DREWspective

I read a rather interesting article in one of yesterday’s free evening papers, about the rise of self-help books. They talked about "The Secret", which is apparently the motivational speaking world’s mainstream shot at cinema, as well as the number of books that had come out.

As well as ridiculing the idea that you just had to think positively to get positive results, they made an interesting comment at the end: that the only way to get rich, it seems, is to write your own self-help book.

I remember making this comment (to myself) years ago, when I was first introduced to motivational speakers and self-help coaches. I certainly thought that comment about T Harv Eker—the first high profile person whose book I bought, as a result of listening to Achievement Radio—after hearing some of his other material. He might have made millions with his businesses, but he seems to make even more money repeating the same things verbatim.

I’ve bought a number of these books in the last couple of years, most of which are from lesser-known authors. I’ve only finished a couple of them: Gifts From Eykis by Wayne Dyer is a very good read, as well as The Fine Art of Small Talk by Debra Fine. The ones about finances and getting rich are out of my league, as they tend to assume you have the money to play with already; they talk about investing and real estate near the end of the book.

Pretty much every self-help book I’ve come across has the same theme about positive thinking—that you have to think positively, stay away from negative people, etc.—and they all seem to rehash the same messages and quotes and references.

There’s another disturbing trend that some people might not notice, and if I ever write a book of my own, I vow never to follow that trend.

Attacking the person who is reading the book.

In about 80% of the books I’ve made a start on reading, there’s usually a dedicated chapter on how you are supposedly at fault for your current situation; how you are responsible for everything that happens to you; how everybody else is faultless; how you must make all the effort. That’s usually where I put the book down. (99 times out of 100, it’s chapter two. If I remember correctly: David DeAngelo’s book Double Your Dating goes right into it at the first chapter.)

Sometimes it doesn’t stop there. In a book I read by Jeff Keller, there were various digs at the reader (mostly at negative people) scattered throughout the book. Very occasionally, these digs accompany the dedicated chapter of finger-pointing.
I wrote about something like this before, concerning certain people who point fingers at the very people they’re trying to sell to, in which I mentioned that all respect for them on my end goes right out the window. It especially holds true for speakers and "self-help gurus".

I’m not saying that they don’t have a point; I would certainly agree that it is up to us as visionary people to pull through, despite others standing in our way, and i would agree that people make choices that put them in particular positions. But to throw these things in the face of the reader or listener, who came to them for help in the first place, is just plain spiteful.

These days I’ve been listening to a guy named TJ Hoisington, who put out an audiobook called If You Think You Can!. I bought it because of the incredibly powerful and energetic excerpts (and music!) I heard on Achievement Radio; this guy seemed to know what he was talking about.
I was disappointed to find that the three CD recording I purchased from Amazon was one of those seriously toned-down, generic, read-verbatim tapes you find in WH Smiths. Even more disappointing was the obligatory chapter on establishing the reader for being "at fault", which I wasn’t prepared for.

Unfortunately there’s no concrete way of avoiding such text, especially if it stops you from going any further.  But like TJ says on the Achievement Radio version of his recording: if you disagree with an idea, discard it.

I’ve always found that, when I’m employed, I’m far more productive in terms of my own projects as well as the employer’s.

I also start coming up with more and more ideas for personal projects, that I just don’t have enough hours in the day to implement. If I do find the time, however, the motivation goes right out of the window.

Can you relate?

Since I’ve started working, I’ve had several ideas for businesses, software, animated films, art projects, crafts, movies, novels and many more random things. Some of these things have been started already (e.g. the chibiModels, The Ignored Board), and things such as my first novel have been in progress for years now. Unfortunately, mostly due to lack of time and energy, many of these great ideas never leave the drawing board; most recently I dropped an idea of starting a centralised portal site for the famous 100 Theme Challenge.

One of the reasons I get so frustrated when this happens is because I don’t have a team of people I can work with. In fact, I don’t know anybody with the skillsets suitable for the kinds of projects I have ideas for. I’ll admit, I haven’t done a good enough job of finding such people.

(On a separate note: when I say team, I mean a team in a traditional sense: a group of people working together, each bringing their own skillset to the table. I might talk about this some more in a future post.)

If I had at least one person working with me on the ideas I’ve come up with, I’m very certain I’d be well on the way to becoming a rich man. Most of my anger and frustration seems to come from the idea of having to do everything myself, because I’ve almost never gotten the help I needed (even when asking for it).

Another problem is a lack of confidence on my part, and possibly discrimination on the part of other people. Many times I feel that I could have the greatest idea in the world, but it wouldn’t be successful because people would see that I created it. On the other hand, if someone else were to create it, they’d be rolling in money.
I’ve often wondered whether it would be better to put myself forward with my ideas, or to take a back seat and go by some pen name or something. Maybe then my work would be appreciated?

Yet one more thing that gets in the way is being protective of my ideas. I am very protective - almost paranoid - about all of my ideas, because I’ve heard recent stories of people profiting from ideas they’ve "borrowed" from other people.
Since there’s no concrete way of protecting your ideas, one has to be very careful. Maybe not careful to the point of reclusiveness, but careful enough.

So what can you do, when you’re flooded with things you want to implement?

My strategy is to write them down as soon as you get them, no matter where in the world you are. Make sure you write your ideas down on paper, by any means necessary, andn begin fleshing them out in a mindmap.

You might not realise all of your ideas, but writing them down will help to empty your mind. Trust me; you don’t want them ping-ponging all around your brain for too long.

So the shapes have arrived, and we’ve hit a snag as we’ve found out the shapes that were ordered were too small for the existing head pieces.

