my flaws

I over-think everything, lack confidence, and am reckless in my personal life. I tend to procrastinate and be a perfectionist.

I am too honest*, and too just and fair as I will weigh every side down to the last gram and then dissect the baby.

* I once answered that at a job interview when asked my flaws and he sourly replied, "Honesty is a plus."

I said, "I can be TOO honest, and in the wrong situations."

He said, "Must be another problem, honesty is never a flaw."

The mood never recovered.

Walking to my car across asphalt I realized, "I should have lied."

Dylan Ray Three Irons

Stories abound across the Internet about Dylan Ray Three Irons.

http://www.google.com/webhp?tab=mw#q=Dylan+Ray+Three+Irons&safe=off

Three Irons was among four inmates who escaped from an Oklahoma county jail while awaiting transfer to a state prison. Many have remarked on the name, Dylan Ray Three Irons, including a sports website -- in their Golf section! Man Named Dylan Ray Three Irons Escapes Oklahoma Jail, Is Recaptured

I don't want to play anymore

The world exists. A human is born. Many humans already exist, and all on the planet is already possesed. Facing death and starvation, the human creates more for the humans that already own everything and is given a morsel of food so as to survive another day and return the next day to create more profit for the humans that already own everything.

The humans are playing Monopoly. All the property is owned. As many times as a new human goes around the board and collects $200 there is no escaping the fact that the owners of all the property get the new player's $200 in short order. If all profits go to the owners, and all property is already owned, then those who own nothing shouldn't play.

This is where we are at, and that is how many feel; "I don't want to play anymore." Creating new squares where profits, rents, will be divided between the owners and the workers, who do ALL the work, is the bare minimum of fairness. Otherwise it is merely slow murder.

Been gone too long … so much to do

The psychic thrashing I took at actually took quite a toll on me and made me re-evalute my overall course of action. I am interested in just about everything and have a fair amount of talents and end up jumping from one thing to another in cycles over days and weeks and even years. I probably have ADHD or whatever, but I'm old and out of school now, so fuck it.

My creative mood curled up and retreated and I seriously considered that I may never be a successful "professional author." Sure, I worked for years as a reporter, and years as an editor, but I never leveraged that into selling books. And now time grows slim and the bucket list grows fat and I must believe that there are things that will remain undone.

Here is my sanctum. Here, on this page, alone in a room I can quietly write. One day there may be visitors and I may eventually have to speak to somebody, but that is far away.

TO DO for here - link list categories.

1. Equitable Principles - worker democracy, et al.

2. Writing, blogging, fiction, nonfiction, art

3. Biz, legal and financial

4. Film and video

4a. RC Aviation

5. Errata

http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2013/08/the-ultimate-cheat-sheet-to-starting-and-running-your-own-business/

http://business.simplicable.com/business/new/ambiguity-effect

http://www.theworkingworld.org/us/what-we-do/workplace-democracy/

… will refine tomorrow

"Casual Critique" - only bleeding a little

I had written a few chapters of a book, and abandoned that book. Years later I tried to write another book, that one in first person and very introspective, and I had used the first chapter of the first book within the first chapter of the second book. That chapter, now years old, was my first submission to a local writers group called Casual Critique.

It was widely despised. One said she stopped reading after a few pages, while another said the chapter within the chapter might be salvageable. Ten years ago it seemed quite deep to me, while now I would agree with the group that the first-person parts are self-indulgent and tedious. The suggestion that I try to salvage the first book is interesting, because I do think there was a better story in my original book than the introspective and self-deprecating crap.

Now I must think about whether I will ever be a fiction writer at all. Given my current concerns perhaps I should write non-fiction. Or perhaps write fiction as a release from the real-world stress. Either way, I'm probably shelving the introspective angle. As one group member put it, "Leave that for your journal, not a novel."

The whole thing reminds me how exhausting spending an hour listening to people critiquing your work can be. And I feel that I should write a lengthy post about all the things I learned, and the way forward, but I'm exhausted.

I'm glad they trashed it though. That was way too unworkable and I can now just let it quietly die.

Many projects, many thoughts

I have so many projects in my mind that my thoughts often get sidetracked from what I was originally doing by something else I need to be doing. Heck, I myself get confused. Since this is a low traffic site, at the moment, I thought I would use this blog as a tool, I am going to view this blog as an opportunity to help get my thoughts organized.

So, Mike, What are your projects, goals, and the steps needed to accomplish those goals.

Well, Mike, I'm glad you ask, because I was thinking along those same lines …
Overall, my projects are all inter-related so they are tough to separate, and that is a recurring theme, that we humans are complex creatures and our emotional side affects our mental and emotional aspects, as well as our outward social and financial selves. But let's just start with the big goal, Hometown Hero.

Hometown Hero

End goal: Franchise of employee owned restaurants.

Planning:
   People & suppliers
   Financing
   Location
   Customers and clients
   Corporate structure and legal
   Network of supporters
   Advertising (and TV & documentary film)

Then implementation, and done...

Note to self: I need to get across the interconnectedness of political power and economic power. Money controls the message and the people listen to the message. If a person makes 50,000 working for big corporation, then it can be assumed that person also created 50,000 for big corporation. Say ten percent goes to lobbying for corporation to screw person over …

If you buy from McDonalds, they will spend some of the money they got from you to lobby for lower wages.
If you work for McDonalds, they will spend some of the money you made them to lobby for lower wages.

So, eating, or working, for any large corporation, is an economic, and political, action. And you are expressing that you feel that large corporations should exploit workers, and keep ALL of the profits (rather than it being equitably divided between labor and capital) and further, you are wholeheartedly acquiescing to the fact that those profits will be promptly shipped out of your community, and off to big corporation headquarters, and then to Wall Street, and on to the one-percenters who own big corporation.

OK, back to what I was originally doing ...

Getting organized

Now that I'm back into blogging, I've been visiting more blogs and investigating my old blogs. Apparently I've got a couple of blogs here, and a couple of blogs there, and I kept starting blogs that would reflect a specific aspect of thought, or a specific issue.

So that's what I should, and am going to, create on the menu on the left; instead of a list of "local" blogs, I'm going to list my (active) blogs.

Keeping a blog going is more work than one might think. I was at a critique group last week and I brought up the topic of self-publishing a book, and one member said, "Sure, if you're willing to write a blog, and keep it going, and build a following, then you could go that route …"

From my fractured mind I thought of specialization of labor, and then the contemporary need to write and promote and market and design books, and videos, and websites and everything else under the sun, and that in a way we are returning to older ways where an individual needed to be able to make candles as well as being literate. It is not enough to have ideas, communication is also necessary, and contemporary communication requires vastly more than the capability to speak.

So, that was a long-winded way of saying that my commitment to writing this blog is actually a commitment to keep writing this blog. Plus, it is a commitment to integrating this blog with other aspects of my life. I actually started one blog called "Fractured Realities," though I think that one no longer exists at all.

So, committing to writing this blog is more than even just committing to writing this blog. Me committing to writing this blog is me committing to be a blogger. That means committing to keep writing, and committing to getting a little more organized, and committing to integrate and market my blogs, and to, so to say, build a platform, and so, so much more.

It reminds me of something else I wrote. I was writing about writing, about writing a self-aware story, so to say. And it seemed as though I could write a short paragraph but could then write paragraphs explaining each sentence of the first paragraph. Every sentence written contains volumes of information. A simple sentence like "I'm going to write a blog" actually means a million things.