are very much appreciative of their staff, whereas new money and younger aristos prefer to employ someone they can abuse.  Again, nothing to do with class, this is to due with cultural values, and our cultural values currently stink.

So, I propose that a new party is formed, abandoning the principles of right and left for an entirely new paradigm.  How about a party that does the following? I propose we call it the Healthy Culture Party

  • teaches the basic principles of economics in primary school
  • reinstates the old arithmetic qualification that taught people how to understand the news, banking documents and how to manage money generally.
  • ensure that everybody understands that work is a means to earning a living, and no reflection on your worth as a person.  On the contrary, the school janitor may be the person who writes the next world changing treatise on education, so you had better be polite.
  • Take pride in ensuring that NOBODY STARVES TO DEATH IN YOUR COUNTRY
  • Encourage innovation, free thinking and genuinely free speech, in the place of labelling hate figures as we have been doing for the last twenty years.  Conservative culture is now at the point of point and hate at every opportunity, with Labour failing to call them to account or opposing them on anything, a very dangerous state of affairs for anybody in this country. Don’t forget, tomorrow that hate figure could be you.
  • Respect borders.  Much the same as respecting boundaries in any relationship, it is simply not your call to tell other countries what to do.  If you are respecting the right of Saudi to behead and bomb people, you have to respect the right of other countries to run themselves as they see fit and vote for. We have mobs instead of diplomacy currently.  It does not seem to help.
  • Rate opportunity above preserving the notion of class oppression.  It is far more important to have a liberal financial system that fosters the growth of new and small businesses and looks on failure as experience, than encourage the idea that born poor means that you stay poor.
  • Reinstate the laws against monopolistic behaviour and discourage over large business generally.
  • Stimulate and encourage diverse thinking and alternative ways of doing things in an effort to produce the next generation of creative thinkers rather than fostering conformity, which is only for the benefit of the very large corporations and multinationals that will dictate future political activity.  To preserve the notion of the nation state and the idea that there is a government between you and a Walmart education and health record, this is extremely important.
  • A housing benefit system that adequately reflects property values, to encourage investment and discourage false valuations on property.  This has damaged our formerly diverse economy almost as much as incentives for large American food and beverage chains.  It is no good for the economy, and no good for the many talented people who could be creating British brands.
  • Encourage the preservation of history, conservation and power that does not destroy the planet we depend on.

Of course, this set of ideas makes me an unusually liberal conservative, with communist tendencies, which is quite close to the truth, I suppose, given my background.  I would vote for that.  It would render us a lot closer to France in terms of views, which can only be of benefit given our current medium term future.

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