Writing For The Community (sic.)

Before we (that's the Royal We of course, because nobody's reading!) go any further with this experiment, I'd.. em, I mean, we'd.. better make a short disclaimer!

This is not a Get Rich Quick blog or scheme. At least, not in the same capacity that they already abundantly exist.

It's an experiment. It's an experiment as much to do with blogging as it is to do with getting rich. And even if it might occasionally brush with the topic of getting rich it's most certainly got nothing to do with getting rich quickly!

I hate Get Rich Quick blogs and I hate the classic Get Rich Quick schemes.

But I needed to get this pointed out early, because with tags like "Get Rich" and "Millionaire" I'm intensely aware of the risk of encouraging the wrong people to become none-readers. As a blogging noob, this is a bit of a challenge, because "Ex-Leper" is nevertheless very much to do with getting rich and becoming a millionaire albeit in an entertaining style, so I'd be foolish to avoid such tags.

So who is my target group? What sort of people should not be not reading this blog? Easy answer: Everybody!

Of course, the approximate theme here is money and (me) getting rich, but, as I've also mentioned, not least of all it's an experiment in blogging. So it's also about blogs themselves and about anybody who writes one (it would be about people who read them too, but I've already established that nobody reads blogs, which sort of screws that idea a bit). But most of all, like any blog it's about it's author. It's about me, me, me with a capital index finger (or thumb, depending on your body language). It's about attention and acclaim, about being better than the next man. It's about self-indulgence and hedonism and make no mistake about it, if nothing else, it's about an undisputed barm cake!

Don't believe any blogger who tells you he's writing his blog "For the community"! LMAO! If that was the case, why would any blogger worry about being stuck in a Blog Hole?!? There are countless blogs out there telling you how to run a successful blog. Probably there are even how to run successful How To Run A Successful Blog blogs. And why? Because every blogger wants to be noticed of course. Every blogger yearns for that warm fuzzy feeling that (I expect) arises from seeing dozens, hundreds, thousands or most certainly tens of thousands of visitors drop by and pat you on the back and tell you how fantastic you are. That's fine, I mean, bloggers are only human after all, but "For the community"? Come on please; we all love attention, it's nothing to be ashamed of, so admit it! And I'm first in the queue - Blog Holes are lonely places.

The Blog Hole

Money isn't everything in life, is it? Well, no of course not, there are also blogs. So let's not let money dictate to us, and let me instead clarify a few points about blogs today.

Blogs.

Blogs are crap.

No, honestly, really they are! I don't like blogs. And I'll tell you why.

Nobody reads them!

LOL... isn't that a bit of a contradiction? You've just read in a blog that nobody reads blogs?!? Well did you? Did you really read it? What about trees... do they make a noise when they fall in the woods with no-one around?

So, you see, I'm a tree. No not out of me tree, I said I am a tree! And when I write in this blog, I'm like a tree falling to the ground. There's nobody around, nobody to hear, so I'm silent. I'm as silent as a silent mouse in a secret soundproofed studio. Oh yeah, I think I'm loud, I think I'm making a sound as I fall, but that's only because I exist in a vacuum. I exist in a Blog Hole. Outside of the Blog Hole I don't exist. I can write all the nonesense I want but nobody's gonna read it, nobody's gonna laugh (at me) and most certainly nobody's gonna be inspired or write comments. Cyber masterbation is all it is. One notch below cyber sex. That's what a friend of mine wrote in his Blog Hole in 2006. He claimed that blogs were just a hype, that they would never revolutionise the web and his theory seems to be holding up - in 3 years he's had 9 visitors and received precisely 0 comments/emails. Unlike their galactic contemporaries however, Blog Holes do not swallow up everything in their wake and one assumes that those 9 stray cyber travellers will have quickly found their way out, leaving my friend to digitally masterbate once more in silence. They didn't read his blog, they merely got sucked through it.

And this blog is an experiement to test that theory. At least that's my excuse.

"HELLOOO... eLLO... ello... elow... CAN ANYONE HEAR ME? Anyone Hear Me? one hear me?"

Hmm. Duh. There's actually no echo in a vacuum is there!

Are Greedy People More Honourable Than Lazy People?

For some time now I've been pondering over the concept of how to make a million (without too much effort!).

At the root of it, I admit, lies the fact that I'm inherently lazy. But is that really a trait to resent? If I needed a justification for wanting to make a million and wanting to do it as easily as possible, then I'd compare my desire to that of people who have become rich and successful through hard work and toil. Because, even though they're still undoubtedly begrudged by many (ironically, lazy people mostly), there will still remain those who have respect for them. That is to say, many people have respect for others who've earned their fortune honestly.

But why? Why not have respect for lazy people too?

