motivation - Ina Disguise

Reflection is over-rated

October 13, 2017 No Comments

Today I had to wait in a lot for various phone calls. I have edited a few stories, which rather alarmed me as I thought I had caught all my spare commas. The cats have been patted, the errands have been run, and I have reflected far too much.

The last few months have been rather eventful. I have lost 60lb, gone to see somebody I was trying to avoid, been through a mammoth battle for my mother’s health, which is still apparently ongoing, and had to suffer the invasion of my home by allegedly well-meaning infiltrators who want to tell me how to live my life. You would never guess that I have a brain at all. I have also had to tell my last remaining offline friend not to return, partially because of the now perpetual drama and interference, which could conceivably kill him with stress, (he was already hospitalised once with the effects, and I was not going to allow this to happen again) and partially because the friendship, whilst good for him, was very bad for me.

Any one of these things would take their toll on a person, never mind all of them, but I have responded reasonably well I think. The trick now is to avoid reflection.

I don’t want to think about the years since my father died. I want to move on, create some great work, write a beautiful book or three, and ensure that my mother has as peaceful a life as possible. Thanks to her unconventional diet, she is stable. The NHS hate this, but apparently they will have to learn to live with it. I dread to think how fast she will die in the event that she has to go anywhere else, however, as even the three days that I was effectively absent from caring for her caused a dip.

My friend from the Gambia is trying to worm his way back in to chatting with me every night. I have no idea what benefit he thinks he will derive from achieving his aim. I assume he thinks that I am rich. It certainly isn’t because he wants to do any work. We have already established this. Why I am to sit and wait for his next crisis and provide I do not know. I have no beanstalk in my garden, and alas no magic beans.

In a week or so I am hoping that I will be able to release the first pieces in the Boris Johnson collection. They are looking rather nice, but there is still a lot of work to do as my studio is rather small for furniture. I have some lining work to do, which I hate, and about seven days of sewing on the carpet for it. In the meantime, I am in a writing mood, so I think I will make a start on the book for the Boris collection. There will also have to be some short stories, and a new series will commence for the release of these.

I am also planning to do some further releases on Amazon. I notice that somebody has pirated some work of mine on there already, so I have to go through their rather cumbersome copyright process. I was ignoring it because whoever-it-is is presumably publicising my books, and I thought I would just let them.

All in all, I don’t think I should waste any more time than I have already wasted on reflection. I don’t particularly envy anyone, and I think things happen for good reasons. You cannot underestimate your own significance, however. I am feeling rather more inclined to be noisier than I used to be, which can only be a good thing given the very large task ahead.

motivation

In 48 hours time

October 5, 2017 53 Comments

In 48 hours time it will all be over, and I will probably be on my way back here, having been ignored again.

In 48 hours time I will have been reminded, yet again, how insignificant I am and be berating myself for having bothered to try and change anything.

In 48 hours time I will hate myself for having spent money I do not have on something I should not have felt the need to do.

In 48 hours time I will be trying to figure out how I can modify my existing work to remove anything that might cause me problems later.

In 48 hours time I will feel very guilty about trying to change anything.

Hopefully I will not try and throw out my work again, because I obviously want to do it. Why I need anyone’s approval I do not know. I just know I feel very sad already, and the worst has not even happened yet.

There is a simple solution to all of this, and that is to modify everything to remove all traces of Wolfe, and do the work on the basis that nobody will be interested in it anyway.

I have to say, for an author who has amassed 30,000 readers in four years, I am feeling rather down on myself. I do not feel I have achieved anything of note, my work is mainly scribbling, and I see no evidence of anybody sufficiently enthusiastic to be waiting for the next thing to come along. Therefore Ina is still a nothing, despite some effort. I would not claim that it is a lot of effort, as I have witnessed people who put in a lot of effort, and I neither have the time nor apparently the drive to put sufficient into the project.

It has not helped that I have spent the last four years with two people who are more concerned with themselves than anything progressive or external, and that I was too sad/unmotivated to do anything about it. I am shocked when I see myself four years ago, at the damage this has done to me.

Maybe this dip is self-protective. If I do not expect anything, then I will not be so gutted when I fail.

