creativity - Ina Disguise

Overcoming Empathy

September 10, 2016 No Comments

I have spent a great deal of my life worrying about weight. I have doubled, and at times trebled my bodyweight, depending on how I feel. Nowadays, I know myself so well that I start buying the sizes before the next physical change. I tend to realise at the checkout that something is about to change.

Such is the nature of your subconscious mind. I think it was after being blocked by Wolfe for asking about his charity (I kid you not) that I went and bought the largest size in the shop. I must be punished for having feelings, and for being stupid enough to feel hurt by someone I had no business trying to connect with in the first place. Not because he imagines himself to be famous, but because he imagines himself to be impervious to other people. Wolfe has a very specific, and a very careful method of dealing with women in particular, but that is another story.

Recently, I bought two items, one the size I was three weeks ago, and one three sizes smaller, so I knew something was about to change. My friend, the endless houseguest, had announced that he would bring whatever food he felt like into the house, that I was selfish for wanting to take care of my ailing health, and my very spoilt at the worst of times mother, was to be even more spoilt, on the grounds that this meant that I would devote my time to caring for her and him, rather than me.

This is not the first time this has happened. I remember a few years ago, an ex boyfriend insisted on buying pizza constantly, even after he had witnessed me losing 130lb. I knew that if I had even one bite, that it would lead to me putting all that weight back on again, because I know me. Nevertheless I capitulated, which led to my being 315lb by the time May 2010 rolled around.

Another ex came on the scene, a rigger with a rope obsession (nuff said) I mistook an old photograph of his on facebook for an example of what he looked like now. I was horrified. I have some videos from that period, and Wolfe can testify that I could not even speak properly, I was so ill. I lost 70lb in ten weeks on a low carb/raw combination, largely because I could not really walk due to tiredness and pain. After shifting this fluid/fat/host of infections, I was able to walk, and walk I did, daily. Swimming followed, to repair my twisted core muscles, and the gym for a period after that. In total |I ended up losing about 160lb

Then my terminally ill ex appeared and joined me at the pool. This was a bad mistake. From claiming that I was killing him by making him swim, he decided that he must out swim me within a fortnight. Interminable and rather miserable trips to the pool followed as I watched him cut off the ends of the pool out of the corner of my eye, just so that he could claim to have caught up with my year of laborious self care in a month.

Several months later, and he came back for another go. This time he insisted that I was depriving my mother of cake, which I was not – I have a system by which she gets everything she wants as long as I do not like the look of it, including cake. Hence, she is very well indulged, and I never have to worry about eating badly. That is, of course, until someone very aggressively announces that he will do what he likes in my house, and I can do nothing about it, because to do so involves either physically ejecting him, or bitching about it until he can safely denounce me as a selfish bitch.

As you can see, dealing with someone who claims to be terminally ill is rather complex. You are supposed to be sympathetic, to the point of self-harm. Your boundaries are there to be challenged (my mother is the same) and if you happen to be an empath as well, your judgement is clouded even more. My mother is pathologically selfish, to the point that she watches me cleaning and compliments the vacuum I am pushing, so I am well used to not existing at all.

Unfortunately the consequence of not existing, or should I say agreeing to not exist, is stuffing your face so that you do not talk about it. You pretend that it does not matter, until nobody ‘sees’ you any more because you are enormous. Then you eat because you are miserable. Then you stop moving because you don’t want anyone to see you.

My good manners and empathy finally ran out two days before my birthday. My ‘friend’ waltzed into my bedroom and announced that he was losing weight, and didn’t he look pretty in his new clothes. I replied that I did not need reminding that he is a titanic prick, and that I would physically remove him from my home if he did not stop what he was doing right now.

“I can’t help it!” he assumed his victim posture and began to whine. I know from experience this immediately precedes his episodes of violence, so it was really time for him to go. He has been a problem at times, but when you see nobody, and he likes to pretend that he is very helpful, it is very difficult to just stop with people who are actively trying to damage you.

