health, motivation

My Crazy Friends (narcissism and other problems)

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Back when I had a social life, my family used to refer to my crazy friends a lot.  Each of them had different problems, none of which affected our friendships.  I have been on the same radar as these people for more than thirty years, despite many ups and downs in our relationships.

Because we do not see each other all the time, sometimes taking a break for ten years or so, it is a lot less stable, yet a lot less boring than most people.  My parents had much the same kind of relationships with their friends, so it does not seem unusual to me.

I have a parent (mother) with narcissistic tendencies, a sister with a more defined form of NPD, which appears to be more of an affectation. I have shown a marked preference for narcissists over the years.  It is easy, I know the rules, I don’t expect anything, so I guess I keep doing the same thing. My father, who I resemble far more than my mother, was more empathetic and introverted, and so I was basically brought up with the idea that we had some jobs, the benefit of which meant we did not have to talk to anyone.  You need a lot of rests when dealing with people who believe that the world revolves around them.

A cursory look at the material on Youtube related to narcissism, is that a lot of it is not particularly good.  Some of it, in fact, consists of people over-analysing things about their relationships that aren’t worth noticing.  What they perceive as narcissistic abuse, is actually just some individuals showing a greater tendency towards selfishness than others.  narcissismvideos is probably the most dedicated narcissism researcher in the world, and one of the few I bother to listen to, because he himself suffers from NPD.

So it is rather ironic that the family would refer to my crazy friends, each of whom had different and in many cases more interesting sets of problems.  Some of these were environmental.  Aldous, the character from Best Scandal Ever and Best Romance Ever, had chronic reactive depression, brought about by living at home with his gifted yet sporadically violent brother and mother.  My own periods of sadness have been greatly lengthened by being at home, and I have lost count of the days I have lost to wondering why I put myself through any of this whilst being told that I am the problem.

If you try to get through life without feeling anything, you will seek out more bland personalities than I have chosen to spend my time with.  I tend to look on this as a strength. I am sufficiently secure to bear the brunt of many problems.  It becomes rather sad, however, when I see someone becoming ill right in front of me.

Because of a brain injury, my friend told me that he thought that he was dying when he was in fact recovering.  His memory has improved, his functioning has improved, he is in less chronic pain than he was in previously.  He has, during the same period, shown significant deterioration in his level of engagement.  You can have a conversation and believe that he is participating in it, only to find that he has not connected with anything that has been said at all.  It has, in the last week, become impossible to talk to him at all as he is clearly not engaging with any information and chooses instead to gaslight.  It takes time and knowing someone well to even spot this, and he is not all that safe, as company goes.

Naturally, since I cannot communicate with anybody about my work, I have come to the conclusion that the only answer is to shut the door on everybody and finally do it.  I am obviously going to have to become as driven and self-promoting as the average narc to get the necessary information out to enough people to finally be able to discuss it with anybody.  This is not good for my work, and it is not something I want to do at all, being an introverted empath rather than an extroverted narc.  In the meantime I have to work on my personal presentation, since my life has, up until now, consisted of servicing others.

This is the biggest change yet in my journey, brought about by my bizarre imaginary love affair with Wolfe, and I am well out of my comfort zone at this point.  I hope for everyone else’s sake that I can pull it off, because it is important.

Having had at least two ex boyfriends with NPD, one psychopathic, a sister with an affectation, a mother with sufficient tendencies to survive almost anything, and a best friend who showed strong markers for it, I am hoping that I have learned enough about putting yourself first to at least pretend sufficiently to make this work.  If not, I will be wasting my time.

Hopefully this is sufficient to explain to you that craziness is a tool, and a label, rather than something to be avoided.  You can learn from anybody, at any time, without fearing adverse results from spending time with more unusual people.  I do not recommend falling in love with them, but hey, shit happens, sometimes with good results rather than bad.

 

 

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health, motivation

Who is hiding behind your depression?

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I am decluttering at the moment, and I am very surprised by some of the things I am finding. I have been shuffling about in the same rags for years now, since I did not consider it worthwhile to dress when nobody was going to see me, and I had thought that I needed to look at buying clothing.

