Rumination #1

MONEY, SEX, FAMILY, FRIENDS, COMMERCE

I have my mom and I love her and want to do the best I can for her health and happiness. I love my Bonnie and I’m grateful for help, energy, and happiness. Bonnie is a strong, generous, loving woman. I am a little man. I don’t have much to offer, but I’ll give you what I’ve got. I’ll offer up what I’ve got. It’s not much. There’s not a lot of interest in it. But, it’s yours if you want it. The trick with the world is to give it something that it wants. It’s good to live for yourself and your vision of things. It’s good to be true to your own vision, but the world wants what it wants, and worldly success has to do with giving it something that it wants. The world doesn’t care about me. The world isn’t looking to reward me or anybody else for being a nice guy. The world rewards confirmation of itself. I’m a homosexual. I don’t have a lot of time to spend being a homosexual, being sexual, pursuing sex. I don’t have a lot of time and energy left over after working my full time job, doing for mom, and meeting my own rudimentary needs. A lot of things in my life get left undone. It’s not a pretty picture. My house is a mess. I have cleanliness and clutter issues. I don’t do a bang up job of taking care of myself and my home. Believe me, I would like to do better. If I knew how to do better, I would. Write, write, write. I love to write. It’s good for me, and I like doing it. It’s not always easy to do. Writing doesn’t always come easily to me, but I like it. It would be nice to get it all together. It would be nice to be a together kind of person. Home wise. Friend wise. Lover wise. Sex wise. Family wise. Art wise. Money wise. Work wise. It would be so cool to be a together kind of guy. One of the cardinal rules of life is to work with what you’ve got. Most people want more from their lives, but we all have to work with what we’ve got, even while we endeavor to get more. It’s not a matter of convincing the world that I’m a nice guy. I’m not that nice. I can be a real prick. Not as bad a prick as Barack Obama or Scott Pelley, but a prick nonetheless. The world doesn’t reward the people in it just for being nice. Steve Jobs was not a particularly nice guy. He was a prick, and didn’t really mind being a prick to get what he wanted, to fulfill his vision. Visionary. Visionary man. Man with values. Insight. Drive. Motivation. Edgy. Prick. It’s nice to have a vision. It’s nice to have convictions. It’s nice to feel strongly about stuff. It’s nice to do what you believe in, to live the way you want to live. We all want to follow our bliss, and we all do to some extent. But, we also want and need to earn a living. Give us this day our daily bread. We have to give the world something it wants, so that it will give us some of the things that we want and need. We all spend a lot of our lifetime trying to cajole the world into giving us more of what we want and need. And, the world isn’t always sympathetic with what the poor, lonely soul longs for. The trick of commerce is to give the world something that it wants and will pay for. It isn’t always easy to know what the world wants. One doesn’t necessarily have the knowledge, skills, and resources to meet the world’s demands. Supply and demand. I have something you want. If you compensate me fairly, I will share it with you. If I don’t receive fair compensation, I will withhold my goods and services from you. If you want to consume what I have to offer, you must compensate me fairly for it. Economics 101. The trick is not to make the world love me. The trick is to figure out what the world wants, and what I have the desire and ability to provide for compensation. The way of the world. The way of life. The way of living in the world. I might not be of the world, but I’m living in it and I’d better learn how. For my own good. Learning how to live for one’s own good and the good of family and friends. One’s own good. Living for oneself and one’s own people. It’s enough to live successfully for oneself and one’s own people, never mind living for the planet. Fuck the planet. The planet will take care of itself, just like I have to take care of myself.