places to go, people to read…

By alice | September 14, 2007

I’ve been reading a lot more internets than ever before, due to my belated discovery of the brilliance of RSS. It’s not helping my blogging frequency any, but then again this place is not for making money online with doshdosh, although I can’t explain that away easily after reading about the teenager who earns up to $70k a month from her website… am I the only one who feels inadequate reading stuff like that?

Not that other people’s successes ought to bring one down. Inadequacy is a very bad habit. Time to invent a new rule for my personalised Happiness Project : how about “Adequacy is not comparative”. Does that sound cheery to you?

I like the idea of personal happiness projects. The self-help trend is never going to go away, and that’s because it is a good idea for us to take responsibility for our lives, careers, and mental health.

Another rule, learn what the hell is going on with Facebook. Has anyone written a guidebook yet? For instance, should I ask everyone I have ever met and can remember the name of to be my friend, including the strange ones, for fun? Or just real friends for reasons of… I dunno, paranoia (?), or should I just ask people I like, and is it acceptable to ask people to be your friends if you have never met them, because you admire what they do and want to be in their supporters fanclub? I don’t even know where to ask. No wonder people want to dismiss this sort of thing. It’s so much work…

Speaking of the ongoing cultural generation gap, Ryan Healey’s Reject Mediocrity, Embrace Productivity hit a nerve with me: We’re called entitled and lazy because we’re ambitious and strive to be productive. If that’s the worst dirt they have on us, then so be it. I hate it when the old are too arrogant to learn from the young so they just bash them instead- ignorantly, while making fools of themselves. Preferring to do useful things than to sit in a box putting up with pointless nonsense doesn’t make you lazy!

If you are cubed in, here are some tips on writing your resume/ CV. Opening objectives are out, so is talking about that awkward murder conviction. I like to stay on top of things!

Which is why I started attempting to read Scoble. If you absorbed everything he ever wrote plus his linkablog blog, you would know quite a lot of what there is to know about the internet that might be worth knowing. Why would you want to do that? Because it’s changing our world. To learn. That’s also why I blog for no apparent/ financial reason: I like learning, and it’s easier to learn if you have a place for talking about stuff.

2 Comments »

2 Responses to “places to go, people to read…”

Leo Says:
September 15th, 2007 at 7:36 am

“am I the only one who feels inadequate reading stuff like that”

No

“Adequacy is not comparative”

How not?

“The self-help trend is never going to go away”

They are now even getting school children into it. It’s a mislead trend.

Theocritus Says:
September 17th, 2007 at 12:37 am

“Adequacy is not comparative.” I’ll buy that. But the important thing is that one sit well in one’s own skin. I see people who thrust themselves into others’ consciousness as much as possible, such things as that tart Paris Hilton, and I realize that they define themselves by who’s looking at them. They do not therefore exist alone in a room. The military call the ability to be alone, “force of presence” and martial artists have other terms, but it’s the same thing.

I’ve had much consideration over religion and the idea of sin and forgiveness–a lot of religious guilt as a child was hard to get over. Yes, if we are not sociopaths, there needs to be forgiveness but who does it? Most people find it agreeable to thrust it onto a supreme being, but cannot that easily be made into self-exculpation?

In my case I found it necessary to deal with my flaws myself, including the flaw of my feelings that I’ve not done what I should. No, I didn’t live up to my potential in ways that people, and I went along with them, thought I should and would, but after some difficult analysis, I’ve found that I do sit easy in my skin if I discharge my obligations to others, and weigh carefully the costs of the things I’d like to have.

Would I, for example, take the time to write books? People often tell me that I should but I understand the time, and the ego, involved. I wouldn’t expect money–fortunately that’s not a consideration. Would I take the time and effort for an expensive and difficult regimen to deny the clock to enter again the hurly-burly of the carnal world? Been there, done that, but years ago. It wasn’t easy then and would be much much worse now, and absurd too. What is, at bottom, worth the time?

And anything that you do worth while takes time, and it’s the only thing that you cannot buy.

Since you aren’t blogging for money you are not forced to pitch it commercially and you can do what you want. The girl who makes $70/month is conscious that everything that she does must be pitched toward traffic. Seems you both figured out what’s important to you.

And here’s another thing. If you want to chuck it, you won’t have to wonder how to find the money for the mortgage. That’s freedom.