Obviously, since I am losing rather a lot of weight at the moment – replacing the icon and logo with a new image is the current priority for the website – I do not want to buy anything.  The plan is to emerge as a completely new visual concept before I let Ina out in public, which takes a lot of work.

To my surprise, I find that I am quite a snappy dresser, and had twenty pairs of fairly nice trousers.  I also had a full cupboard full of jumpers.

The biggest surprise today is that I am clearly very kinky, and have a couple of dozen items of very restrictive underwear.  I haven’t worn any of it, so it is all brand new and in a variety of sizes.  Evidently my alter ego/non-repressed self is quite a gal.

Caring for others involves a lot of hiding your personality. There is no point in tarting yourself up to be covered in half digested food, poo or anything else, so you end up shuffling about in your studio clothing, if you happen to be me.  Even when I go out for my twice daily walk I am in glue covered clothing.  This is how I end up with three wardrobes full of clothing that I barely remember – there is no reason for wearing any of it.

I suppose this is why they try to insist that you have a day off now and again.  It doesn’t seem terribly relevant when you redirect your life around constraints you have had no control over.  I didn’t even insist on privacy until a couple of years ago, so it was necessary to hide any aspect of personality from any potential intruders.  I like to leave a pair of vibrams out now, since it disgusts my sisters.  Beyond that, I try not to tell anyone anything.

The point of hiding behind Ina, was to express myself without interference.  It turns out that even I was interfering, since I have clearly been hiding things even from myself.  Obviously, I was aware of my sexual proclivities in the past, but I hadn’t realised quite how much I was avoiding thinking about it because of sheer misery.

Distracting yourself with friends does not help with this, since naturally you concentrate on more sociable topics.  I certainly don’t discuss my sexuality with my exs, since they are either aware or were not capable of dealing with it.

So, I wonder, have you considered what you are avoiding by hiding behind your depression?  Would it help to identify and indulge whatever that is?

 

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health, motivation

My raw food eating disorder

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One of the exs, who befriended me this week to borrow a ladder (I kid you not) last night announced that my objection to his attempts to sabotage my health constituted an eating disorder.

This guy has just spent three years with us, on and off, and is well aware that in the course of his gaining 14lb I gained 140lb eating the same thing. He literally just watched that happen. I am very active within the constraints of taking care of my mother and this place, basically the only difference between us is that I am constantly under a great deal of stress, which is usually made worse by spending time with an unpredictable and potentially violent person who is apparently obsessed with getting attention in the form of food and interest.

This is one of the main weaknesses of declaring yourself a raw foodist.  Your former friends just don’t get it.  They believe everything they have been told and think that you aren’t getting a balanced diet.  Another objection, which I have just read from a Paleo site, is that the use of superfood products just ain’t natural.

The social difficulties of retaining your raw diet include not being able to eat out, being an awkward guest at parties, frequently finding yourself either very hungry or eating non hydrated nuts because nothing else is available, and basically avoiding social events because you know you will be unable to eat anything that you haven’t prepared. You can get as obsessive as you want, the opportunities are endless, but there are workarounds for almost any problem.  Fairly early on, I came across someone who had managed to remain raw whilst eating from a MacDonalds, so I figured, you have to be a little flexible.

In recent years, thanks to some of the wrecking attempts of close observers of the raw foodies, it transpired that almost nobody was 100 percent raw, even though they were telling you they were.  Having actually done it for some time, I concluded that my first impression was correct.  90% is as much as is sensible.  That was certainly the case for me, but as I come from a cold, meat obsessed country, it may not be the case for everybody.

Another frequently observed criticism is that raw veganism, as it is sometimes misnamed, represents extreme asceticism,  in other words you are not only vegan, you are raw vegan.  This is a typical reaction of somebody that has never either done it, or thought about it.  Many raw vegans are not actually vegan, using bee pollen and honey, for example.  I prefer raw foodist, as it conveys the same difficulties in feeding yourself without the loaded moral gun.  Besides which, my ten percent involves smoked fish.  From a personal perspective, it is more of a way of indicating that I am unlikely to suddenly enjoy flour, sugar, potato, steak, milk etc so please just give me a green salad.

