Category: Post Untitled, volume three

WEDNESDAY, 9 JULY 2008

It’s five to two in the morning. I feel like a cheap prostitute who’s been selling his body for his dreams all day long, but who still ends up with nothing.

Fuck it; then I’m a cheap prostitute. Tomorrow I lie down again. Tomorrow I dream again. Because … whatever. That’s how it is.

09:12

Every time I believe in something and it backfires in my face, a piece of my soul stays behind. This is a problem because I need to believe. Otherwise, what’s the point?

09:59

How do you go on believing, if you know something can backfire in your face anytime?

What you do is you think twice before you jump into bed with every new idea that promises you the world.

11:24

“More than a million blind warriors form the vanguard.” ~ from a documentary on ants

FRIDAY, 11 JULY 2008

I am good at struggling, but can I deal with success?

Just thought I’d ask, again.

THURSDAY, 14 AUGUST 2008

A statement to which no price can be affixed: “You loved me when I was poor.”

WEDNESDAY, 20 AUGUST 2008

My motto: Be reasonable.

[no date]

Standard marketing advice:

1. Here’s what I’ve got.

2. This is what you’ll get out of it.

3. Here’s what I want you to do next.

______________________

FRIDAY, 13 JUNE 2008

That then was Thursday, the day numbered “twelve” in the month labelled “June” in the year following “2007”.

I know there is a point behind everything I fill my days with. Time flies. Everyone gets older. The world perishes bit by bit.

Time for bed? Why? Because I’m tired of sitting on this chair, but especially since sleep traditionally precedes breakfast. And I like to do things right.

TUESDAY, 17 JUNE 2008

It is because we are born that we die.

It is because we survive 85 years of life that we die of old age.

It is because of life that we succumb to death.

THURSDAY, 19 JUNE 2008

Today is not January 6^th, the Day of Epiphany, and I know I have an almost programmed tendency to go profound whenever I get near Lane 55 [my first neighbourhood in Taiwan], but as I was pedalling past early tonight, it struck me: Life came to me.

In Korea, I often spoke of pausing at the red light, waiting until I can continue with my life. These sentiments were repeatedly reconsidered in ‘99 and 2000. Taiwan was, initially, like Korea, a place of waiting: Waiting until I could go “home” – where I could live a fuller life, where I could finally commit and belong.

June 2008. I am still in Taiwan, nine and a half years later. Still here, as I remind myself every time I pass by Lane 55. But I am not waiting anymore. People came to me. First it was just friends, and then, finally, love.

* * *

To me Natasja represents LIFE. To me, she is LIFE incarnated. Surely we are all, technically speaking, but to me she is a truly wonderful manifestation of LIFE: her personality, her willpower, her survival instinct, her enjoyment of things, her experience of things, even her fears, although she doesn’t always talk about them.

Of course, Natasja would have been here regardless of my presence. She would have come here anyway, and she would still be here now even if I were not. But if I did go back to look for LIFE in South Africa as I had planned to do more than a few times, I would have missed her.

I was here in 2004. And she came here.

The rest is my blessed experience of LIFE.

THURSDAY, 26 JUNE 2008

“Marry me, Rita,” says the title character in the film, Sgt. Bilko. “I know I’m a longshot, but sometimes they pay.”

______________________

FRIDAY, 9 MAY 2008

Here are the notes I should have made on Friday, 10 February 2006:

Besides learning to make money from home, in my own time, and with work that I see fit, I set myself the following goals over the next two or three years:

1. I have to learn to fail utterly and completely, and then to start again the next day, and to fail utterly and completely again, and to start again the next day.

2. I have to learn to venture an opinion and make predictions, and to be totally wrong, and the next day to again venture opinions and make predictions, and to be totally wrong again, and then the next day to again risk an opinion and make predictions.

3. I have to learn to be patient. I have to learn to progress painfully slowly, even slipping back every few days almost to where I had started, and then to continue the following day.

Oh, and I have to learn all the above whilst someone whose respect I want to be worthy of witnesses each and every one of my failures, and knows of almost every single time I am and have been wrong.

MONDAY, 19 MAY 2008

If you stop breathing, you die. If you stop trying, you fail by default.

SATURDAY, 24 MAY 2008

“One of four thousand,” dictates my mind while I am lying flat on my back.

One of four thousand writers now living, who write about life in a certain way. And because not all these writers are active – for a variety of reasons, it makes the work of the writers who do write so much more important.

THURSDAY, 29 MAY 2008

Just over the bridge on the way to my usual dinner place yesterday, I thought of how many times I have boasted – not intentionally, but still – about great wealth the past two years, and how Natasja has listened to it all, how she has seen how little has materialised thus far, and how she still loves me.

