Category Archives: Thursday

May 11 2012

Sometimes A Fantasy…

 

“….sometimes a fantasy,  is all you need.”

 

I often say that I live so much of my life inside of my head.    I think I have a healthy respect and appreciation for fantasy.    Though some times you definitely need real life things too.     I went and got my insulin today.      I was thrilled that with my new insurance the co-pay was only three dollars and thirty cents.       Given that Walmart charges $120 (the cheapest regular retail price I know of) this alone makes the insurance a great value.    I will have to make an appointment and go back and see my doctor.    I am going to insist he refer me to a shrink to manage my psych meds.     I am a happy camper to be getting most of my meds at this point and look forward to having them all in the not too distant future.

I’m honestly not sure where I am at the moment on the manic-depressive scale.    I seem to have backed off the major mania and have been sleeping more or less regularly for several days now.  And I am definitely finding it difficult and a struggle to write much of anything at all.    I am doing some socializing and some game playing  (I continue to really enjoy The Sims on Facebook.      I was sad to find that my current lappy just isn’t up to playing the current version of The Sims 2  (the CD Rom game.)   But I haven’t been able to bring myself to touch the manuscript for the Missions Guide I have been planning to release on July 1st,  on the one year anniversary of the initial publication of Walking Down The Avenue.    And after putting up a web site and writing some introductory bally hoo,  I haven’t really worked on the pseudonymous project at all either.    (Sighs.)

I know that if I am going to have the new book ready for release July 1st I need to start writing it in earnest like yesterday.    Yet as I gain more experience with Empire Avenue missions each day,   I find my perspective shifting so rapidly that I’m honestly not sure what I am going to write.      I try to comfort myself with the thought that when I am quite certain what I want my guide to using Empire Avenue missions to say I will be able to knock it out in no time at all,  and aren’t I wise not to try to force a book that just isn’t there yet.     I find this small comfort compared to my serious writer friends (who aren’t collecting disability) who set themselves a budget of so many words or so many pages and force themselves to work at it each day until the day’s budget has been produced.    Writing on a drop dead line really is so much harder than writing when the inspiration strikes.

Jan 19 2012

Promoting Yourself Without Excrement

Rupert Murdoch

Rupert Murdoch

A great deal has been written and published about how to promote yourself online.   There are of course some excellent sites and articles out there which contain spot-on advice.   There is also a lot of, well, let’s call it dreck.    If someone has written a book on how to promote yourself on Twitter,  it may not be unreasonable to presume that that person’s main objective is to sell his book,  rather than to give you good advice about what would be the best way for you to go about promoting yourself,  whether on Twitter or perhaps on some other site that might be a better conduit to your particular audience.

As someone who writes and sells books,  I realize that at times I too probably have focused more on trying to push my book to the people I’m speaking with than to give them my best possible advice about their particular situation.  Though to be fair,  many times people who are new to a particular thing  (for example– just this week joined Empire Avenue),  ask questions that are well familiar to everyone else in the conversation and urging them to read a guide book or consult a FAQ can be  really good advice.  And my advice to all of you self-promoters out there today,  is to try hard to refrain from slinging shit.  Personally,  a salty vocabulary and an earthy way of expressing ones’ self does not bother me at all.   And yet I know that many folks are bothered by that kind of language.   There are also legitimate arguments that one should not use such language around children.   And honestly,  using almost nothing but swear words does give listeners the impression that the speaker has a paucity of imagination,  and perhaps a world view they might not wish to become intimate with.

So my advice today for those who are trying to promote themselves online is to take care with the language you choose,  not just when writing a blog post but always.   Whether you are just chatting with a friend or creating a  pillar post you hope will draw thousands of links and visitors,  words matter.   It really is true that “it’s not just what you say,  it’s how you say it”.   And finally today,  I will just acknowledge that the image (which depicts a pile of old goat feces) and it’s caption are a nod to something my friend Ron– as opposed to my huzband Ron–  said awhile back and to a trick that sex advice columnist Dan Savage played on a politician.   Google   “Santorum”  and visit the first link that comes up if you don’t know what I mean.

PS– There are NO links in this post.

Jan 13 2012

Soon To Come In From The Cold

So far,  my trip to the pharmacy is half a success.    I went back this morning and picked up a fresh bottle of Lantus and a new box of syringes.   But no seroquel.   The pharmacy clerk told me that they contacted my doctor to get an approval and are waiting to hear back from him.   (That Ron spent twenty minutes on the phone with the clinic last night,  when they called to schedule me to come in for blood tests next week, foolishly made me think the clinic was so on top of things that all would go smoothly.)     The pharmacy seemed certain that they would get a definite yes or no from the doctor  (who remember works for the same clinic the pharmacy is a part of) and suggested that I check back with her tomorrow.   She asked me if I needed an emergency three day supply,  but I still had and took one this morning so it’s not yet desparate.  But clearly this chore is going to drag into tomorrow and I am going to have to do whatever it takes  (including an emergency three day supply)  to not run out.    I so don’t want to stop and start again with seroquel.