I did try to take him out with us one more time, but he then tried to start telling me when I could and could not speak, and then it was really time for him to go. He has since tried to blame me, for the fact that he has deliberately pursued a course of damaging behaviour, been extremely self centred, and completely disregarded my health, all whilst abusing my hospitality.

So, now I have nobody to talk to. I do not wish to see this person again, I do not wish to see my Tory neighbour again. I certainly do not want to see my siblings ever again. I guess I will have to write.

The problem with all this empathy, is that it is an excuse to forget about yourself. Forgetting about yourself leads to repressed anger, which leads to depression. A recent hashtag about weight problems on Twitter had hours and hours of people who could see nothing good about their weight, and relentless self punishment.

Bear in mind, that nobody is nastier to you than you. Other people you can get rid of. You are, however, stuck with you, so try thinking of all the good things. Once you treat yourself as well as you treat other people, it will become far easier to make positive choices, and far easier to develop strategies to deal with pain other than muffling yourself with food, alcohol or your chosen self abuse.

creativity, politics

Letter to Boris

September 6, 2016 No Comments

Dear Boris,

I don’t usually do this, but then I don’t usually make a conscious decision to pick anybody. Work is going reasonably well, and I should be up to date with background tasks in about ten days or so, which means I will be starting the new work.

In the meantime, I am concerned about your health. To save some time and energy, rather than wasting your time or mine on hints, I think you should get yourself some seaweed, some omega 3 seeds, some wheatgrass and some barleygrass. Soak the seeds every night, add some green leafy vegetables, some stevia or honey and the wheat and barleygrass, whether powder or freeze dried to the mixture in the morning. Then add fruit until it tastes reasonably pleasant. Raw cacao powder is also very good for improving the mineral content and flavour. Since you are probably being plied with over rich food constantly, please ensure that you eat a green salad with every meal. You will find that if you eat a tiny bit of the green salad before you start, your digestion will function much better. Try to choose the fish and ignore the potatoes/bread/pasta etc. Your overall functionality should improve in about a week.

I realise that it is not easy to ignore idiots at work, but you are dealing with at least two, so try to work around it. I have some proposals, which will be included in the charming book I am preparing for you. This will be released free of charge, since I am not famous, and I do not do this for money as such. (chance would be a fine thing) I will probably release it from the website, so as to retain full copyright, hence it will not have huge distribution. I do this directly for the person I am writing/making objects for rather than the general public. It is a bit quirky, but perhaps eventually I will learn to like money somewhat more than I do at present.

Usually, I have some sort of emotional event and the creativity takes over because I feel terrible. You have been selected because I was seized with concern that you feel terrible, and I would like you not to feel terrible. I hope that this makes some sense.

This oddity was created by my father, who was also an artist and forbade me from taking up art as a living on the grounds that better art is created by people who cannot help it. It is a rather repressive way of working, but perhaps this is me breaking out of it. It also seems like a rather good opportunity to return to my academic work, which is highly relevant to you in particular.

I do have a considerable pile of work still to finish from the Wolfe collection, but this will be completed whilst I carry out the Boris experience. It does not mean my attention is at all divided, it just means that my time is somewhat limited.

I do hope that you take my oddness in the spirit in which it is meant, and do get on with those trade deals, regardless of the oppressive shit on a plate you are doubtlessly being kept on a leash for. It is extremely important.

Thank you in anticipation of your patience.

