I had fallen into the classic trap:

Definitely not loosing now is better that maybe winning in the future.

In other words we are so caught up in keeping what we have that we are often afraid of taking the last few steps needed to complete our goals for fear of losing what we have already achieved and ending up with nothing.

By not wanting to lose anything we end up losing everything.

I have a friend who one day mentioned that he’d like to take up squash. At that time I was consulting at a company working with a guy who was a squash fanatic. So I suggested they get together. So they started playing together regularly.

Time after time the squash player would come into work and boast of how he had beat my friend yet again. I asked my friend why he kept playing. “I want to learn how to play squash,” was his answer.

This went on for over 3 months. Then the squash player came in and said how my friend had “gotten lucky” and beat him. Then he lost to my friend for the second time. The next week the squash fanatic was “very busy now days. It’s hard to find the time.” And he no longer played my friend.

I caught up with my friend and asked him for his side of the story.

His explanation was simple, “I lost 15 games in a row because every time I played him I tried something different. He won 15 games in a row by doing the same thing each and every game. The 16th time I tried something different I won. The 17th time we played I did what I’d done in match 16 he did what he had done in all 16 matches. I won. The 17th time he did the same thing yet again. I built on what I had discovered in match 16. I won again. We never played a 18th match.”

I no longer consult at that firm but from time to time I still run into the fanatical squash player.  I always ask him about his squash games with my friend. He always boasts about beating him 15 times in a row. When I ask when the next game will be he is always too busy to play.

He had learned how to win squash games by playing in a certain way that would get him a certain amount of success. He had learned to judge which players he could beat and which he couldn’t, and so chose which players he would play accordingly. He had decided he had learned enough and didn’t want to learn anything new. So he didn’t.

The trouble is the world keeps changing. New things keep happening all the time.

If you stop learning you will get left behind.

If you need help learning how to learn again, or if you have just gotten a little stuck, phone Declan on 087 2420699 or email declan@conspiracyofmediocrity.com and we will get you moving again.

I can’t tell you how to be successful. And I can’t judge if you are successful or not. Only you can decide to be successful. And only you can determine what success means to you. And only you can achieved your success.

You have to look into your own hart and be true to your own passion.

You have to make your own meaning to your own life.

You have to live your dreams.

Your response makes you count.

So stand up and be counted.

Dumb Little Man! had a recent post Five Ridiculous Alarm Clocks which I found both amusing and intriguing. Intriguing, because the geeky nerd inside me loves technology and gadgets and the unusual application of such things. Amusing because as someone who spent decades getting out of bed late and being the guy in the office who was always late for work, I know that such crazy alarm clocks are only effective for a short while, if at all.

Often we seek “easy” solutions to our problems from our external world, an elaborate alarm clock to wake us in the morning, rather than the “hard” solution of changing our internal view of the world, or simply reprogramming a habit. But the “easy” solution is very seldom permanent and the “hard” solution is usually easer in the long run.

Most of us think that some people are naturally early risers and some of us like to stay up late, “Larks” and “Owls” as my Mother used to say. But in reality rather than being deeply embedded aspects of our personalities staying up late at night or getting up early in the morning are simply habits that we have picked up as we went along.

And like all habits getting out of bed is an easy one to reprogram once you know how. It is no good just making a firm resolve to get up early, because our habits are controlled by our subconscious mind and when your alarm goes off in the morning you will preform your usual habit and not any new habit you may thing you want to do.

So how do you make a habit then? Repetition. Habits are formed by repeating the same actions over and over until we do them automatically. Until the subconscious mind takes over and we perform the actions with out any conscious effort. So that is what we need to do in order to make a habit of getting out of bed once the alarm goes.

Like Pavlov with his dogs we will create a conditioned response so once your alarm rings you will be up and out of bed before you can even think of pulling the covers over your head and hitting the snooze button.

It is best to pick a time when you don’t have to set your alarm clock for a couple of days. Because having your alarm go off in the morning and not get up is going to reinforce the old habit and break the new habit before it has a chance to take complete hold.

What we want to do is recreate as closely as possible the conditions that normally exist when you want to get up in the morning. And then perform the action we want to become a habit, that is getting out of bed when the alarm rings.

