motivation - Ina Disguise

Improve your life right now

September 15, 2016 No Comments

Today, I am feeling OK, because I have caught up with most of my boring admin. I have also isolated two tasks which will move the entire Ina Disguise project on a notch, which I am now concentrating on. Tatler rang me yesterday, so it looks as if I will be doing that Tatler thing again before Christmas.

So, in my infinite wisdom, I have decided to make a list of things you can do right now to improve your life.

Think of something nice you can do for someone who actually deserves it. This does not mean just anybody – think of someone who has done things for you, without being asked and without thought of benefit to themselves, be that emotional or actual.
Drink more water. Before every meal, and every time you think about it.
Stop drinking tea and coffee. These drinks are associated with sitting down. You can easily sit down with a glass of water instead, which will not act as a diuretic or cause you to form sitting down habits.
Find items of clothing and objects which you do not use. Donate them to charity or sell them on ebay.
Find a free course from Coursera, Udemy, Alison, Udacity or EDX. Some of these you can complete today. This will make you feel better about yourself, and open your mind to new things.
Carry black pepper wherever you go. This helps you process fat, whatever your eating habits.
Reduce the amount of sugar and white flour in your life. This will stop you drooping after lunch or feeling lazy in the evening. Best to get rid of it altogether unless you poop immediately after every meal.
Stop assuming that people are better than you are. Nobody is. There is no such thing as infallible authority.
Look on Smashwords, free ebooks, Barnes and Noble, or the Apple store for a free book, read and review it. Authors almost never get a review from a stranger, so they will be very grateful.
If you had a reasonably good experience with a business recently, review them on Google.
Have a look at Hubpages and see if there is a topic you would like to write about. You can make money from this, and it is now a better option than Youtube.
Sign a petition.
Resolve to stop playing ‘free games’ on facebook as it is a waste of your life.
Resolve to eat more vegetables. You literally cannot get enough.
Make an appointment or complete some neglected paperwork. You will feel better when it is gone.
Spend fifteen minutes thinking about your goals and deciding what you can do in under half an hour to move towards them.
Consider your relationships. If something is bothering you that you cannot quite put your finger on, think about it carefully. You are better off without people who slow or wear you down.

After all that, you can do whatever you want. Go for a walk, indulge in your hobby, complete your day to day chores.

creativity, health, motivation

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.

business, motivation, politics

Saving Face

September 4, 2016 No Comments

Saving face is my topic for tonight. Saving face is what causes people to ramble anxiously when they don’t really know what they are talking about. Saving face is what causes suicides in Japan, and honour killings in India, Pakistan and the Middle East. Saving face is also heavily involved in blame culture.

Note that all of these consequences of saving face are negative. There is nothing good about the idea of saving face. Fuck your stupid face.

Having spent a decade of formative years in high-pressure catering work, where there is no such thing as saving face, I can tell you how annoying it is to be around people seemingly obsessed with it. It is very simple – you either get it right or you don’t, and unless you are one of those rare beasts like Boris, who is not that interested in saving face, despite his career choices, you are more likely to stick with your bone-headed opinion forever like David Wolfe.

Saving face is time-wasting, a product of ego, vain and when you can see through it, extremely irritating. There is absolutely no excuse for sticking with the same wrong opinion or dearly held belief just because people have been doing it for centuries before you, or because you are trapped in some stupid cultural norm of ‘doing what is expected of you.’ So what if you are a diet guru who digs fat chicks, or a male head of the household whose wife earns more than you do? Really, so what?

The inability to think your way out of a state of requiring that you must save your tedious face is a sure sign of inane vanity. It is not something I regard as forgiveable. To err is human, but the divine does not forgive you setting your wife on fire, hurling yourself out of a window or worrying about what your equally stupid neighbours or friends think.