business, creativity

Product, Brand and Consistency

September 3, 2016 No Comments

Product, brand and consistency

Product, brand, consistency
OK, I have made a lot of lazy posts recently, because I was feeling a bit low due to a crap diet and feeling a bit browbeaten. I think it is time to get back on track really.
Conclusions I have drawn from the last two and a half yearsIf you are marketing yourself with no money, consistency is key. Putting yourself out there takes dedication, daily attention and perseverance. In the absence of a budget, you need to set aside about two hours a day for getting your name out. It has been said that people need to see your name around nine times now before they notice it, even if you have a shit hot product.
Books do not make money unless you have an established name. This means you either throw some money at creating a brand, or you create a cool underground product and rely on word of mouth. This means the contents of your product also need to be consistent. I am not so worried about the books, although I can spin a yarn, so to speak. I really put the books out to promote other things, such as the artwork on the cover, or the subject matter. It is a cheap and cost-effective way of making more people aware of my doing something, basically.
Cross marketing is a long winded way of going about things, but it still works to an extent. I still have three distinct groups of people interested in what I do, the blog readers, the book readers and the artwork peeps. Until I add the gamers, I do not think this is getting me far at sufficient speed.
The artwork takes a very long time, and a lot of space in my house. My eyesight is no longer perfect, which is kind of annoying, and I am already making changes to some things, like beadwork, as I know it will make this worse, so I think it will ultimately be phased out, although I still have two to three years worth of work to finish.
I am disinterested in some aspects of marketing, and even though the information is available, I do not use it. I need to pay more attention to getting my name out and improve on my strategy, which has actually been fairly successful so far.
Deadlines are depressing, and I do not enjoy them any more. I think the work is better when I do not set them, which renders me a keen amateur rather than the professional I perhaps ought to be.On a personal note

I need to be a lot less tolerant of timewasters and people who set out to obstruct what I am doing. This has cost around six years of time over the last three. If I include the time Wolfe wasted before I started this project, we can take that up to a decade of wasted time because I was weeping or worrying about people that do not give a shit about me.
I cannot afford to make myself ill with food again.
I need to get out now and again.
Sometimes it is better to stop what you are doing in order to get something off the list, just because it feels less cluttered
I need to sell some items that I have created (such as computers) in order to get the stuff I need (such as software) I need to get an Ebay store going in order to shift some wool that I will never use for anything.
I have about thirty courses to finish, and it is far more important that I do this than anything else.
It is imperative that I do the Boris Experience project, as I think he is a more deserving and appreciative case than David Wolfe. There, I said it.
My ideas are better than I think they are, and it is time I appreciated me and stopped listening to other people at all.
My health is more important than ANYBODY

Rant over for today
Priorities

Mandala carpet and Perfect Posterior finished and on Etsy
Market the screen and Honey I made you an icon from the website
Set up Ebay wool store to shift some unusable wool
Sell at least three computers
Build another two computers
BORIS!!!!!!
Best Adventure Ever
Courses

Then I need to up the marketing effort and put out a short story every week, building the youtube channel and finding an alternative audio stream since Ina has no face.

business, creativity

Progress Report

August 30, 2016 No Comments

Progress Report

The Mandala is progressing well, if slowly and the new addition is looking quite nice. I think it will be a good piece of work. I have purchased a replacement 20 kilos or so of wool, and have my eye on a place selling it by the ton. The tiling on Wolfish continues to go slowly but well, although I am not sure how I will assemble it without help as it is 8 feet tall.

No progress so far on the books, I am still wrestling with three computers. Two of them can be finished as soon as I get to them, and the other one I think I will sell for parts, as the motherboard seems to need replacing. Whilst this is not difficult, it is not cost effective to save the rest of it.

My friend has finally gone home, and I have been on supermix for about a fortnight, as previously mentioned. I feel a lot better and my clothes are indicating that I have shifted some weight, which is always nice. The eyebags, from stress, are lifting and altogether it is a relief not to be providing treats for the never-ending houseguest. I think I will spend today on the garden and cleaning up after the messy bit of the mandala carpet.

I am wondering what to do about a friend who suffers from psychosis. Normally I just remove myself until it passes, but the prolonged episodes seem to be worsening, and since he usually chooses to attack me first, I do not feel particularly safe. It is very difficult to know what to do.

You would think, given my mother’s unpredictable and delusional family, that I would be used to this, but I am not. It is very difficult to know what to do when somebody is psychotic. They insist that your wishes are subordinate, that there is nothing at all wrong with their need to do whatever weird thing that pops into their head – whether this is merely irritating, to extremely dangerous and unnecessary. It always has a cost, and they never pay it.