I wish the ending of this story was not so inevitable.

motivation

Altruism as insanity

October 1, 2017 2 Comments

Finally managed to talk to a friend about my current plans and the conversation was as bonkers as ever.

In the meantime, I constructed a note for Wolfe to indicate that I am at the event, should I make it so that he doesn’t have to see or talk to me unless he wants to. Why am I so apologetic about this? I have been extremely patient, his entourage seem to think I am made of some sort of shit, and I have been waiting to provide him with some quality material that he doesn’t even have to pay for for several years. Apart from some choice words, I have nothing to apologise to Wolfe for. Every bit of sour has been compensated for with sweet at other times.

Anyway, she harped back to a friend of hers who had become ‘obsessed’ with a Slovenian singer, who then used her very polite sounding obsession to make a name for himself by pointing a finger at her.

Yeah, its a dog eat dog world out there and doing anything is utterly pointless. May I point out that this is why the planet is in the state it is in? If everybody continues to function in this egocentric and stupid way, the whole world will end up looking like the USA and nobody creative will bother doing anything. I am sure this will suit some people, especially those who make a living by talking about having read a book once, but it will not actually make life better.

I frankly do not care about Wolfe’s private life that he didn’t tell anyone about. I do not care about the unhappy woman that caused me years of pain with her bullshit, and I do not care if he is worth 10c or $200 million. None of these things matter. All that matters is that I can see a problem that nobody else seems to be addressing and that I actually deal with it. It affects everyone, and it affects the future. In the unlikely event that he actually listens to me, it will also make Wolfe a little bit less obscure.

Why I am to be reduced to being referred to as ‘a fan in denial’ and sitting at an event that I may not even be able to cope with listening to (for a variety of reasons) I do not know. Maybe people, whether they know me or not, should try a bit of fucking respect for a change. Maybe I should just stop bothering at all.

In the last few years, because of shit like this I have been reduced from a proud, intelligent hardworking individual to a brainless blob, mired in bullshit that benefits everyone but me. I am tired of it. I am not a bimbo, I have no respect whatsoever for fame, and I have a job to do. Just let me do it already.

motivation

As time goes by (yet another David Wolfe post)

September 28, 2017 6 Comments

It honestly feels like months since my last post, but it was actually only five days ago.

I am going to the Wolfe event after all. This may seem very odd, but it is time I did something selfish for the sake of my sanity. I felt that it was unlikely that I would be able to do it for a few years so it was now or never.

There are several options as to how this will go down:

1. He hates me, and will do something horrible like suddenly realise who I am and prevent me from attending once I have gone to all the trouble of actually getting there.

2. He plays a horrible practical joke on me, which I would probably deserve after all these years.

3. He does not know that I exist at all. (I doubt it, since he gives online stuff about him an Assange level of attention, which means he spends a great deal of time on that smartphone looking himself up)

4. He chooses to ignore me entirely, which I would again probably deserve.

5. He actually felt exactly as I did and is as similar to me as I thought he was, in which case he will be cautiously pleased to see me, with caveats.

6. He liked me more than I thought he did, in which case it will be a very strange experience indeed.

All I want to do is discuss my book and the game, both of which are designed to benefit him. The book because I would like to ensure that he reads it at the very least, and the game because it has business implications. Anything beyond that would be unexpected, and frankly it will be a miracle if I get that far.

In the meantime the preparation going into this is astonishing, and I haven’t even started on going through the research material yet. In the last three days I have walked about 50km from sheer nerves.

I am still a little fat lady, albeit with bizarrely good skin, so I am hoping that I do not find myself feeling like an alien at an event which promoted itself as being full of hippy fanchicks and pale bodybuilder types. I assume that this is not strictly the audience, although I note from the material sent to me so far that more than the first 80 tickets have apparently sold, so I may just melt into the crowd.

For the sake of reassurance, I am not attending this event as Ina Disguise the entity, but as my shy and retiring self, so I do not forsee too much in the way of drama coming from me.

Considering that I am still unable to watch any of his videos, I am not sure how I will react to this, but I am hoping that watching the audience will be as fascinating as I think it will be.

I am now going to go and read ‘Rhetoric of Economics’ to put myself in more of a ‘me’ mood.

motivation

David Wolfe Uk Event update 2017 (sigh)

September 23, 2017 162 Comments

I have two weeks left to see if I can attend the event that I was still trying to stop myself attending. I have decided to stop asking myself permission. I am not very nice to myself as a rule.