One of the few things America has got right is discarding, to a certain extent, the idea of saving face. The obsession with money has helped with this. If you fail, you have no option, as a yank, but to move on and be successful at something else before your health insurance and ‘gasoline’ runs out. They may be extremely dumb about other things, but acknowledging and moving on from failure is something they do reasonably well. Look at the example of Trump. They see no reason at all for not voting for a man on trial in two states for fraud and rape in at least one other state! No question of his saving face then!

Ultimately in life, it is imperative to learn how to shrug and move on. Sometimes mistakes cannot be cleared up immediately, and sometimes they are catastrophic, but you will find out fairly early in life, if you are any kind of person at all, that you are a lot more worthy of respect if you simply acknowledge your error rather than finding someone else to dump it on.

In recent years, it has become fashionable to try to spin your errors onto someone else. This has been extremely bad for the economy and for talented individuals it is also extremely frustrating for learning. If you are not allowed to point out and correct errors, nothing can change and little errors quickly turn into enormous disasters. (The banking crisis being a case in point.)

So, whilst mistakes are inevitable, it is important for you as a well rounded individual to learn from them and take responsibility for them, at least in your own mind whilst you find some poor sap to take the blame so you can retain your promotion. Remember that cheats get promoted, and the lower in the organisation you are, the more likely you are to be sinfully honest. (see the bagel experiment)

Try not to kill your wife and children, ruin anybody’s life or jump out of any windows. It isn’t worth it. Shit happens, and if you have even half a brain you will figure out a way of getting around it.

motivation

The Perils of Responsibility

August 31, 2016 39 Comments

The Perils of Responsibility

I have previously written about the sin of kindness. Nice guys and gals really do finish last, and thanks to a culture of contempt for anybody who takes care of anybody else, it is really not wise to stop and take care of anyone.

Having children is also unwise, since you are effectively producing taxpayers at the expense of your own wealth. Although I have never begrudged the unemployed, elderly or disabled their pittance, I have frequently wondered, back in the days when I worked 20 hours a day for actual money, why I should pay for other people’s children to enjoy school and healthcare when I cannot afford children myself. Why should I pay for everybody else to get what I was told I should not have, since I was dumped with the job of taking care of my parents and this house at the age of 25.

I would have liked to have children. I worked very hard for a career. I would have liked a pension. I am to have none of these things, thanks to my caring for my parents. My siblings, who effectively announced that they wanted nothing to do with taking care of them, told any number of lies to make my life in Glasgow impossible, on the assumption that I would have no option other than to play family whipping boy forever.

Things are somewhat different now. I have ensured that I need never suffer the sight of them again, and they are still able to visit their mother in her own self-contained room in the lower house. I have worked on the Ina Disguise project for two or three years, and whilst I eventually had to give up working to take care of mother, I did not claim the benefits I was entitled to for several years after I really ought to have stopped to take care of everything. When my mother had the stroke, I was working three jobs, one full time, and two part time, whilst taking care of my parents and their property. All the time my siblings did nothing, and continued to invent more lunatic stories about me.

I have no idea how I will respond when she dies. My day consists of a list of things to do for her, timings for doing them, which vary, interspersed with creative work, which she enjoys watching, and thinking about future writing. (the hard drive is definitely finished, by the way, which means I will have to restart Best Adventure Ever and Lucifer Ogilvie again) I have no hope of making money out of either, currently, and so I worry, as I have for several years, that I am to be left homeless with no pension.

You would think somebody in this situation would consider this, but they do not. I am stupid for taking care of her, ‘nobody asked you to do it’ is the family motto, and my mother seemed to imagine for several years that Prince Charming would appear at the front door to make the problem simply vanish. It never entered her head for a minute that my being stuck in this house for most of my adult life was a problem, or that I should be considered in any way.

Of course, since it is inevitably a career politician that makes decisions on how carers are to be dealt with, it must make perfect sense to have people imprisoned in their own homes, earning £60 per week for a 24 hour a day commitment, in my case unable to get the free help I am entitled to as a carer because it would put my mother’s life and property at risk from the local council. Hence, through other people’s stupidity, my hard work in the course of my life has been utterly wasted for other people, and there is no chance of financial recovery.