You get tired of being lied to, you get tired of the mean-spirited selfishness, and you get particularly tired of the violence that inevitably follows. I am no longer willing to put myself at risk from someone who has physically attacked me twice, and wanted to hundreds of times. I cannot help this person, and as a psychiatrist who once treated him said, pursuing a cure is pointless because that, in itself, produces psychosis.

So, the only thing I can do is keep the doors locked and avoid this person. I dread to think what he is doing to some unsuspecting victim from the comfort of his flat. In the past he has made complaints to damage the life of people he has met only once. You can imagine how worrying this is when you have had this person around for any length of time.

So that is today. I am sorry to say that you are best to avoid such people. It is a shame, because they need company to ensure that they do not damage themselves or other people.

creativity

My birthday, and I’ll sew if I want to

August 18, 2016 1 Comment

Well, today (18th) was my birthday and I spent it working on the mandala, which is looking lovely. It is scheduled to take another month, but I may alter the plans a bit, depending on how it is looking when it is through this bit. It is extremely complex, and so I have to take it one section at a time. There is also a lot of overstitching, which you have to plan ahead for with a large piece of work due to maneuverability issues.

The Wolfish tank is being tiled at the moment, and I am thinking about starting back on the enlightenment portion of the project shortly. Wolfish is next up after the mandala is complete, but will take quite a lot of time, and I will have to find a bicycle for Harley, as he is in the tank too.

Writing has stopped as I am waiting for some cables to see if I can scrape the books off the old hard drive, which cannot be started by conventional means. So this time I had to research data recovery. Interestingly, I found that data recovery is not all that complex, and there are quite a few things you can try before resorting to a data recovery company.

Wonders will never cease, the only person in the world who actually remembered my birthday was Wolfe, who apparently chose today to unblock me from Twitter. Why this would be I do not know. I can only assume that there is some sort of Twitter fault, or he is looking for some amusement from my timeline. Either way, he is unlikely to change his past MO, and so I can look forward to a pretty freaky conversation with a random stranger which makes no sense at some point in the future. This is unlikely to get us very far.

It is odd that Boris comes across as a very kind person, despite his political affiliations. I will be working on Lucifer Ogilvie as a priority because of this. Best Adventure Ever is best left until I have completed this work, and by the time I have finished it, I will have some handle on what the artwork for Boris will look like. So far, the only thing I know is that the colour range is a lot more subtle, and the work a bit more technical. Boris’s mother is an artist, so I trust that he can be relied upon to be a bit more understanding than Wolfe was. I also have a bit of mathematical work to do for Lucifer Ogilvie, so this will be fun.

My apologies to regular readers for a spot of scattiness here and there in the last few posts. I get little sleep because of the worry of mother, and this seems to be affecting a few things. I will be working on this, along with my depressing lack of self care, over the next few months. It is no fun being stuck in the house all the time, but feeling ill does not improve it.

Should you see an ad on twitter, it is because I am experimenting a little to see if it is any more effective than facebook or google. I am not expecting much, but I will let you know how it goes.

I have made no progress at all on the marketing or coding side of things so far this year, but once the sewing is out of the way I will be on it.

creativity, politics

Life hacks for Amos Yee

August 15, 2016 No Comments

This post is for Amos, since I notice he is wasting his time with a bunch of social enquirers and not applying himself to actually learning anything. Moral relativism is a fucking bore.

Here are some free philosophy books. I recommend at your age, that you skim through these fast, but get a broad understanding. You will be able to find most of Plato free online, I recommend you start with this as he is a very clear and simple philosopher. Once the pegs are in place, it is far easier to hang the other philosophers on the pegs. Go to Aristotle next, then Hobbes and Locke. After this, do what you like. I recommend that you read at least two History of Philosophy titles to get a broad overview of where you want to go from there. There are a variety of options, from what you are saying you are most interested in moral philosophy and basic political philosophy.