Now I don't want to take the stage here and lament people who've worked hard for a living. But what I'm going to do is come from the other side and claim that lazy people are no less justified to becoming rich and successful, than honest hard working folks. And why's that? Because the Hard Working are only hard working due to greed! And in my view laziness and greed are two traits of comparable (un)desirability and should not be confused. Lazy people are not inherently greedy and greedy people are not necessarily lazy.

Now, with that logic I realise I've probably already confused the hell out of many people. Doesn't matter. Salient point is; greed (and by that I mean the overwhelming desire to own yachts, villas, Ferraris, etc) forces many people to work hard, because they know it won't all come for free. With me on that? But working hard is nothing to be proud of; it ruins your family life, it ruins your social life! Laziness, on the other hand, inhibits people from working hard, so although they (in most cases) won't become rich, at least they'll have time for their family and friends. So, laziness might well be an equally undesirable trait, but it's certainly not worse than greed!

OK, now that I've got that off my chest and hopefully convinced the world that folks like Richard Branson have no time for their family and friends and don't deserve to be millionaires, any more than the Special-Brew swilling band of crusties scrounging the entrance fee to a New Model Army gig, let me be objective, backtrack a little and segregate myself from this latter group of god-awful social misfits (the crusties that is, not the band).

You see, I've been around. Over the years, I've seen it, done it and got the T-Shirt many times over. The consolation prize T-Shirt! The loser's T-Shirt! Because it seems that that I'm pretty useless at everything I try! And probably mostly because I'm too lazy.

When I was 19 I tried to be a goth. That went immediately wrong because I was too coward to dye my hair black. So I thought I'd be punk. Hm, same problem again, this time in fluorescent green. So I settled instead for being indie. Well that at least didn't go too badly and by the age of 22 I'd deluded myself with the idea that hanging around motorway service exits, armed with the obligatory army-surplus parker and duffel bag, hitching a ride to the next Wonder Stuff gig was actually quite a laugh. But standing there in the cold and rain, late on Sunday evening with work the next day and still 100 miles from home was not such fun. In fact, it was almost less fun than being vegetarian!

So there I'd be, Monday morning, hair all washed and packed away again in a tidy ponytail, and now sat in front of my computer, wearing the obligatory shirt and tie. So I thought, why not be a computer programmer?!? After all, that was what all those tax payers had paid for me to study. Tax payers who I was now resenting as they drove past me, in Mercedes and BMWs on Sunday evening! Well that went OK for a while and I was even on track to make some decent money from it, as a profession. There were just a few hitches;

• I was not greedy enough! I was more interested in quality of life, rather than quantity of possessions, more interested in a decent party at the weekend than in working overtime, more interested in records and CD's than stocks and shares! So whilst many of my work friends were worming their way into the overpayed and decadent world of contracting, accountants and expensive cars to offset tax, I was happy enough with my modest employee paycheck, cash machines that didn't swallow my card anymore and a Vauxhall Nova.
• I was a poor programmer. Linked in many ways with the previous point, for me programming was an unfortunate means to an end and not something to be nurtured and developed with the prospect of becoming a highly paid IT professional.
• I didn't fit in. Much as trying to be anarchic, socialistic and vegetarian was nothing more than a grubby facade behind being middle class, well brought up and actually one of The Shirts from Monday to Friday, well so was wearing a shirt and tie to work and hanging around at lunchtime with people preaching to me about where I should be investing my money and how I could be earning so much more (like them) also a million miles from what I'd call fun! So I quit.

I quit my relatively well paid job, because now in my late 20's I'd discovered that;

1. money isn't everything in life
2. pretending that money is unimportant is an equally unsatisfactory way to live.

And so it came to pass that I took a break from the daily rat-race, moved to Berlin, lived from my savings (you see, money is important!) and retrained myself as... as, em... well... a computer programmer! But of a different sort! Self-employed (not contractor, there's a difference) and poorly paid but at least doing more interesting programming, in the now booming internet and multimedia industry. It's a bit of a long and irrelevant story, how I ended up like that, but revolves mostly around not being any good at anything else.

Anyway, that too went OK for a while. Interesting work, plenty of leisure time and just about enough money to enjoy it. That was, until the bubble burst in the early 00's and my work dried up. Then the money dried up. Then the debts mounted. And then, just as work slowly returned the whole thing went completely pair-shaped, due in no small part my lack of greed (not asking for enough money!!!). And what did I learn from that, as a now mature(r) 30-something? I learned that money is everything in life and that working 70-100 hours a week is neither big nor clever nor commendable. It doesn't just ruin your social life and your family life, but can also impact seriously on your health - if not physically, then certainly mentally. I also learned that (generally speaking) if you're not greedy and ask for (more) money nobody's going to give it to you. If, in addition to that, you go pontificating this hippy-dippy view that "Money is not everything in life", then you're in danger of falling very. very hard. And I did. And it hurt. And that was the incentive for me to rethink this whole money-work-life-survival thing.