This is very dispiriting, and yet I keep trying. There is no way of discussing it with anybody, because I do not know anybody who genuinely cares what happens to me.

I have wondered whether I should perhaps give up Ina Disguise and do a sensible but dull course leading to a sensible job for the pre-elderly, such as funeral advice, or financial back office work. I could do such courses from home, instead of what I am doing. I cannot help but think this is a good idea, and does anybody really care whether this project keeps going?

Then I think that I already had to give up two post-graduate courses for my parents, that this fits around the constant roller coaster of stress, and that not many people would tolerate this life for very long, never mind try to achieve anything.

At least my sisters were unable to inflict themselves on any children I would have had. That is a blessing.

motivation

Some people are best left behind

August 29, 2016 66 Comments

Some people are best left behind

Harry, from Best Scandal Ever, got in touch today, and immediately demanded a phone call.
Since the last time I spoke to him was in the middle of the family crisis, when my siblings tried to rob my mother, and he declined to either be supportive or help, I was wary. I was right.
It always alarms me when I discover that people that I have spent years of my life with, have not listened to or correctly interpreted anything that I have said. To be fair, I often give up speaking, especially when the hearer is racist, stupid, inadequate, or just plain nasty.(Harry only fits into two of these, I am speaking generally.)
As a very shy person – I have only really stuck my face out of my shell to experiment with cross-marketing for Wolfe’s benefit – I did not start out in life as a particularly outgoing person. Not that I am particularly reticent when I want something badly enough, or when I am in a managerial role, but I am not one of the world’s great socially dominant characters.
For several years I spent time with a number of male friends who I regarded as social equals, and treated them as such. They apparently did not agree, and spent their time with me looking for problems. Harry announced in the course of our conversation that I was a cold hearted economist, and that he was immensely surprised that I have a social conscience. I have at no point demonstrated otherwise.
It alarms me that for some people, the deconstruction of a concept is meaningless. The great comfort of economics is that you look on people as performance units rather than thinking, feeling beings that you have to care about. This has no implications for applied economics, which is what one’s government is supposed to practice. It simply means that there is the mathematically correct option, and then there is the applicable option.
I hid my various talents on the basis of the response from Aldous and his brother Harry, who assumed that as what I did was done by someone they knew, it must be substandard or insane. Little did I know that they were making a personal statement.
At one point in his attempt to con me into getting in touch with him, Harry assured me that I was not that bad. I do not require his validation. I should never have waited for anyone’s validation. You can imagine what it is like when your family and friends have an attitude like this, especially when you have already declined to connect with the wider community.
Beware of your shyness, as you are shutting out people who might actually make some effort to understand you with an open mind, rather than allowing their own hang-ups to make you miserable. There are always people who will seek to make you unhappy, deliberately, or just to ensure that they have some company in misery. Haters gonna hate, you need to quickly learn when to put rubbish firmly in its place.
Again I have cause to thank Wolfe, for being imperfect, for teaching me how to revel in my own imperfections, and for freeing me from a state of mind where I was unable to flourish, and where nothing would have ever seen the light of day. Thanks to him, I love me, never mind him.

health, motivation

Aging, the news and how to read it

August 26, 2016 No Comments

Wolfe and I have just turned 46. I am 12 days younger than Wolfe, and I have to say, I do not know what he was doing in those 12 days, but it must have been really wild.

Seriously, if you wish to avoid looking like an unironed sheet at this age, stay out of the sun. The sun may be fun, but my eyes are living proof that the sun does damage your skin quite significantly. Otherwise, I am suffering from neglect, caused by being busy doing other things and not having a relationship with anyone since I ‘met’ Wolfe, since it would have been a rather pointless waste of everybody’s time.

At our age, Wolfe and I ought to be practising calorie restriction to prolong our lives. I say practising, because the benefit is really derived after the age of 50. I reckon that at this point we should be shooting for about 1500 or so as a maximum per day, reducing to 500 or so by the time we are 60. If we happen to go over that now and again, it is less damaging this way.