Gutenberg free philosophy

Open Culture free philosophy

28 Sites With Countless of Free Philosophy Ebooks

After this, get a basic understanding of the the three greats, Durkheim, Marx and Weber, but do not waste a lot of time on sociology as it is for pussies.

Free Sociology books

More Free Sociology books

You seem to be reasonably bright, so from here go for an introduction to economics. A-level will do for starters, again there are plenty of free texts online.

Apart from this, you actually need to earn a living, and my feeling is that you would like to do this by expressing yourself. Bullshit Performance Art is not going to cut it, so you will want to write a book, or improve your scatty blog at some point – I recommend, given your age and capacity for sponging up information, that you immerse yourself in programming languages, graphics and 3d modelling and shoot for making your first game in four years or so. This will be a far more effective way of getting your point across to a far greater number of people, and as you are likely to need to hide given your location, should enable you to make a living from anywhere with a fairly low profile. Again, you can get started on this free of charge. Start with Javascript and C# and work from there. There are plenty of free tools if you look for them, so do not be tempted to throw money at it.

Do not waste your time discussing alternative forms of government year after year as it is really not useful to you. Far better to explore the world as it is, armed with useful tools for labelling and looking at it.

Apart from that, well done, your videos are not boring, however you will want to grow out of that shit relatively soon.

Ina

creativity

Boris Exhaustion

August 2, 2016 7 Comments

So, I now have three Boris related books on the way from ebay – I was very picky, there are a few more that I didn’t bother with, I have several lengthy videos on youtube to sit through, and I dabbled with a few family ones, since that is the point I am at with the book. I am already suffering from Boris exhaustion. There is an awful lot of material and associated reading to do.

On the plus side, I see that my approach is totally radical, and may make readers weep a bit. Presumably this is a good thing.

It has been incredibly difficult to get the feeling of the thing across to Twisty, who knows my work and knows me extremely well. He is making a lovely job of the cover, but it is not easy to convey the flavour of the thing even to a friend who knows exactly what I am up to.

The first idea was a very strong yellow, black and white newsprinty type cover. I have seen a few union jack type renderings of Boris, and whilst they are very nice and have that 1960s Carnaby Street optimism that we like from Boris, this is absolutely not what is going on in the book.

I suggested a pale primrose was nearer the mark, and we now have a slightly satirical cartoon with more delicate colouration, which again is very nice, but still not quite there. Lucifer Ogilvie is not exactly Boris, he is just built from similar bones. Who knows where I shall drag him eventually?

Generally speaking, I prefer to binge read before deciding on a project, so this is all out of order for me. It is the equivalent of catching someone’s eye at a party, and then suddenly spending a month with them and nobody else. A little bit awkward, with flashes of sort-of-ok.

My academic reading is happening, slowly, but there is an awful lot of pop-conservative crap out there, which is no use at all for this. I kind of know what I am going to end up saying anyway. My weird brand of conservative communism runs pretty deep, having listened to fairly strong and dearly held opinions from ma and pa.

Still sewing like mad, and, family rows permitting, we should have some new art material shortly. Still no emotional visions on Boris – maybe there won’t be any, who knows? Maybe this is a brief aberration, just for fun?

My Slovenian friend, a political journalist I have done some creative stuff with in the past, is delighted at the new project, so perhaps we can fire a few in that direction once done.

creativity

Writing Update

July 30, 2016 48 Comments

Writing Update

Sadly, I was unable to attend the March for Indy today in Glasgow, as I was taking care of mother and entertaining Twisty. I hear seven thousand or so people attended, which is pleasing, and that everyone had a good time networking and hoping for a forthcoming yes result.

Wonders will never cease, I have actually started work on Lucifer Ogilvie. I had vaguely decided on an inquisition into conservative policy in the form of a charming story. Then I researched Boris a bit more attentively and found that I would have to make some serious decisions along this route. So now I think we will cling a tad harder to the meandering world of Boris, with our inquisition taking a more entertaining second place. I have come up with some policy solutions to the current predicament, but as this seems to be turning into an epic task, this will certainly not be immediate.