I have not had any flat out refusals, the big issue at the moment is care for my mother, which will be very expensive.

Should Wolfe happen to drop in on the blog, NOW would be a good time to object rather than after I have made the relevant arrangements, as Birmingham is amongst many of the countless things I hate about doing any of this. You can do this via Tree of Life or by leaving a comment, which I can then hide.

It was extremely funny this morning trying to explain who he was without actually saying it. I still cannot imagine actually doing this. I have run through several scenarios so far, none of them particularly glorious. I am trying to calculate how big a book I need to hide behind and whether I require a heavy veil and irritating hat.

Toodle Pip, I will hopefully know later in the week.

Ina

health, motivation

Narcissism and other Pop Diagnoses

September 19, 2017 1 Comment

My Sweet Somatic Narcissist – it’s free

I wrote the above story this week, and duly punted it for a couple of days. The first four copies were poorly edited, so if anyone got one of these, my apologies.

Having spent the last week or so investigating the matter, I have come to the conclusion that you can easily get sucked into a vortex of extremely complex self-evaluation as a result of investigating this topic. I would just like to reassure any potential readers of the above free story, that it is not particularly heinous or ‘victim’ orientated. In fact, Kate responds reasonably well to her 18 months or so. I did leave out some stuff, but it was more about poor self-management than drama.

So, today the mild panic was over whether I am an Inverted Narcissist – someone who seeks relationships with narcissists because they know what to expect and seek validation from tolerance of narcissistic behaviour. Given that I am drawn to complicated relationships, and that I have had a few narcissistic people in my life, I wondered whether this was a possibility.

Whilst I certainly don’t seek to cure people of whatever their problem is, I have probably shown too much flexibility in terms of tolerance in the past, and should be valuing my emotional and physical safety more highly. I am also highly practiced at managing the feeding of narcissists, evidently, which is why I have managed fairly long term relationships with some very difficult people. I do also suffer from flash rages, which are, I think more evidence that I was brought up in a large house where I could easily go and chuck a tantrum and avoid dealing with problems face to face, rather than evidence of CPTSD. I could go down the other road, and investigate whether I am suffering from dependency issues etc, but I think it is healthier to develop a harder core and go ahead and do what I am capable of.

Therefore, I would like this blog post to be a warning to other people like me, who discover that the answer to some unanswerable questions is that you are dealing with people suffering from a variety of personality disorders. Your trauma is yours, and you do not necessarily require intervention or company. As I have said to many people in the past, feeding the sharks is not necessarily a good idea. Sometimes it is a good idea to starve your particular shark and go and do something else. It is not so much a question of avoidance, as a willingness to say OK, I think I will close that chapter and move onto something else.

In the more distant past, I moved on successfully from being an angry teenager to being a highly productive twenty something, and a stupidly caring thirty and forty something. I got some answers this week, as to why I was so angry to start with, and why I am taking the very odd path that I am currently taking. I do not think that this is justification to question or alter that path, as I think it is a positive development. In many ways the Wolfe project is continuously positive. I have rarely been so happy to avoid hating someone on the grounds of it being obvious to do so.

This does not mean that I will not be carefully considering the new information that I have, yes, I have been ‘mobbed’ by my family for several years, yes, I have made a lot of mistakes with people, and yes, I have developed some symptoms of trauma. However, the knowledge of this does not change the validity of what I am currently doing or plan to do, especially as it does not involve harming anybody and might help a great number of people if I can pull it off. Even a few years ago this would have thrown me a bit off-balance, as I would have sought to ‘fix’ the problem. Now, I think ‘meh.’

Feel the fear, and do it anyway. Additional information is a good thing, using it as an excuse to stop moving forward is not.

motivation

Where do you want to be in five years time?

September 16, 2017 3 Comments

Well, it seems like nobody wants to answer my complicated question. I guess I should write a more interesting post. I was just watching a yank video on emotional problems, as usual money was mentioned, and it asked where I wanted to be in five years time?

I was actually just discussing this on youtube a couple of days ago. The great thing about not climbing any sort of ladder until later in life, is that your youth is kind of artificially preserved by your lack of self-definition.