So, you can see that you should spend your late thirties to mid forties researching how to get maximum nutrition from minimum calories and deciding what is bearable.

Since my foodie friend has returned home, I have eradicated arthritis in my left hand, rather important considering I sew with my left and do everything else with my right; stiffness in both legs, what I can only describe as muscular congestion across my collarbone and a feeling as if I am about to suffer a fairly serious stroke in terms of fuzziness. I am now no longer deaf in my left ear, all because I have returned to my preferred option of fish salads and supermix, a concoction I made from a combination of my herbal knowledge and a few recommendations from Wolfe. I am achieving more, doing things better, and generally not quite so inclined to hurtle towards death. If you do not wish to eat fish, however, fermented foods fill in the gaps left by your raw diet, and then it is up to you to investigate any options for fine tuning (see your preferred alternative nutrition advisor)

What you should not do, is listen to your GP, who is likely to know very little about nutrition and certainly won’t like it when you present your superior blood counts. (in my case raw at 41, my blood pressure, cell counts, and other indicators of blood quality indicated that I was about 16) The guidelines offered by the Board of Nutrition in the UK, and FDA in the USA are very supportive of the food industry. This is a balance of industry and the little they actually know about nutrition. There are several ‘truths’ which are not actually anything to do with how you function, or what your nutritional needs are after decades of self abuse in the form of eating ‘normally.’

Obviously, like most things, this does not affect everybody. Some people are able to burn off excess calories and their bowel is speedy enough to ensure that they are not carrying 40lb of caked faeces around with them. Some people are not, and as you can imagine from any incidences of nappy rashes you have seen, carrying poop around is not a good plan if you wish to stay well.

Speaking of poop, Andrew Neil is this morning trying to pick a fight with me about the oil figures. I have responded that any country with oil reserves it when the price is low, and several others have pointed out that extracting oil at a cost of $50 per barrel is not cost effective when the price is $55, but no, Andrew, the overpaid journalist must crush anybody that tries to speak to him, rendering my response rather pointless. Money does not buy manners, brains or flexible thinking in someone toeing the party line at the BBC to pay for his next car/holiday/house.

The point about independence is getting the government that you actually vote for to do the things that actually benefit the population. I am guessing that Andrew Neil has never had to stack shelves for a living, and I doubt that he has ever had to interview a weeping, severely depressed, skilled carpet worker in Kilmarnock, who, if Westminster gave a damn about Scotland, could have led a perfectly normal happy life. He does not spend much time in Scotland, so he is unlikely to look at our architecture and wonder why we cannot afford to build quality housing anymore. He is unlikely to be affected if the population of Easterhouse, Paisley, Mallaig or Lanarkshire suffer from lack of inward investment because the government does not care to encourage any.

So we are unlikely to hear anything but contempt from a man who has led a very fortunate life, and has nothing better to do than attempt to challenge a person who has actual responsibilities in the form of protecting my mother from daylight robbery, whether by her own children or the Tory owned care home down the road. He just does not understand how everybody else functions, because his life is just peachy. Andrew Neil is not the only journalist guilty of toeing a party line, they all have to serve a master.

So, to bring us finally to the point – we can see the connection between my two topics for today – you cannot understand what you cannot see, and why should you if your life is OK? If your health is fine, you won’t understand why other people have to take great care of theirs, and it will not matter if you give people bad advice, as long as plenty of people are employed by the food industry, the NHS, agriculture, pharmaceuticals. If your life is easy, you will not understand why people would want to vote for an alternative, risky but more promising future. People are quite dangerously stupid, even the ones that try to tell you that they know best. Therefore, your best option is to shut the door on them, and find out for yourself.

motivation, politics

@Gazthejourno and misogyny

August 20, 2016 3 Comments

Today I have worked hard on the mandala, and am feeling rather easily amused. So I see that @Gazthejourno believes Glasgow, a city famed for its incredible Victorian and post Victorian architecture, a fact we like to keep secret from the rest of the UK, is a sewer and that the SNP are Nazis. He is a lightweight tabloid journalist that believes he can bring about a defensive erection in the jock-hating English by mentioning haggis.