Best Adventure Ever will probably emerge shortly after this, although I am working on both. Fool’s Mandala will be ready in around a month, going by current thoughtful progress. It is the first actual carpet I have made for a long time, and since it is a Wolfe product, it will be the usual blaze of colour.

Going by the response to the music playlists (see below) I created on Youtube, Boris is around twenty times more popular than Wolfe. I am not sure if there are hundreds of commuters building up their happiness bar before going to work, or whether it is just curiosity as to the tone of my work this time, but it is certainly educational. I have no art visuals on Boris as yet, beyond the cover of Lucifer Ogilvie, but from the level of writing, I can say with some confidence that there will be significantly more finesse with Boris related work. My head is somewhat buzzing with the juicier writing project, balancing the needs of the muse with the narrative requirement etc. My work, as always, targets one person, and entertains everybody else. Time will tell what my hands tell me to do this time.

Hopefully I will have more news shortly. In the meantime – busy, busy, busy.

creativity, motivation

Killing your Mojo

July 28, 2016 No Comments

Killing your Mojo

So, we are about halfway through the Fool’s Mandala, I have Best Adventure Ever open on the lower tab, Lucifer Ogilvie is now hanging about the desktop, and I have acquired twelve or so history and philosophy of the Conservative Party books from the University Library, so I am all set.

A lot of what you do as a creative person involves fantasy. Making the transition from a life held down by poor self image/fear of insanity/lack of encouragement for many people involves Dutch courage, a helpful friend, or a mammoth ego. It was particularly difficult for me as an artist’s daughter, since he advised me at a very early age to do anything but art.

His reasoning, as a former school truant who used to jump on the bin lorries, destined for Troon, to get to the harbour to draw the boats, was that if you wanted to make art your career you are better in a fine art situation, or some alternative means of actually expressing yourself. He loved working, but much of his career was spent doing things he did not want to do (like hand drawn whisky labels and engineering drawings) rather than loosening up emotionally and artistically to do something more fun. The grandson of a (quite literally) revolutionary communist, he had already rebelled by falling in love with a militarist Conservative. Hence, my father was constantly hiding, hiding his emotions, hiding his background, hiding from his horrible children.

Lucifer Ogilvie is the best idea I have ever had. At long last I have randomly selected a means of actually using my education. Thank heavens for Wolfe, or I would not have the confidence or the ‘moxie’ to just go ahead and do it, and to hell with the consequences.

Chatting with Twisty today, he again attempted to re-orientate me to the reality of being a nothing. I don’t feel like being a nothing. Nobody should decide to be a nothing, no matter how bleak one’s future looks. “Man must strive” as my grandmother used to say, as she brought up two children as a single parent whilst feeding the poor people down the hall. She worked day and night, as did my father, as did I, in the course of considering my mother and her charmed yet lazy life.

Depending on your methodology, writing can be a bit like method acting. The Boris experience project is very different from the Sheep in Wolf’s clothing project, because I understand the process far better this time. Clearly, I like thinking about boys. Preferably naughty, well developed characters. I have no problem with this, although I am well aware that people of both genders, particularly those bound by the constraints of a ‘free’ life, will have.

There are limitations to this curious method of working, however. Good sketches take a long view, and it is important to omit as many details as you include for the purposes of your narrative. What you leave out or distort for your creative purposes is as important as what you choose to include. Style has to be considered. My American readers, for example, could not understand that my gentle and flattering satire on the life of Wolfe was not, in fact, a savage attack.

This rather touching difference in communication, divided by a common language, may well suppress the growth of my American market, but my British readers complained that I had not been savage enough! Poor Wolfe has slaved away for all these years without considering that communication is vastly different between our nations. He probably wonders to this day why I laughingly compared him to Liberace.