Pick a time, not too late in the evening, we don’t want you to fall asleep for real, when the light is about the same as it is in the morning. Got to your bedroom. Get undressed put on your PJ’s, or stay naked, however it is that you normally sleep. Set your alarm for a few minuets from now and get into bed. Take a deep breath, roll over and snuggle up.

When your alarm goes off: first get out of bed then turn your alarm off, take a deep breath, stretch, touch your toes and go into the bathroom, or kitchen if you need your coffee before you do anything else. Do what you would normally do when you get out of bed. Or at least pretend to do it. The idea is to create a new link in your subconscious mind bridging the time between being asleep in bed and what you do first thing when you get up.

Next do it again. Go back to bed, set your alarm for five minuets time and snuggle under the bedclothes. Then get out of bed once your alarm goes off, take a deep breath and go into the bathroom. Then do it again and again. Remember the key to making a habit is repetition. You need to repeat it until it becomes automatic.

Half a dozen times three or four days in a row will be enough to reprogram your habit from hitting the snooze button and rolling over to getting out of bed and turning your alarm off. For that day on you will automatically get out of bed when your alarm goes off.

You may feel a little silly doing this. Going to bed just to pretend to get up in the morning might seem strange. Especially if you have to explain what your are doing to your family or a room mate. But do it any way. When you are getting up with your alarm every day both they and you will forget any silliness you might have felt.

Just remember when you are getting out of bed earlier you have to go to bed earlier. Earlier risers still need the same amount of sleep.

Changing you habits is easy once you learn how. Learning how to change your habits is easy. The hard part is wanting to learn how to be in control of your habits, because then you will have to accept responsibility for them and not be able to blame “that stupid alarm clock” when you are once again late for work.

If you can dream — and not make dreams your master;
If you can think — and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And — which is more — you’ll be a Man my son!

—Rudyard Kipling

In his Dancing with entropy Seth writes “There is no good, there is no bad, there’s just what happened.”

This is the theme of a longer article I am working on, and perhaps even a full chapter in my book. Things happen, always, all of the time, forever, and we only hurt ourselves by trying to make them fit into our subjective beliefs of good and bad, or right and wrong.

For instance missing a mortgage payment on the face of it is a bad thing. “Your home is a risk if you don’t keep up repayments.” But in my case it was a good thing.

When I realised half way through the month that come the 30th there simply would not be enough cash in our bank account to cover all the direct debits and standing orders that were due I sat down and cried. Then I picked myself up and did what I had never done before – monthly accounts. I took a long hard look at what money was coming in and what money was going out and started to do what I had until then only paid lip service to. I set a budget and stuck to it.

I have not missed a mortgage payment since and I am slowly chipping away at all my other debts, Car Loans, Credit Card etc. So missing that one payment made me improve my financial life. It gave me the wake up call I needed to actually do something and not just pretend to be addressing the problem.

But I seem incapable of starting a story and finishing with the characters in one short story. I have gotten 3 stories written, well almost they all need a little more polish before they can see the light of day. But already I have at least one sequel for each story. And one story has at least 5 subsequent scenes involving the same two main characters. That’s a novella of 20,000 words in the making.

The same thing happened to me last year when I wrote Seducing a Girl. It was meant to be a stand alone short story, but ended up being 7,000 words long and the first chapter of a Justine. I will be finishing Justine just as soon as I can figure out how to make the three major strands in the story/characters intertwine into a cohesive whole.

But the good thing about writing these new stories, and Seducing a Girl, is that they had a beginning, middle and end of their own and so can be enjoyed as stand alone stories without you, my loyal readers, having to wait 2, or 3, years for me to finish the complete novel.

So look out over the next few weeks to reading these new stories as I post them here on my blog. Subscribe to my newsletter and be the first to read these new stories. Or don’t subscribe and read them a week or so later

I wrote a total of 2,614 words which averages at 373.43 words per day. However only 1,718 words were in Alice the other 896 where on other stories. (I’ve actually lost count of the number of stories/novels I’m currently “working” on.) Either way I have not managed 1,000 per day.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way I can improve my daily word count is to get up earlier in the morning. I find that if I get an early start I can get a good bit done before the kids wake and the daily routines kick in. I’ve not been very successful in integrating my writing time into daily life. I have also tried staying up late but find I am often too tired to work properly.  So I’ll will have to make extra time by getting up earlier.