So, I have decided to add a misleading headline of my own to this charming man’s mention in my ongoing blog. Today’s topic is about @Gazthejourno and mysogyny. Now Gaz can enjoy the effects of people who cannot be bothered reading the post making assumptions about him, just as they do about the SNP.

For the uninitiated, the SNP are about as far from being Nazi as you can get. So far, in fact, that the Union Jack is now associated with racism, insular thinking and not getting the government that you actually vote for. Instead we are ‘ruled’ by a series of appallingly disinterested politicians, toeing in many cases, a line that they barely understand. “Oh but we have to starve the poor, it is right here in the party history. The Conservatives are the party of conserving the status quo.” Or even more tragically “Austerity is right, it must be, the Tories have always done it, so Labour should now do it too.”

Wanting our country back is nothing to do with hating English people. Whilst feelings run high amongst a population sick of being lied to and sidelined, we have a tradition of not only welcoming, but marrying and bonking ‘foreigners’ who come to our shores. Gaz has failed to do his homework. To be fair, he probably isn’t asked to do much, at whichever rag he scribbles for.

Now for misogyny. I have had lengthy relationships with many misogynists. They are under-rated, in some respects, as they are usually tragically inadequate and actually hang around for years, in between their attempts to have a relationship with a trophy bitch. As trophy bitches do not particularly like being interrupted, and they certainly don’t like anyone questioning their right to other people’s money, these relationships inevitably do not last long. Any question of them lashing out in anger is laughed off and the trophy bitch simply goes hunting for a better prospect. I used to play backgammon with a money pig that had married one of these goddesses, and despite his constant whining, he was perfectly happy.

I have always assumed that these things come down to ‘daddy issues.’ A man who has always failed to please daddy, assumes a more exaggerated male posture than he is really capable of, choosing to spend his time on male pursuits in an effort to placate the male gender for his failure to impress. The trophy bitch he marries, was very spoilt by daddy, who was away working to pay for her lipstick. Therefore her spending his money on ribbons and fripperies whilst he watches football or cricket suits both of them perfectly.

If he calls her crazy, this is fine because she is a woman, and incapable of doing anything sensible anyway. This gives you a lot of leeway to do really silly things, and not be blamed for them because you are a woman. If he cheats on her, it is because he is a big man and cannot help himself. As long as a financial arrangement is reached, the relationship then survives.

Likewise, he does not have to grow out of it, and neither does she. I have lost count of the number of elderly couples like this that I have come across in the course of my life. It is a trade-off, like many other trade-offs in life. Their divorce rate may be marginally higher, particularly in the USA, where trading her in for a younger model is a sign of wealth, but otherwise nobody has to change anything about themselves, and all remains fine.

As I have said, I have had twenty year or longer relationships with dudes just like this, so I know one when I see one, and it does not phase me one bit. Weak men are fun, it is just different fun, and at the end of the day, as long as you have a few of them, does it really matter if they stray off to try another trophy bitch? They always come back, sooner or later, for some comforting ass kicking.

motivation, politics

Climbing Trump Tower

August 10, 2016 No Comments

I happened to tune in just before Steve, from Virginia, an ‘independent researcher with an important message for Donald Trump,’ was yanked to safety by an impatient and very strong policeman. He looked about nineteen, and very confident that he would not get a hearing any other way.

Since Ina Disguise exists for exactly the same reason, I am thankful that I do not live in America, and that I did not know that wealth imparts such power in the USA. In the UK, if you have something to say, then a PA checks it and passes it on if it seems useful. In America, you are supposed to accept that your bank account dictates your worth, and nothing that you have to say matters unless it is wrapped in dollar bills or accompanied by a spectacle of some kind.