I have always answered the above questions in interview by relating it to the particular job I am trying to get, so I have never really had an answer to this question.

At the moment, I plan to have resolved my health issues permanently, have at least 70 books out and have sufficient downloads to consider monetizing them, have sold some artwork (I have not rushed at this, since I do not want to either sell crap, or have to spend money on advertising that I need for creating) and possibly have a small computer game enterprise on the go. In the event the original book (it does have a working title) is complete by then, I will also be putting actual work into advertising that.

What I do not plan to be doing is having another shitty relationship with somebody that doesn’t think well of me. That has been a lengthy waste of time in the past. I would like to have snapped out of it entirely by now, but clinging to things that really don’t matter and that should not affect my life that much have kind of held this back. I need to stop hiding behind other people.

If you have emotional confidence issues, you are likely to spend your time with other people with confidence issues, which leads to a kind of vortex of self-doubt. Sometimes, if you want to grow out of it, you have to spend some time alone.

Pleasing such people is a waste of time, since it is kind of locked into the relationship that anything you do is likely to be regarded as sub-standard. This affects the most surprising of people, including people that should really know better. If you are self-critical, it also feeds that monster.

I have also learned, to my cost, that other cultures do not understand the notion of ‘friendly fire.’ British people are very fond of it, to ascertain views, explore topics and gain momentum in terms of communication. Other cultures expect undying admiration, and they are not likely to understand when you point out defects in the course of trying to establish communication.

So, next time somebody asks you where you want to be in five years time, try to think about your personal answer to that question, unrelated to your current employment, friends or family. The answer may lead to a more radical change than you expected.

health, motivation

A complicated question

September 16, 2017 2 Comments

This is going to be a complicated post, complete with hideous scenarios and consequences.

The question is whether I should take a gamble on myself, in the form of tolerating a social situation I do not want to be in, in order to see a person that probably does not want to see me.

Risks of attending

He does not want to see me. There is significant evidence to suggest that this is the case, and no evidence at all that this is not the case. I tried emailing in advance, and my messages were both ignored by the company dealing with it.

I become irate within minutes of attempting to listen, because I currently cannot bear listening for a variety of historic reasons.

I have to speak to people.

I am ridiculed.

My mother would have to go into care, risking her diet, and my cats would have to go into a cattery for a couple of days whilst I locked the house up. This is also complicated by social services involvement. It is also a very expensive operation.

I look hideous and this affects the purpose of my attendance as the person certainly gave the impression of being extremely superficial and undervaluing me on my last futile attempt at contact or rational conversation, which is what started this project in the first place.

I am regarded as some sort of monster and am treated like dirt. (again)

Possible pay-offs

I resolve a problem that has been crippling me and my work for the last seven years. If so, I instantly gain about thirty life points in terms of confidence.

He might actually be pleased to see me. (unlikely, but possible)

The people might be OK.

I need a break anyway, and maybe this is sufficiently selfish to make up for a few years of garbage in the past.

The fact that I have a life outside this situation might shock a few people into behaving like humans.

My mother’s health is unlikely to improve, and so it is the last chance to do it for probably five years or so. Also my own age is a factor due to this person’s probable attitude.

Why do I even want to do this? I didn’t before. I just think I might regret it if I don’t. He has had ample opportunity to speak to me, and been given ample reason for doing so. Why should I not expect to be treated like an adult?

On the other hand, maybe I need to take control of this situation in order to stop thinking about it.

Should you wish to give an actual answer, the comments box appears below. You do not need to give a real email address.

health, motivation

Is your happiness the most important thing?

September 15, 2017 291 Comments

If my happiness was the most important thing to me, everybody around me would be worse off. My friend ‘Leon’ would have never seen me again after the assault, my health would be better, Wolfe would probably have met me by now and would certainly have had a large present that he did not want, his agent would have had sore ears from my dealing with her, the avocadess would not be very happy, the book would be written, regardless of market, my mother would be dead due to her children’s behaviour, this house would be gone, my siblings would have no inheritance, my old friend Aldous would never have experienced shooting, my cats would still be waiting for a home. I would not have bothered making any more art.

Is your happiness really the most important thing?

