I saw Dr D on Friday. She identified some obstacles.

She does not think this blog project will earn any money. My son works in New York. He knows a lot about money; he trades it every day. He doesn’t think this blog project will earn any money. I am the guy who needs to generate some form of income and I can’t see how this project will earn any money. The no money side wins 3-0.

But I do not know what else to do.

I know from my experience on June 12 (see this post: Decisions ) that I do not have the ability to perform in a customer service, customer facing role. That is a big obstacle.  I also question my tech skills. Despite tech being my most recently deployed skill set, I have almost no memory of what I did while working for Gargantua Computer. The technical aspects of the blog are the hardest and the most frustrating. I try and brush up on php, CSS, and js, and none of it “takes.” Yet, on occasion, I appear able to pop out a set of literary flourishes like nobody’s business, just a great big honking bowl of joyful yelps and syllablistic euphony. And I enjoy it. This verbal tooting.

Most puzzling to me is where this literary jazz comes from. What writing I have previously done has been dry and technical. In the oil industry I had a reputation for writing memos. If someone attempted to run with a dumb idea, my response was to draft a deadly memo that demonstrated with razor sharp clarity the inanity of the proposed course of action. But none of my prior written work involved anything close to what I presume is called “creative writing.”

Most of the weekend has been spent trying to puzzle out the implications of what Dr. D had to say. One thing I now realize is that the absence of any sense of anxiety is a double edged sword, anxiety understood as both an obstacle and as a benefit..

In the past, when I engaged in entrepreneurship, there was a definite edge, a nervous, sharp, intelligence. I no longer experience that. This lack of anxiety is positive in that it does not impede me from undertaking an improbable venture; but the lack of anxiety is also a negative in that I no longer have the benefit of that razor like intelligence that throws potential danger into sharp relief.

But I see no other alternate plan of action. I have zero confidence in the state and its responsibility to provide assistance under my insurance plan. I know I cannot just sit here and wait until the bank balance ebbs away to zero. I have to do something. At this point this blog is the only iron I have in the fire. I have to find a way to make it work. Real life survivor (without the television cameras) here we come!

One very positive aspect of this blog engagement is its function as a learning tool. The other day I went looking for a digital file called Self-Assessment; in this file I record all my notes in regard to my foibles. In the course of the search, I discovered I am actually maintaining four different files all intended to capture the same information. I forgot I started the first one so I started the second, forgot the first two and started the third and, well, you get the idea.