The reactions online were interesting. Would he have been shot down if he was black? Was he crazy? Would they let him complete the climb? His video, which clearly stated that he did not think that he would get a hearing otherwise, indicates that he is a shy geeky guy that likes climbing, and feels that he has something important to say to Donald Trump. Since it is likely that he is considerably more intelligent than Donald Trump, I doubt that Donald Trump will understand what he has to say, which is a shame.

The most shocking part, was the men who complained that he looked like a girl, and that they would like to see footage of the beating he would get from the police once he was in the building. He apparently left the building in a stretcher, so either he was extremely tired, or he cannot walk at present.

After seeing scenes of evident brutality in Turkey recently, this is of some concern. Are we so overcrowded, as a planet, that seeing people get beaten is simply entertainment, and is it so impossible that a young man has something relevant to contribute to an arrogant and extremely spoilt man’s publicity campaign in the form of running for President?

Why on earth would a country be so deluded as to assume that a man who has struggled for nothing in his life, who evidently despises women and people of other races in equal measure, be competent for a role which has become pivotal to the rest of the world? With power comes responsibility. Should the rest of the world be forced to allow an ill-educated, vicious, and evidently thoughtless nation pick the person in effective control of the balance of global power?

In the course of watching this, I discovered facebook live, and have been watching people all over the world discussing health, talking about themselves, partying, having sex and generally sharing even more information about themselves. Most of it is not very interesting, progressive, or useful. Just lonely people trying, like my cat, to reassure themselves that they exist at all.

Poor Steve from Virginia is now being sent for psychiatric evaluation as a result of his stunt. Having been in much the same situation of not being listened to, and feeling forced into the public eye in order to exist at all, apparently, I completely understand why he felt he needed to pull a stunt. Presumably climbing is his thing. I hope that he gets to submit whatever he has to say, at least.

It has been suggested that Trump is actually paying him to do this, since he got into a spot of bother with his second amendment suggestion for Clinton yesterday. If this is the American idea of diplomacy, then we have a lot to fear in the near future. Neither candidate is good for the rest of the planet.

If it was up to me, and it is not, I would get as far away from the special relationship with America as possible. I noted in a recent poll that I am not the only person who feels this way. Putin has never been so popular in Europe.

As it is unlikely that America will make any significant changes, we can look forward to more input from China and Russia within our lifetimes, and a war will probably be invoked to take care of our current over-population problem.

Such is the illusion of choice. You can see clearly what is going to happen, and since nobody listens, there is little you can do about it. Might as well climb Trump Tower, create an alias, or go off on some other tangent. Brutality, cheap manners and lack of taste wins, because America decides who gets the guns. This is not the world I choose to live in. With role models like this, forget America as a worthwhile ally and think again.

Note for regular readers – I had yet another massive laptop disaster, and Best Adventure Ever has been lost for the fifth or sixth time. Lucifer Ogilvie is also gone, but it was a minor loss in comparison. This is another new computer, and I will be rebuilding the old one, since evidently it is my lot in life to spend several months building the equipment I need as I am not particularly wealthy. There will be a short delay as a result. Anyone would think that somebody does not want me to complete the Wolfe projects. Tough tittie, I will be doing it anyway, since I am too shy to go climbing any towers.

economics, motivation

Fakery and Modern Marketing

August 4, 2016 No Comments

I see so much fakery online, particularly since I started on the Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing Project. People talk about authenticity, but when authenticity includes Rihanna explaining why she did not bother to design her own shoe collection, you realise that people basically jump on linguistic bandwagons without considering what the words they use actually mean, never mind whether it means anything to anyone. I seriously offended a few Rihanna fans, when I pointed this out at the time.

Last week, I happened upon a ‘social media guru’ advising his apparently adoring fans on how to achieve – wait for it – 125 hits on your blog using twitter. He wrote an entire post on it, with largely useless and irrelevant advice, so that you too could achieve a small fraction of what I achieve with every single post, and I do that without an subscriber list or tremendous amount of effort. I am sorry to say that this guy has evidently missed the entire point of Twitter.