Over the last few months, I have employed what I learned from the raw foodies to create a high nutrient diet for my mother.  Having seen her go from ‘weeks away from death’ to a more robust state, I can verify that the use of superfoods and raw food principles works extremely well in cases such as hers.  From being unable to lift a fork to guzzling down 1500 calories of nutrient dense drinks per day, with a meal when she requests it, she would have probably have died in hospital if I had not used my knowledge to take care of her.  Nevertheless, I had to explain her diet over and over again to nurses with no nutritional knowledge or interest in learning anything.  I then had to explain it to GPs and a dietician.  I have no confidence at all, even after all these explanations, that they fully understand the implications of my mother’s life having been saved by this.  Even now, they attempt to tell me that she should be eating more mince. (she hates it)

A great reason for doing it is in combination with use of your knowledge of herbal medicine, amino acid and antioxidant therapy.  It is a particularly good base for this, and if you happen to sell health products, I am sure it is very lucrative.  From my perspective however, I wanted to be able to regulate, medicate and ensure that my mother and in the past, myself, had the building blocks to repair actual damage, and a ‘normal’ diet would have slowed this down enormously.

Having said all of that, I choose to combine my ‘health crank’ raw foodism with some eggs and fish.  This is not to denigrate all the people who do it without, I just find it works better for us as we do not like to think about food all day.  It is still easier to say raw foodist than list all the things we avoid in order for her treatment to work.

My friend knows this, and still refers to us as having an eating disorder (he is an ex-nurse, so presumably old habits die hard.  I had to explain poo to him a year or so back.)  This from a guy with high blood pressure, anxiety and a host of other health problems, which vastly improved when I briefly managed to persuade him to do it.  He is, of course rather jealous of Wolfe, as he was the perceived problem blocking my undivided attention.

Having been goaded into again ruining my own health by the aforementioned emotional garbage (see previous posts) of the last few years, I am having none of this.  A normal diet makes me ill, is the bottom line.  Now the awful Wolfe issue has finally been cleared up, he is nothing to do with it.  I employ a vastly different knowledge base than he does anyway, as my original interest was from the European/Swiss tradition.  I am just sick of being sick, basically, and I am more than tired of prioritising other people since it clearly does my health and well being no good at all.

So, when in doubt, do more research.  This Paleo dude I am reading seems to have thought that raw foodism consisted of eating a bag of raw cabbage.  If you thrive on that, I will happily shake you by the hand, but it isn’t really how you do it long term.  The bottom line is that you are unlikely to be eating enough vegetables, and you are likely to be eating too much of everything else, so start from there if you cannot be bothered doing any further reading.

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health, motivation

Disassociate to succeed

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As I walk off some weight in order to progress Ina – I am more aware than ever that a face is required to move projects on in this day and age – I am considering the lessons from a lifetime of being too considerate of other people. I cannot tell you how much your connectedness to others holds you back.

In the past, I have considered my family, I have considered my friends, I have considered everybody else before myself. I used to think that this was a virtue, that vanity was selfishness and that my health was incidental and not to be considered above anything else that came along.

This led, in 2009, to my painting a 14 room house in 10 minute increments, lying down for 20 minutes in between times to recover. I was extremely ill by the time I started researching natural approaches since my GP was not at all interested in helping someone who worked four jobs and looked after everyone but themselves when they said they were tired!

Ironically, had I indulged my fascination with selfish people at a much earlier age, I would have been ready to discard others far more easily. I have always been fascinated by the ability to simply ignore everyone and carry on regardless as I am incapable of doing it.

In the most recent case, I tried many times to let go of the idea that I had done something terrible to deserve the last few years. I had not done anything apart from being born, being a perfectly normal adult, and trying to make the best of a bad situation. I am continuing to punish myself for it, even by persisting with this project. What I should do is ignore any new information and continue to push for what I want, regardless of anyone else.

