Say No

 
Relearning how to say “no” wrenches the guts. Toddlers know how to say “no.” If you’ve ever spent much time around one, you know that it’s one of their favorite words to use. Abusive and immature parents, frightened by the assertiveness of their vital child, use intimidation, humiliation and even violence to suppress this healthy [...]

Optimize

 
 
 
My goal of reading and reviewing five books a week is not being met. The Interpretation of Dreams by Freud has been taking me much longer than I had anticipated. I have not been getting in as much work for pay as I would like, either, and I’ve been delaying blogging to try to make it [...]

A Toxic Environment

I find myself addicted to reading economic news and commentary lately. It feels dreadfully demoralizing to be living through such an ugly time, just when I can least afford it. I make my own personal issues worse by spending my valuable time reading half-truths and projections about the economy writeen by people with fundamentally flawed [...]

Critique

I am extraordinarily sensitive to criticism. It took me about three months over the past year to learn how to take criticism without becoming aggressive. I regarded editors as adversaries to be exhausted or won over in debate rather than negotiating partners. I was able to move past that relatively quickly, professionally, after I broke [...]

For Sale

Note: I began working on this late last week. I put it on hold roughly 4,500 words in before returning to it this Tuesday.
I have completed another business cycle that ends with my bank account going empty. I’m working again, and should be just fine next week – but I hope that this will be [...]

Stress

Today and yesterday were good days for me. I am learning how to trigger my stress so that I feel it fully and I become motivated to discharge it. I won’t say that I have kicked my habit of self-attack followed by extreme procrastination, but I’m working on the core issues and trying to keep [...]

Visibility

The struggle for visibility is nearly universal. For most of my life, I’ve wanted other people to see me for who I was, but met with no success. If you conceal your essential self from your own eyes, how can others hope to see it? It creates a frightening but all-too-familiar scenario of being heard, [...]

Pity

I’m doing quite poorly, having trouble even eking out basic functioning. If such a thing existed and I could afford it, at this point I would check myself into some kind of care facility.
I’m not sure why I have these thoughts. I think it might be that I’m experiencing serious age confusion issues. Lately, I’ve [...]

Guts

It’s impossible to stand firm for anything when you’re still dominated by primal fear of your parents. Most children are born into the world afraid – which makes sense, as it’s a rude awakening relative to the comfortable and largely secure environment that they start out in. That ordinary and healthy fear can be assuaged [...]

Fertility

Most of my mind is not under my direct control.
I am a little guy standing on top of a giant. I whisper my ideas into his ear. He may or may not take to them.
Ordinarily, I have screamed commands directly into this sensitive giant’s eardrum, sticking my head up his ear canal. I believe that [...]