In other news,  I have contacted my absolute favorite designer who has agreed to make a cover for Black And White.     Dawn‘s covers are so much more visually compelling and effective at selling books than anything I  (honestly I just do not have an eye for graphic design) could ever come up with.    I am confident that I will be able to launch Biljana’s book in a thoroughly professional way and am so excited to be (in a sense) building a team which I believe can be quite successful in selling a remarkable writer to a world which I believe with all my heart will want to read this stuff.    I am thinking a lot about “success”  and “branding”.    The more i look at what Biljana has already done online,  the more I realize that I really don’t need to show her anything about how to use social networking.   But maybe,   just maybe by finding a way to be the friend she needs I will be able to help her realize her fullest potential.

Which is certainly a lot more fun to think about than Medicare.    Yesterday’s post brought me my very  own Medicare card which states that it is effective as of May 1, 2012.     So I will soon be coming to the end of my two and a half years of being Really Sick  (enough to qualify for disability income) and having NO health care coverage of any kind.     What a long strange trip it’s been,   including some excellent care by great doctors,  times with no medicines and no way to see a doctor,   a heart attack,  a hospital stay  (the astronomical bills for which I will never actually pay,  even if they send them to a collection agency)  and knock wood,  finally having most of my conditions mostly well managed.     When people speak against health care reform,   it feels just like a slap in the face to me.

Jan 5 2012

Happy Bear

So this Thursday finds me a happy bear.  My Empire Avenue stock is up to a share price of 105 and while I do have some back sliding days I am still (knock wood) above 105 today.   I invest some in newbies recommended by DES Daughter and invest back in people who have recently invested in me.   I do try to max out to 600 hundred shares in all of my investments,  but if your div ratio is not great it may take me a Very long time.   And if you sell off all of the shares you hold in me I will block you on Empire Avenue in order to be sure I do not again invest in someone who didn’t think enough of me to buy even a single share.

Now that I have Timeline I am going to try directing the FB post promoting this blog post Only to those on my Empire Avenue list.   It is possible I may have tagged a person or two incorrectly but I believe that all of the folks on these lists connected with me First through Empire Avenue or have been active on one or more Empire Avenue related discussions.  As I’ve mentioned before,  I was Not blown away by Google Plus and deleted my account on that service not too terribly long after starting it.   Honestly,  at this point Facebook allows me to meet and get to know and keep up with an ever expanding circle of virtual friends.

Since my main purpose in social networking is to meet and get to know other people,  and any business that results from these relationships is for me,  simply an extra benefit.  While I do promote my book regularly,  I try very hard not be one note about it and I talk with lots of different people about lots of different things in lots of different threads on lots of different web sites.      For me,  online socializing is very much a time consuming hands-on more or less full time activity.   But I try never ever to forget that it’s All about building real relationships with other real people.

(And I am a very happy bear this morning because I just got back from a great visit with my cub friend and I am maybe even Joyous Bear today  ;)_

Jun 2 2011

Revisiting: What Is A Blog?

There’s been a  very interesting discussion today on a an Empire Avenue-related Facebook group.    Adriel Hampton posted in the X-Bar that he was disappointed that Empire Avenue seems to be permitting “content farms”.

On Empire Avenue,  the seemingly simple question “What Is A Blog?”  can be anything but simple to answer and there was a spirited discussion about, well the morality of having a Tumblelog that consists of embedding videos from YouTube and adding just a one line quote from the lyrics and two tags,  connected to Empire Avenue as a “blog”.

I’m a writer.   For years I updated my book review blog about one or more books three to five times per week.    I am very well aware of the difference in terms of time, effort and skill between researching and writing a professional quality three hundred to five hundred word blog article vs re-blogging a picture or a video that someone else has already created.    And yet,  I found myself arguing on behalf of folks like,  well myself,  who regularly “blog” twenty or thirty music videos every day.   It is,  I believe,  a curatorial endeavor.    My music tastes are a bit narrow,  a bit odd and rather well-defined.    I listen to select pop/rock music from the 1960′s–1980′s for the most part.     And the fact is that I have through Tumblr made a few friends who share at least some of my tastes in music and tell me they enjoy having my videos in their Tumblr stream.   And every day it seems,  there are people who Like and Re-blog the videos that I post.   It seems to me that if what I am posting is reaching out and connecting with an audience,  my posts create real value in my personal social network.     Which is why I don’t in any way feel that I am “cheating”  on Empire Avenue.

My friend Jake,  whose Tumblr curates amazing landscape photographs from all over the world pointed out that he has made real friendships through sharing amazing pictures– which he pointed out he spends a great deal of time selecting and in the cases of photographs he takes himself editing.   Jake argues, and I am inclined to agree,  that he does put as much time and effort into his photo blog as any of us writers do on cranking out those 300–500 word posts that many people do in fact find challenging to do more than once a day.     One thing that many folks in that discussion did seem to agree on, is that Empire Avenue should regard Tumblr as another content site,  like Twitter and Facebook, etc.  rather than as “blogs”.    As my new friend  Roger Hoyt and I agreed– we’re supposed to be networking and making friends–not arguing over what a blog is.   So how about a nice, non-spammy campaign to convince Dups and the EAv team to make Tumblr another top level network.

cc: @adriel  @dups