This, however, would be psychotic behaviour, and I am, despite my many other failings, a thoughtful person. What I now have to do is repair my ailing health, pick up the torch I was trying to give to Wolfe, and do something with it. Whether it turns out to be useful or not is not really relevant. What is relevant is whether I believe in it, and I think the most loving response is to decide that I do, regardless of the consequences to my privacy.

So. in the spirit of disassociating, my first job is to replace the icon on the homepage, which will take about a year, since it is a work of self-sculpture. In the course of doing that, I have to turn myself into a public speaker and I have to write at least two major non-fiction books. The first one being Lucifer Ogilvie, which is my alternative history of Boris Johnson, and the second being the original book.

Do I feel stupid for trying to invest in Wolfe, when I knew it was a bad bet in the first place? No, it was an act of stupid selflessness, but it was in keeping with my less bitter and twisted character and it was a kind of play against someone I knew to be extremely selfish from his history. I admire that, rather than condemn it, but any time I have tried to give a gift to such a person, they immediately assume that the gift is somehow loaded. From this, I consider that time spent listening is as important as time spent talking, and this should stand me in good stead for the future.

That is not to say you should take everything everyone says on board. Quite the reverse, you should discard anything you aren’t interested in, otherwise you end up being a follower rather than a learner.

There have been many times over the years that I have tried to take it in other directions in the time I have available. All of these have turned out to be bad ideas. Best Adventure Ever, the game I am working on, for example, will fail to absorb Wolfe’s marriage, but it is still worth making from the perspective of what it has to say about people and their approach to life. Therefore I am going to persist with it anyway. As a creative exercise it is still a worthwhile project, despite its failings in terms of reality. If Wolfe has a problem with a couple of million extra followers, I daresay he can let me know.

I have actually come quite a long way since the pre-Ina days. I used to worry about doing anything because my name was on it. Ina solved that problem. I used to worry in case things weren’t of sufficient quality. Wolfe cured me of that. What is most important is that you do something, regardless of anybody else or the consequences, because the more ripples you create, the more inspiration you dispense.

So, I must again thank Wolfe for my new cold, more efficient approach to rocking the boat. There are far more ways to skin a cat than you could ever imagine. There is always a way out of the most convoluted mess, as long as you are willing to leave it behind. Shame and feeling sorry for others is a waste of time you could better spent making your dent in the world, whether the dent is useful or simply self-serving.

Being bullied is quite serious in the course of your life, both in terms of your assumption of lack of importance and the voice that tells you that you just aren’t good enough. If you are in a similar position, please remember that the love of your life will not understand your baggage and it is therefore important to discard it and not expect any understanding or consideration. Fight for what you need to grow beyond what you are told you are capable of, regardless of the consequences or the length of time it takes you to stop beating yourself up. I know better than most how difficult that can be, especially after this harrowing and lengthy episode of self doubt. I can do better, and so can you.

For the benefit of regular readers, I obviously have no intention of attending the event in October. I am sure I could manage to have a civilised conversation, since that was all I wanted in the first place, but I am not at all confident that Wolfe could manage it, whatever his dick-led reasoning.

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motivation

Contentment versus Glory

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There comes a point in everyone’s life when they choose contentment over glory. Chefs, in particular learn this very early in life. We discover that we don’t actually have to work 20 hours a day to earn a living, and that it is kind of counter-productive for your health. Therefore we take lower level jobs, and work fewer hours for more money as there is better profit in lower level food.

Today’s blind fury with Wolfe, for no really good reason other than I thoroughly enjoyed being furious with his apparent contentment. was extremely productive. (I think that blog post was probably written 2 years ago, so it may be rather out-of-date, but never mind.)

I have no real wish to rain on his parade, nor the opportunity given that I have been here for years taking care of my mother. I just missed getting annoyed with him I think. It is very odd that a person who irritates me intensely, and that I have had so little interaction with, makes me feel more alive than some of the people who were actually in my life in the even more distant past.

This begs the question of why I would actively crave discontent for me, and more importantly attempt to inspire it in him. I see discontent as being strongly linked to achievement, in terms of striving for future contentment. This is very Western, this idea that happiness is something to be pursued but not gained.

