Category: Old age of my youth – 2015

MONDAY, 16 MARCH 2015

In your bleaker moments you often think things that are a bit rough. Then, when you feel better, you realise how many of those things are actually true.

In my case: In the first place, I will never be mistaken for a Viking warrior. Can I protect myself or my loved ones in a moment of danger? I don’t know. Secondly, I am almost 44 years old, and although I have no debt, I also don’t make much money with my few part-time jobs. Third place, I don’t have children, and will probably never have children. Four: I recently responded “Yes” 23 times to a list of 27 questions to determine if I qualify as a Highly Sensitive Person – which among other things means I am more prone to physical pain, and can even be affected emotionally by a loud noise. (None of the questions were about fear of heights, but I could have added that as well.) Point five: My parents and my sisters think I am a lost cause who was fortunate to meet a good woman. Six: I struggle for years to make money with a variety of projects … and the struggle continues still.

What to do? What are my options?

One is suicide. Get it over and done with. Make room for someone else, perhaps someone better.

Another possibility is to work really hard and to turn one view of you after another on its head and force people to eat their words and their opinions. Sounds nice. Could work.

Yet another possibility is to pretend not all the bad things about you are true, that you’re not that much of a loser. While deliberately ignoring some things, you continue your efforts to improve those things that are in your power to improve.

Difficult to pretend, you might say. Not easy to ignore what many people think or say about you, someone might add.

Think about it this way: one alternative is to step in front of a train.

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SATURDAY, 14 MARCH 2015

12:15

Like an insecure child who collects toys, I collect projects. And the “child” refuses to share his toys with other children, or to give some of it away, or to allow his mother to sell some of it at a church bazaar.

“I am going to play with it!” he’ll cry out, and fold his little arms tightly over his toys.

“When?” his mother would ask, exasperated.

“Tonight,” he would mutter. “Or tomorrow …”

“You know you’re never going to play with it, Johnny,” his mother will say. “You have too many toys!”

“But I was thinking …” Johnny would start, and then he’ll try to convince himself more than his mother that he still has great plans to play with all of his toys simultaneously one day.

12:24

My projects are like a bloated bureaucracy that threatens to undermine the state it is supposed to serve.

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FRIDAY, 13 MARCH 2015

Most enterprises are doomed to fail.

Most investments never pay a dividend.

Most books are read by very few people.

Most websites get very little traffic.

Most new music is heard by relatively few people.

Optimism and faith sometimes propel you forward, and sometimes it leads to your downfall.

It should also be mentioned that if you launched a business venture and it becomes successful, the likelihood increases that your next venture will also be successful.

If you have made an investment and it turns a profit, chances are that you will repeat this success with your next investment.

If a book you have written is read by at least a few hundred people, the probability is strong that your next book will also be read by at least a few hundred people.

If you develop a website that regularly gets visitors, chances are your next website will also get decent traffic.

If you release some of your own songs and a few thousand people listen to it, chances are that these people will also listen to the next song you release, and maybe they will even tell other people about your music.

Success, after all, often generates more success, and if you have little of anything, you will probably have even less in the future.

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WEDNESDAY, 11 MARCH 2015

Last night I thought how it usually doesn’t take much to reignite my interest in the concept of identity. One of the things that makes it so interesting is that many people believe their identity is absolute – that who and what they are have been identified, so to speak, and that is simply how it is.

One example is a 22-year-old woman who works at an electronics store. She might think of herself in a certain way, but change her surroundings, the people around her, the economic needs of the community, and within a few years she may be mother to a few children and married to a poor farmer who tries to eke a living out of a patch of dry land.

Of course it is your own business to contemplate what other roles or identities slumber within you that may not currently have an opportunity to come out. You may currently be a single man or woman in your thirties, but inside you lurks a very competent mother or father. You may currently be struggling in your career, but within ten years you’ll be giving talks about career choices and how to improve your chances of success. Or, you may currently be struggling with health problems or even addiction, but hiding inside you is a health consultant and a fitness instructor.

Identity is a fluid concept – don’t lock away your best identity before it has had a chance to develop.

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THURSDAY, 5 MARCH 2015

If you have any hope or ambition to make money on the financial markets, it is of the utmost importance to start the learning process when you do not need to make money from it.

Start reading books on how to interpret the markets and how to trade and start practising at least two or three years before you want to make a penny from it. This should eliminate desperation and impatience. It will give you time to make mistakes and learn from them. It will teach you how to be disciplined and how to control your emotions. You will have time to get to know yourself as an operator on the markets. You will learn where your strengths and your weaknesses are. And you will learn how, when and in which markets to get involved.

The same advice applies to any way with which you may hope to make money independent of boss and corporation. Learn how to do something long before you need to make money from it.

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