So, then, if you are friends with a writer, an actor, an artist or even someone with a keen sense of whimsy who has not discovered their particular spark, do not discourage them. Eventually a bud will peep forth, followed by a flower. It’s all good.

creativity, economics, motivation, politics

Broad Brush Thinking

July 5, 2016 No Comments

Broad Brush Thinking

I have cleared 15 ton bags of garden rubbish from my garden in the last month. Not that the garden was a jungle, it is just a large garden, consisting of three lawns, around 35 trees, 4 shrubberies, a large scale rockery and what seems like a mile of mixed hedging.

Occasionally over the years, my friends, whom as I have mentioned are all male, have stopped by to help, which invariably causes great merriment as their ideas about gardening are somewhat different scale to a person trying to manage a large house and garden without spending money on contractors.

The flatulent pedant, as he is known in my memory, recounted a tale of a two week war with his mother about a weed on his 4 square metre patio before he saw my garden. Another ex took a full afternoon to present me with a square metre of perfectly weeded rosebed, and another likes to tell me that I should pave the lot. It always makes me laugh, this variety of approaches to life and thought.

Obviously, dealing with something on this scale when you have limited time, you have to organise your time effectively. At one point I was working 6 days a week at the bank, researching for the government, and conducting corporate interviews by phone whilst decorating and taking care of this garden, all with no assistance and a great deal of criticism from the rest of the family. Any spare time was spent making lists of things to do, their level of urgency, and the likely time of paint or varnish drying so that I could then schedule hoovering, mowing or chopping whilst waiting for other things to be ready to progress. In fact, the Sheep in Wolf’s clothing collection was started whilst I was conducting research from home, since the interviews were by telephone, nobody could see that I was sewing whilst working, hence my time was used productively.

You learn a lot about strategy from all this. Many people have the luxury of never having to learn about strategy, time management or having to accept a margin of error they would never consider if they did not have this level of workload.

So, to get to the point, debating detail is not effective for a broad brush thinker, who is likely to be more interested in the overall structure of the problem. A broad brush thinker is likely to become a large scale strategist, whereas a ‘devil in the detail’ expert is what you require when you have already determined the shape of the problem at hand.

It hugely surprised me, when I was working on a (personal) three dimensional economic project in 2009 or so, that the economists I wanted to involve in the problem did not understand what I was talking about. After much messing around, I finally found a physicist in France who understood exactly what I was saying, who told me that basically I was a car designer, trying to explain myself to a crew of mechanics who wanted to know the specifics of the problem. I desisted with the project at that point, since I felt it unlikely that I would find a crew willing to spend months experimenting to achieve something on my say-so. Such is the problem of the broad brush thinker. We have great ideas, but without the means to carry them out via a team of detail mechanics, we may not be much use. When it comes to tackling improbably large projects however, we are exactly what is required for the job.

It struck me last week or so, when despite the screamingly awful Leave Campaign in the UK, I felt very concerned for poor Boris, that I now recognise and resonate with other broad brushers without even realising it. (Wolfe was a broad brusher too.) I wonder how many more I can find, if I look around? And will my own capacity for grand strategy ever achieve anything useful or be given an opportunity for useful endeavour? So far it seems to have done little for me apart from ensuring that I become extremely bored with small problems and making sure my parents’ family is taken care of.

I cannot help the way I think, any more than someone who imagines that their love of following rules or sticking to tradition despite the disadvantages can help the way they think. I get a lot more done, and require less in the way of help, especially in situations where the way forward is not always clear. This does not mean that you end up with a precise result, but you do get a result.

It all comes down to approach, your ability to prioritise, your willingness to get the job done. A detail oriented person is fabulous when you approach the end of a task, but they are as useful as a chocolate fireguard when you are creating something new. You cannot add the bells and whistles before you have something to hang them on.

So, before you create your masterwork, always draw the sketch. Before you add the embellishments, create the scheme. Before you list the tasks, determine the problem. All of this takes careful thought and a willingness to stretch and bend your reality. Once you have done all that, then you will have a good idea how to present the tasklist in order to solve the problem.

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