I find it hard to forgive Wolfe for not wanting to achieve more, and yet I daresay he feels he has done enough. I have attacked him on a similar basis several times over the years. I am not sure how much sense it makes from the other side, probably none at all.

My mother used to say it was the irritation that kept my father alive, so perhaps, having had two parents with radically opposing political ideas, I identify argument as affection. Certainly I find calling Wolfe an asshole more affectionate than his syrupy assertions about happy relationships. Whether this is personal psychology, or an expression of how driven I feel on his behalf, I do not know. What seems to have been a brief and insignificant period for him, has been absolutely devastating for me.

When I first made contact with him, it was with a view to simply handing him my work when it was finished, having established a direction he was happy with. My life is kind of over, since I took on care of my parents and this house. I no longer tolerate people terribly well, so, I reasoned, why not pour it all into him. I rather like the idea of doing something spectacular for the world in a slightly self-serving way, and Wolfe has demonstrated a capacity for this.

Having been brought up with a particular interest in public speaking and natural health, it appeared to make a peculiar kind of sense to do this work. The emotional string-pulling just happened kind of by accident, and then when I became despondent, fiction made more sense than trying to produce something more solid alongside the inevitable artwork. I am glad at least part of the mystery has been solved, although I am not so glad that I could not help being stuck behind a non communicative block in terms of actually getting on with the work. I can only blame my crippling self-doubt. It certainly isn’t directly Wolfe’s fault, although some communication and a modicum of actual respect would have speeded things up enormously.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. Apparently I would be faster to come out of my shell than await Wolfe smelling the fucking coffee in terms of work. It comes back to my usual ponderings on economics. The basic economic problem is not scarcity. It is satiety. Wolfe is sated, apparently, and his knife is somewhat blunted by contentment. Therefore the raw material is not nearly as appealing.

I am not in a hurry to become content if it means that I become similarly blunt. I am a spiky character, and I plan to remain spiky for as long as possible. I miss the slightly tortured Wolfe. Perhaps he no longer exists. I’m sort of weirdly glad I bumped into him then, even though he has been a royal pain in the ass. I did so enjoy sticking pins into him. It made me very happy.

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motivation

Best hate ever – Ina Disguise versus David Wolfe

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As you can imagine, I am feeling a bit flat today, given that I have just had another lousy birthday and have ascertained that I have wasted yet more time appeasing somebody on an utterly pointless basis. Therefore I will be spending today re-editing some of my funnier stuff and tidying up before I decide whether to remove all the free marketing Ina did on the grounds of really not caring about anything anymore.

On a funnier note, here is why Wolfe and I did not get on, although should he read this I happen to know that he will secretly find it hysterically funny – no, I do not plan to explain this further, worry not Wolfe. This is from his lovely blog post, which I found yesterday. I did catch sight of some boring and rather staid posts a couple of years back, but chose to avoid them and I was hoping the indication of brain aging was temporary.   David’s words are in bold:

Here are 10 Things I do to Help Keep my Wife Happy!

1. Chores

Small tasks seem simple and straightforward, but they tend to pile up. Pretty soon, the wife is running around the house for a half an hour getting everything done before bed. This is hard for anyone. Small things like emptying or loading the dishwasher, moving along the laundry, or taking out the trash, are easy to do and help to make a loved one feel more appreciated. It is hard because I really live to work, to make sure I am helping around the house. However, taking 2 hours out of each day to be one-on-one with my daughter is a huge break for my wife. Helping with bath time, reading time and simply making sure I clean up after myself is enough to keep things rolling with positivity.

Congrats on managing to clean up after yourself.  This already looks like the most boring day ever. Do not refer to your wife as ‘the wife’ as it is extremely insulting. What happened to the queue of groupies you were so proud of?  Is she first in that queue?

2. Her Needs First

Being in a relationship means caring for the needs of your partner. As often as possible, I try to put her needs first. I ask her what she wants for dinner instead of stating what I want. When we walk or run together, I try to match her pace. Alternatively, she will yell at me to slow down!