It also turns out that most of the ordered pieces, which were bought from a shop in the US, could have been ordered over here in the UK! However, these shops had kept themselves very well hidden.
For future reference, a search for pin craft in your favourite search engine should take you to the right place to buy polystyrene shapes. In most cases, you’ll be able to get the parts you’re after.

Where are we up to now? I’ll show you:

I initially made a start on the first three models, painting the head separately from the bodies.

Everything went well, until I had trouble getting the right flesh tone for the white characters. I have a formula for creating a good flesh tone, but unfortunately I didn’t have the right colour paints. In the meantime, I stuck the heads to the bodies.

A trip yesterday to both the London Graphic Centre in Covent Garden, and Cass Art in Leicester Square, turned up six more tubes of acrylic paint and some white gesso primer. As the head shapes were low density (LD) polystyrene, I applied a couple of coats of primer to them, as well as the top part of the body.

You might or might not be able to see it, but there are five different skin colours in the photo: brown, white, olive, pale white and a kind of orange tan white.

Next question is: what is the next step?

I might have solved the problem of how to make the legs: along with the paints, I bought some 12mm balsa wood dowel, which might or might not work as is. I decided on balsa wood as nowhere seems to sell ordinary polystyrene rods, and a request to a company that makes custom polystyrene shapes turned out to be fruitless.

I still have next to no clue as to how to make the arms. Right now I’m toying with the idea of using art straws as a base, and it’s a matter of getting hold of some. Due to my job, I can’t get to any art and crafts store during the week whatsoever.

Hi.

I haven’t written much on DREWspective recently, as you can tell. Besides being extremely busy with work, and trying to get The Ignored Board back on track, I felt like DREWspective was going down the same road as my old weblog.
I don’t want that, because I don’t fancy being brought to trial by an attention-seeking whore and her brainwashed mate again. I have a feeling you guys don’t want it either.

As you can see, I haven’t been doing well at all on the misogyny front.

I’ve refrained from ranting about V Day (unless you were on Facebook), where I hinted about being armed with a baseball bat on the day. Luckily for many happy couples, none of the stores around my workplace stocked baseball bats. Even more fortunately, not that many people bragged openly about their gifts and relationships. A couple of people had to have their digs at work - everybody at my workplace excluding me is in a relationship - at the last minute, but I restrained myself. After all, I’d be the only one that gets in trouble (and being a black man, they’d throw the library at me).

However, there hasn’t been much else going on in terms of girls. I still hasn’t been any response from my one "match" at speed dating. She’ll get one more e-mail sometime today, and then it’s entirely up to her.

I’ve also been doing a lot of asking out on Facebook and Dating Direct. If you don’t know already, and I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it on here, I took the plunge and signed up for 3 + 1 months on Dating Direct. (In a battle between Match.com and Dating Direct, Match had the greatest number of proactive girls, but had a greater perceived number of shallow ones to boot.)

So far I’ve made two or three contacts on each site, but the majority of girls have done their usual thing of giving silent treatment to anyone who doesn’t match their "list".

Another reason why I didn’t choose Match was the sheer number of rejection e-mails I received, purely as a result of "winking".  The emails begin:

xxx received your wink and reviewed your profile, but is not interested.

The email then goes on to give the usual spiel about their millions of members, how there’s "someone out there" etc.

I say: cut the bullshit. Any reviewing of profiles these girls do is to look at the pretty pictures, not to read what the guy put in his profile. Do you know why? Because they can’t f***ing read.

I would suggest that Match encourage people to give reasons for turning someone down. Not only would it potentially help someone looking for "the one", but it would give an insight into the intelligence, stability and morals of the person involved. (Especially those who give vague, or no answers.)

And they wonder why they’re single.

Weight wise, I had a shock earlier this week when I found myself approaching 19 stones. I really don’t look good these days; although I’ve been told I’m "slimming down", my double chin just keeps growing.

Nothing I’m doing seems to work: I’m unable to go to the gym regularly because of work, and it’s ultra difficult to eat healthily because of the shops and restaurants around. There’s a Sainsburys across the road, and while they’re known for premium food they’re pretty shit at healthy food you don’t have to cook.

If I had the freedom, I would go on the LighterLife diet in a heartbeat, as I have around four stones to lose now. But trapped at home, mom insists I do the usual, "cut back" thing I’ve been doing for so long. I’m getting sick and tired of her getting in my way every time I want to try something new, but moving out isn’t an option right now.

That’s all.

It turns out that I’d left this as a placeholder post, which I haven’t added anything to yet. I’ll briefly go over what happened now.

On Tuesday 5th, I went to yet another speed dating event in London. The venue was the 101 Bar near Tottenham Court Road: a venue I’d been to twice before, and a very good one for this kind of event.

The turnout was very poor on the girls’ side, even for a 20s event: there were only 11 girls to 17 guys. The good news was that the quality of the women was much more consistent than at the other events I’d been to; you pretty much knew what to expect.

I was hesitant to tick anybody this time around, but I’d met this very attractive French girl whom I seemed to get on with. As well as ticking her, I’d ticked four other girls whom I wouldn’t mind seeing again.

The next day, having convinced myself I’d get nothing after a long, hard stretch at work (and accidentally getting on a fast train to St Albans, before heading back on a train that missed my stop), I was rewarded with one match. Except it wasn’t the French girl; she’d decided to follow her less interesting mate, which was a damn shame.

But like all of my previous "matches", the match hasn’t responded to my friendly introductory email.

I’m certainly thinking that speed dating isn’t ever going to work out as well as I’d like. The girls don’t take it seriously at all, and in the end most of them are just after trophies. Whatever you do, don’t expect it to be any different to going to a bar or a night club to meet women; you’ll get the same results. Anyone who says otherwise is either a) a girl or b) good at pulling in night clubs.