Likewise, people like David Wolfe put a tremendous amount of time and money into achieving massive follower lists, by hook or by crook, as investors and media alike like to be validated by looking at largely fake numbers on Twitter and Facebook. I think I have about 50 likes on the Ina Disguise page on Facebook, and I have 25,000 regular readers, and another 16,000 or so who find me in the bookshops rather than on the website.

You could say that I am stupid for not taking all the conventional advice on offer, for not bothering with vanity advertising on facebook or google, for not bothering with heavy marketing budgets or promotion, but the reality is that fake followers are worthless, that your regular readers like to dip in and out of your topics, depending on what they are, and that they do not want to commit to hanging on your every word without you providing something unique and special.

What is important is getting your work into the right hands, very easy for somebody well connected such as Nigella Lawson, who did not even have to know anything about cooking, but extremely difficult for everybody else. Matt Haig was lucky enough to be circulated amongst the ‘right people’ for his book on depression, and now he gets media coverage before he even writes the book. As he is on my friends list on facebook, I have a peep now and again, and he is an extremely unassuming guy. One of the writers on the Hunger Games also friended me for a while, and he was also very dull.

Really what I am trying to say is – you will not get your follower number on your gravestone, and it is entirely meaningless in terms of being picked up by someone who matters. It just isn’t how social media works. Spending your time and money inflating your numbers, is time and money you would be far better to invest on producing better work and thinking of ways of getting it to the right people.

The only people impressed by huge numbers, are people who seek to leech from you as much as provide you with opportunities. It is a marketing con, designed to promote flotsam over serious content, and unless you plan to produce endless flotsam at a rapid rate, it is not much use to you.

For Wolfe, I can understand it. He is interested in ignorance. Ignorance pays the bills. Ignorance lasts for a year or so, and ignorance makes money when people want a fast solution rather than acquiring any knowledge. Wolfe is in the ignorance business. He has taught me an awful lot about the difference between depth and distribution, and he is right about many things. He is right, and he is wealthy, at the expense of being respected or particularly liked long term.

Especially for writers, there is a wealth of useless vanity advertising that you could indulge yourself with, but it will not get you into the hands that help. Spending your time oiling up a crew of equally vacuous authors and hangers-on on facebook may sell a few books, but it does not demonstrate love of your craft or a development of your skill. It is up to you which you prefer, but as with most things, success does not correlate with talent or skill.

On the first day of my author’s page on facebook, I was attacked by a gaggle of genre writers who refused to believe that anybody could write in several genres for the same series, which was essential for the Best Ever and Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing series to attract people to David Wolfe. This was considered rookie madness. It has, as any raw foodist will tell you, been a very successful strategy rather than churning out yet more tiresome raw recipe books that only raw foodies will read in terms of numbers.

At the same time, another writer complained that nobody should put out free work. A year later she complained that she could only dream of the numbers I had reached, with minimal effort. She is still churning out the same Agatha Christie rip-offs and her sales number in the hundreds.

My journalist friend asked with considerable disinterest how I was doing, as she is in this ‘no free work’ school of thought. My view is – get over yourself – your first two books will be worthless, your third might be OK, and why on earth should anyone want to pay for an unknown author, any more than they would pay to hear a pop song for the first time? You have to establish yourself. Yes, an email subscription might be a good idea, but it is probably better for you, and better for your readers, if you spend your first few years establishing your name, learning your craft by putting out some free work and seeing what works for you. There is a host of options for doing this, some are covered in previous posts (see Shameless self-promotion)

Look a bit more closely at the big names you admire. Are they really any good? Rather than matching up to the numbers, look at actually being better than they are, regardless of the financial benefits. You will be a lot happier with lower financial, and higher personal expectations.

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.

« Previous 1 … 28 29 30 31 32 … 34 Next »