I am not sure why anyone would have to think about this, unless of course they aren’t actually doing anything apart from role-playing ‘the best husband ever.’  Time apart is a lot more important than time together, unless of course you are trying to create a homogeneous unit of melded non-thought and pithy unproductive boredom.

3. Listen Not Fix

Sometimes my wife just needs to talk about her problems without someone trying to fix it. Men want to get to a point in the conversation where they can offer a quick fix and then drop it. However, my wife needs to talk through her issues, and I allow her to do that with me, without glancing at my smartphone as she does.

This is straight out of a self-help book from the nineties.  You do not deserve a medal for avoiding your text messages.

4. Use Kind and Grateful Words

I constantly remind myself to use kind and comforting words with my wife. Thank yous and pleases go a long way in any conversation. I want to make sure she understands how much I appreciate what she does for me.

Know each other well, do you?  This is not the person I know.  He was a lot more interesting and doesn’t give a shit about anybody.

 

5. Compliments

I make it a point to compliment my wife whenever she tries something new like a hairstyle, a new sweater, or even a new craft. I also talk highly of her to our friends. She is very talented and, whenever I can, I tell my friends all about how amazing she is.
That said, my wife and I keep it real with others. We are not afraid to look ‘messy’ around others, as real relationships are not without complications.

OK this is now into the realms of extremely tedious.  How do you expect to get better at anything if you are constantly soft-soaping each other?  Try starting from the standpoint that you aren’t good enough and work from there.

 

6. Take Responsibility

Jobs like mowing the lawn and taking out the trash, are mine to do. I try very hard to get them done without my wife having to ask me more than once. No one wants to be a nag, and by getting stuff done when asked, I take that burden off of her.

You sound like Theresa May  “There are boy jobs and girl jobs.”  What a boring old fart you turned out to be?  What happened to the importance of male – female friction?

 

7. Listen, Apologize, Change

Your wife knows you better than anyone else on the planet. Thus, when she has something to say about how one deals with other people, take note. She is the perfect outside observer that has your best interest at heart. She stays out of my business affairs but when she speaks up, I listen, and it has helped me take my business to the next level.

Evidently she doesn’t know you very well, otherwise you wouldn’t continue to be such a rude, tiresome wanker.

 

8. Ask Her Opinion

I always ask her for an opinion when I have a big decision I have to make. She is also very good at considering the feelings of others and does a great job helping me see all parts of the situation.

Keep doing that, she is undoubtedly better at that than you are.  She couldn’t be any worse.

 

9. Support Her Dreams

Supporting your wife’s dreams is a lot easier than one may think. All one has to do is make sure she has the time and the materials to make her dream happen. If she wants to learn how to operate her computer better, get her a book about that. If she wishes to take up hiking, set aside time so you can both enjoy the outdoors together. We have a second kid on the way, and we are looking to move into a bigger home to accommodate that. 2016 is a year of big dreams for us.

That’s really great, I am delighted that you are happy, but you aren’t going to be saving the world any time soon.  This is a time-consuming, patronising and boring relationship.  Sorry, but I am glad you are happy with it anyway.  I didn’t realise you were this limited? Is this new?

 

10. Say, I Love You

The phrase, “I love you” should be used as often as possible. You chose your wife to have and to hold, and she should never have any doubt that you still feel the same way about her.

Role-playing a relationship isn’t real.  I take it she has more money than you then?

 

One’s words and actions have a huge effect on how their loved ones feel. This is especially true in a husband, wife relationship. I make it one of my biggest priorities to help my wife feel cared for and happy.

Tell me about it.  I do not forsee a bright or productive future.

 

What are the little things you do to help your wife feel happy and cared for?

Well, personally I like to lock myself up until I feel less ugly, stupid and undervalued, which can take anything up to fifty years.  Perhaps you should try insulting her intelligence more.  That seems to work well for you. I’ve been dead for years anyway.

 

If anyone wants any artwork, I am wanting rid of some of this stuff before I have to pay to store it.

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creativity, motivation

The Quest for Quality

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The Quest for Quality

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ina

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Thoughts on the David Wolfe UK event October 2017 issue

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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motivation

Change is sometimes sad

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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