EOFY

I can't figure out how to read the pin for the new pre-paid credit 
card that I bought. It's a funny little puzzle - I was told to... 
Nope wait, I figured it out. Finally, I've been working on that for 
almost a month. Ho hum...

Well I don't know how this relates to other countries, but here in 
Aus we've entered into bold new financial year. Soon I'll be again 
be stumbling my way through filling out a tax return, while stuck 
in that particular moody mix of confusion, frustration, and 
depression. Fact is that my bookkeeping is terrible - because I 
never find the time to do it except at tax time. Always I'm chasing 
some long overdue project, desperate to get it done and making 
money. Then I finish it, just how I want it, and it makes 
absolutely nothing, because nobody's interested, besides me, or 
maybe including me if I was making it specifically to target some 
other people who I thought I understood, but didn't. So after I've 
run my scripts, and built my spreadsheets, and matched up some 
figures on a notepad, I can see all the money that I spent on 
developing these things that found somewhere between zero and one 
customers. At the same time though, my few minor successes mean 
that I somehow keep making more year-on-year, at the same time as 
spending _most_ of my time developing new ideas that only cost me 
money. That's confusing - I'd have made more money if I spent most 
of my days on the couch watching TV instead of really trying to 
increase profits?

There's a certain anger that builds in me at this time of year. A 
sort of anger against society that is undoubtably common in the 
population, though deeply taboo due to the violence that it can 
lead to. If I couldn't see the flaws in other proposed models of 
society I can imagine directing it to some political organisation. 
Finding a new life "fighting" for a different world in which to 
live.

Of course I know it's me who'se to blame for my own failure to 
succeed within society. Upon realising this the anger turns to a 
new determination to improve, to find a new path, work harder at 
it, believe in it. Except that's what I've been doing all these 
years anyway. Gah...

Every year the same old thing, round and round, out here in my 
little house in the middle of grassy paddocks while the birds chirp 
and the kangaroos hop past blissfully unaware of the quandries 
seizing up the mind of that human sitting by the window grumbling 
at his computer monitor. Seeing this I flip it around, I remember 
that I've got food to eat, electricity to cook and entertain 
myself, fuel in the car to take me wherever I want to go, who gives 
a fuck how or why? Plus I disagree with all sorts of things that 
are popular in society, don't really care for interacting with 
other people beyond talking/typing monologues at them and indulging 
desires towards the female ones. Odds are that if I'm that out of 
touch, then things won't work out a lot of the time, and that's 
just how it is if I'm going to make money doing something that I 
enjoy.

But then do I enjoy it? Well actually I recently discovered the "Go 
Beyond Phlog" via its recent inclusion in Bongusta, and the post 
"The Things You Own End Up Owning You" digs pretty deep into my 
problems here:
gopher://go-beyond.org:70/0/post/the-things-you-own-end-up-owning-you.txt
He's complaining about needing to be engaged daily with running his 
online business, feeling "tied down" to it. The thing is: he's 
actually living my current utopian vision for success. Assuming he 
makes some sort of above-poverty-line income, which I certainly 
don't, his purely online operation is what I've aspired to with my 
more recent surges of determination for success. You see, he 
complains about needing to be online at least once every 24 hours. 
I need to be online once every 24 hours dealing with customers 
(especially the endless cases of things getting lost in the post), 
and at home with my stock once every 48 hours (72 hours spanning 
over the weekend if I pre-plan and take a little risk of 
complaints). With some effort I could take everything offline and 
put up notices saying when I'll be back, but I never have. Mainly 
because I don't make enough money, so I don't want to waste 
opportinities to make more, and I also don't consider that I 
deserve (or can afford) to go on a big trip (defined as anything 
requiring paid accomodation) until I've been more successful. The 
irony is, I'll only make more money by selling more things, which 
will take more of my time and make me worry more about the 
consequences of taking it all offline like that.

The ideal then, that I've put a lot of work into already, is 
getting into a more fully-digital business. I've got various ideas 
for this, one of which is very slowly coming together, but so 
slowly that I've been going off onto other things due to 
above-mentioned spurts of determination to achieve quicker success. 
Another is quite ambitious, aiming for a website that really 
targets the general public (as well as business) with a new online 
service that might fit in alongside Google, Wikipedia etc., and a 
business plan that I don't think is evil.

But this guy is living in my ideal world of a purely digital 
business, and HE is complaining about being trapped by it! I guess 
then my only hope is to achieve great success with that grand plan 
for a BIG website, so that I could employ other people to run it, 
or sell it (the choice he was pondering). But based on performance 
of my previous products, it probably won't appeal to other people. 
Yet it would take a lot more time to develop, and money to set up. 
So I go back to my easier ideas, but they don't work either, so I 
keep going round and round. Ho hum...

 - The Free Thinker