By the time I parked my bike next to the lamppost, a thought had struck me right between the eyes. I shall illustrate it thus: Once a woman has decided to love a man – or when it happens in the mysterious way it does, the man on the receiving end can casually proceed straight to the nearest Daoist temple. On the way, he can pick up a kilogramme of joss sticks and once at the temple, light up one after the other while thanking, solemnly, and with tears welling up in his eyes, every single figure or statue that resembles any kind of deity for the good fortune that had befallen him.

SATURDAY, 31 MAY 2008

(Part of a larger kitchen contemplation of Eros and Thanatos: the desire to live and the desire to die.)

I take good things for granted, dismiss them as insignificant, or even ignore them, while I consider unfavourable outcomes – even relatively trivial events – as incontrovertible evidence that “things are not right”, that I am busy “screwing up”, that “things are obviously not working out – and perhaps never will”.

By the way, who am I, and what am I doing with my life?

______________________

THURSDAY, 1 MAY 2008

The love of a woman – from a man’s perspective

Picture a man walking in a desert. He’s been walking for days. He has run out of food and water, and he is dehydrated. He stumbles as he descends down a dune. Rolls to the bottom. Just lies there.

Then, at that moment, a rescue plane appears in the blue sky above him. Someone parachutes down with emergency supplies. Three hours later a jeep ambulance arrives.

A few days later he wakes up in a hospital. He is connected to tubes, and doctors and nurses are monitoring his condition. He is going to be okay, the doctor assures everyone in the waiting room.

This, from the moment the rescue plane appeared, to the assurance of the doctor, this is the love of a woman. It is a most fortunate turn of events in the life of any man.

(for Natasja)

FRIDAY, 2 MAY 2008

[…]

The thought culminated in a demand for a term that can be applied to the last two years of my life. A few months ago, I started calling it the Second Commercial Dictatorship, but meaning to be a bit more descriptive and more accurate, I said: A time of discovery, failure, embarrassment, faith, disillusionment – and the beginning of the end of financial incompetence.

THURSDAY, 8 MAY 2008

By Wednesday or Thursday or Friday repetition of the same boring actions and a lack of creative fulfilment become a problem. A good way to handle this is to go out for drinks, to play some tennis, or to watch a movie.

I, however, force myself back into my office chair, and the routine continues – whatever the routine is that particular week. My state of mind is therefore susceptible to any mistakes I make, to results that are not as good as I hoped they would be, even to good results that are “too little, too slow”.

The outcome is predictable: “It” does not work. I have to do “something else”. “It” is too slow. Perhaps I should look at “this” or “that” again.

If I had just sat down – on the green couch – and read a book, or watched a movie, I would have been on the road again after a few hours, or the next day. Well-rested. Ready for another day’s journey.

But the way I approach the problem is like someone who has been on the road since shortly after breakfast. Instead of finding a motel when it starts getting dark, after ten or so hours on the road, the man continues driving, without stop. Until he crashes into a truck or a telephone pole.

______________________

THURSDAY, 10 APRIL 2008

Too much. Headache. No creative thoughts. Can’t think of angles. Desperate for short-term gratification. Go to bed late. Wake up early. Breakfast doesn’t inspire … Natasja is beautiful. She’s the absolute light of my life.

FRIDAY, 18 APRIL 2008

What I learned this week, by Brand Smit

Any way you want to make money can be described as a job. For some people it is teaching English; for others, it is marketing through original articles, or marketing by way of a dozen mini blogs, or pay-per-click advertising campaigns; and for some it is sports betting, horse racing or the buying and selling of prices on a betting exchange.

At least basic training is essential before you start doing any job. More advanced training, both theoretical and practical, is crucial if you are serious about making a long-term success of anything.

Everybody knows this, right? And yet, how many jobs have I not taken the past more than two years without even the most basic training?

One example is marketing through your own website: I assumed the fact that I could produce my own content qualified me for the job. I could not have been more wrong.

Many argue: “Start taking action the first day. Don’t waste too much time on reading how to do something.”

I understand about parking at the traffic light. But how much time isn’t wasted by starting a job without an essential understanding of how to do it right? In terms of marketing on the Internet, we are talking time – precious time that is wasted as if hours and days and weeks and months are cheap commodities. In terms of betting and trading, losses are measured in precious dollars.

It is easy to underestimate the difficulty of work with which you can earn money from home. It is also true that you can overestimate the complexity, and never start with anything.

Know that you will waste time and that you will lose money if you start a project without the necessary training; also know that neither time nor money will ever produce any kind of return if you never start applying what you learn.

WEDNESDAY, 30 APRIL 2008

The other day I recited for Natasja the following quote: “Fear of failure leads to fear of commitment.”

I added: “I was always afraid of failure, so I tried to avoid it at all cost.”

After the obligatory pause, a confession, followed by an embarrassed chuckle: “I have failed so many times in the past two years …”

I had to learn to become humble. I had to learn of failure. And, as I also recently realised, I had to learn about regret.

______________________