Right now, if my happiness was the most important thing, I would be out trying to find some unsuspecting male, which, given the attitude of some men would not be a particularly joyful or interesting experience. I was told only today that women over 35 are a waste of time. I guess we are too challenging for this dude. All the more for me, I replied.

Maybe the pursuit of happiness itself is a risk not worth taking. Low risk living is, however, in itself not a happy or brave experience.

Perhaps we should take it from this that avoidance of regret is more important than happiness. You do what you can live with. As I have said before, life is a series of trade-offs. Maybe that is the answer.

Maybe being polite is a bad thing. Maybe we should all take the motivational attitude that you keep pushing until you get whatever it is that you want, at any cost. This would make for a deeply unpleasant and unstable world, but at least we could say that we have gone after our bliss at any cost.

The problem with this is that our bliss changes from minute to minute, and what we think will make us happy is not necessarily what genuinely will. Therefore we have a margin of risk aversion to stop us from being too impulsive.

I find that medium to long-term goal setting stops me from being too impulsive, whether happy or sad. If I am sad it stops me from doing anything too damaging, and if I am happy it stops me from being too selfish or smug. I am still not sure that I rate happiness highly enough. I am just happy not to be a shit.

health, motivation

In memory of my father

September 12, 2017 3 Comments

David Wolfe post in memory of my father

Ten years ago, nearly to the day, my father’s life was ended in an NHS hospital. The hospital in question used to exist to terminate elderly and terminally ill patients, so that the statistics were all at the same location. Whilst it was a superficially nice place, it was the equivalent of taking your pet to the vet for the last time.

My father had vascular dementia, which I knew very little about at the time. Nevertheless, I made sure that he was able to stay at home for as long as possible. My mother, not the most proficient of carers, would not have lasted as long as she did had she not had someone there. She still lied about the help I was providing until she was not listened to by the rest of the family anyway.

A lifelong socialist and pacifist, my father rebelled by marrying my mother, whom he met on the shores of Lake Geneva, despite both being from Glasgow. His family were very well known communist/extreme trade unionists in Glasgow. My great grandfather was behind the revolution that had tanks in George Square.

A large proportion of my father’s family rejected him when he bought this house and married a militarist Conservative, although my mother was not the most thoughtful of political thinkers. He never told her, she was quite shocked when I broke it to her a couple of years ago.

During WW2, he and his friends were conscientious objectors. One was jailed for it, but later had a very respectable life and did quite well. This would not happen now, of course. My father was sent to work in the forests as he had defended himself in court and it was established that he had rather obscure religious reasons for his communitarian beliefs and seven single widowed aunts from WW1 to support.

His interest in natural health was so obsessive that it cost quite an astonishing amount even when I was growing up in the 70s. We had a dehydrator going and sprouts along the window sills.

He was a very quiet, humorous individual, who you did not get to know unless you showed some interest. Therefore I was told the family secrets even my mother did not get to hear. I have to say, since his death I have become more and more like him. My attitude to Wolfe has been much like my father’s love affair with this house. When he failed to secure it on the first attempt, he shuffled around muttering “that was my house” until the person who had bought it changed his mind and sold it to him.

If anyone deserved to be saved by my persistent interest in natural health, it was my father. I did try to extract him from the clutches of the NHS, but to no avail as my mother had just had a stroke and was considered ‘a handful,’ although there was no question of my having any support at the time. I was just expected to manage, regardless of anything going on in my life.

What really gets me annoyed is the fact that within two days of being in that hellhole he was drugged because he was considered difficult. When I challenged this, I was flatly told that he was suddenly in pain. He was still capable of speech and eating normally prior to this. Within three months he was less than half the weight and we were told that he must not even drink anything.

The figures for Alzheimer’s deaths in Scotland indicate that this is deliberate policy. I can see that the NHS regard aging as an unacceptable burden, and that they are trying to take quality of life into account, what I do not understand is why the alternatives are so frightening to them. I am still suffering from an invasion of nurses who appear to think I should be burnt as a witch because my mother is still alive, despite their best efforts.

I am, rather helpfully, very angry about what happened to my father, and about the continuous bitching and battling I have to do to protect my mother. Anger is a useful energy. I daresay it is considered negative in some circles. Personally I think it is the best fuel ever.

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