Yesterday I was quite keen to write one of a couple of phlog posts.
I'm starting to settle into a vague routine of thinking up topics
over the week and finding time to write them on weekends, though in
this case I seem to have forgotten one of them entirely since
yesterday. However after wasting time looking through some Usenet
nonsense that I hadn't bothered reading during the week, I was out
of time before heading to a burn-off with the local fire brigade.
The burn went well but it felt like I spent most of the time
standing thick in the smoke on the back of a truck. When I got
home, had a shower to change my skin colour back to white, cooked
tea, and sat down to eat it. But I was so tired I that only managed
to get half-way through and after an hour I gave up and went to bed
at around 8PM. Six hours later at a bit after 2AM I'm awake and
feeling ready to start the day (it's amazing what sleep can do for
you when you really need it), beginning with writing those phlog
posts. But! If I wake up at that point I'll be getting tired at 8PM
today, and before I know it I'll be committing to early nights for
the rest of the week. Going to bed while the sun still shines and
the birds are still chattering outside my window, waking up to the
deathly silence and darkness of night in the country. So for fear
of acidentally converting to a nocturnal lifestyle, I lay around
for four hours failing to go back to sleep, and, worse yet,
thinking endless self-analysing thoughts.
In small doses I think my stints of self-analysis are quite
helpful. In fact a lot of the philisophies that I think to babble
about here originated while sitting and thinking for a half hour to
an hour. But let them run too long and I end up just coming back
over and over to my own frustrations, and have to concede that all
of my ideals for my life are just irreconcileable. Most
particularly I'm clearly going to have to pursue larger-scale and
more complicated business models in combination with what I've been
doing so far, if I'm going to have some hope of making a better
income off it. This in turn means that success is hard to envision
in the long run without working closely with other people in one
way or other, which is a big thing that I want to avoid - indeed a
big reason for wanting to run my own business in the first place!
[Here, by the way, is where this is a restrained winge because with
the hope of remaining anoymous I've got to avoid mentioning any
details that would narrow down the possibilities of who I am any
further (and they're already narrowed down way too far, as I
explained in "What's in this for me?" logic says that I should
never have started this phlog).]
It also means that I'm going to have to put a lot more time and
money into setting things up, still with no more of a real
guarantee of success than I had with the things I tried to do
before. Which is to say that I can see the market, and other people
making money off it, but I'm probably going to miss something about
what people buying things within that market are really looking
for. That's obviously what's happened a lot so far, though I have
no way of knowing where I've gone wrong (proper market research is
well outside of my budget).
Of course most people spend a lot of money on things I don't want,
and a lot of things that I do want aren't available at all, or not
the way that I like them. Hence I buy few non-business items
besides consumables and second-hand collectables. Mostly just VHS
tapes and DVDs, almost always second-hand. There's a fundamental
disconnect here - I don't "get" other people and other people don't
"get" me. So making money off them is always going to be awkward,
and probably not very enjoyable.
Or you could say "stuff the lot of 'em" and try the fully self
sufficient route. Grow your own food, cobble together what you can
to make heat and hopefully cling on to a source of electricity. Of
course it's hard for me because I really wouldn't have time to do
this _and_ try to maintain a business which is taking most of my
energy already, so it really would be one or the other. I'd never
be able to pay council rates or registration on the car for more
than a few years without income, so that doesn't seem like it would
work out very well. Investing in shares might work to pay for those
costs if I have enough money going in, but that's a gamble that can
only be mitigated by understanding and keeping a close eye on the
markets that those companies you're investing in serve, which
brings me full-circle again.
So the depressing conclusion, made many times before but getting
more depressing every year, is just to keep on going as I am in
whichever way the money lies, shedding ideals for my future as I
try to get to it. Either to end up poor and unhappy, or rich and
unhappy but with the power to finally go away and live how I want
to. What a bloody aweful state of affairs! I haven't mentioned it
here before, but yes I do selfishly support the idea of a Universal
Basic Income (though I think it would be better administered by a
non-government organisation, maybe I'll elaborate on my idea for
that one day in the Ideas section)!
Having thought over all that through the early hours of the
morning, I no longer cared for my phog posts about philosophies and
obvservations of society. I was angry. What bloody use were they?
Setting out some impossible life for myself that I can only ramble
about on the internet while it all fails around me? Might as well
just vent what I really think, the bare truth carved into my life.
But also so I can sit here and tell the people, the soceity,
myself, that we're all a bunch of idiots and frankly why should I
give a fuck. Because my one philossphy that does save me is that I
hate everything and I love everything. I hate society for being
incompatible with my desires, but I might as well love it for being
some stupid crazy creation ready to zip along and take me on some
ridiculous ride, and I should think how cute I am rolling around in
bed at 4AM trying to think of ways to stand up against it to pursue
my own silly ideals. Fuck all the worry, I've got all I want: a house
(etc.) filled with all sorts of tools and facinations to pass the
time, a nice car (well, nice in the 90s) to drive off and see
what's going on outside, and bugger all people to get in the way of
me using them to my full advantage. Who cares how I keep hold of it
all? It'll just be some silly nonsense one way or other anyway.
