A RESTRAINED WINGE

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.

- The Free Thinker.