Now, I am not naturally an early riser. I have had to get up early in the past (5:30 – 6:00 am) but the longest I’ve managed to maintain it was 6-8 weeks. (You would think that after 6 weeks getting out of bed early would have become an ingrained habit, but not with me.) However now I know that I only have to become an early riser for 3 weeks, until I complete my September Resolution, and also that I am getting up to do something that I want to do (As opposed to previous periods of early rising where I was getting out of bed to commence a very long commute to work.) I am hoping that I will be able to get out of bed at 6:00am for the next 3 weeks. And that once out of bed(notice I don’t use the word awake) I will be able to do productive work.

I’ll let you know how it works out here on my blog. So subscribe to my RSS feed for updates.

So my plan is to write 1,000 words a day for the next month and complete Alice. Biased on the size of completed chapters I have a little over 29,000 words to go.

I am taking my inspiration from both the National Novel Writing Month and from 30 Days to Success by Steve Pavlina. I know it is possible to write 1,000 words a day and I know that setting a limit of only doing it for one month means that it does not seem like such a daunting task, like a complete lifestyle change would be. But then as I am going through my Mid Life Crises maybe a complete lifestyle change would do me some good

I am also thinking of publicly exposing myself by posting my word count for each day here on my blog. Of course I will have no problem posting on those days that I achieve, and exceed, my 1,000 word target. But how would I feel about days like yesterday where I only wrote 323 words of Alice. I also wrote 298 words of my Cinderella story and bits and pieces of other works so the total word count for the day wasn’t too bad. But I don’t want to bore my blog readers with posts along the lines of “Oh dear, I only wrote 128 words today, Woe is me.”

But we shall see.

Country Road

I have just turned 42 and have been thinking about my life, and my death, for the past while now.

I guess I am going through my Mid Life Crises. I am a bit late as the latest statistics that I can find show a life expectancy of 75.1 years for Irish Males. That would mean a “mid life” of 35.5. So at statistically at 42 I am already more than half way through my life. Even so I still feel, and act, like I am only 19.

However it doesn’t matter in the long run if I live for another two, twenty, or two hundred years(though I’d prefer the latter) because in the thousands of years of recorded, and unrecorded, history of mankind it is such a small moment. And in the billions of years since the Earth formed my lifetime is less than the blink of an eye.

But mainly I am sad because life is like an unfolding story and I am always keen to find out what happens next. And once I am dead I will never get to see the ending.

At least those who have commented and e-mailed me about Seducing a girl. About half of you seem to think that more will be seen of the girl on the couch and that she might play some further part in Justine’s and John’s story. This had not been my plan. She was supposed to have just a “walk on” part. She was never going to be seen again.(Look people, I didn’t even bother giving her a name.) But now that several people have mentioned that they would like to see more of her I can’t get ideas for her out of my head.
There is also another “walk on” part for a girl towards the end of Justine, and now she has that part as well. She fits the part and now there is an extra thread running through the story’s universe, so it is all good.
She also now has a name, “Julie”. Originally she was just going to be a sex object for Justine to use to play with John, and you don’t need a name for an object. Now you guys have got me thinking about her she has become a “real” person with a name and she wants her own story line!
However I don’t have space for her story line in the novel Justine. Except for her two brief appearances at the party in the beginning and towards the end, in a scene that shows a fundamental change in Justine, but which I can not describe without telling you half the story of the novel, there is no space for her. So she has ended up having her own “mini series”. I have a story outline for her that is about 4 chapters long (25,000 words). Now all I have to do is find the time to write it!
If you look at the sidebar on my site you will see a section titled “Work in Progress” there are currently 3 novels listed with a progress meter for each.
However I now have about 20 other stories started, or outlined with a plot and an plan. But I can’t work on every idea I have or I would never get anything finished. So only the 3 stories I am currently working on get a progress meter.
So if you see “Julie’s Story” popping up as a progress meter in my sidebar you know that she jumped up and grabbed me by the throat and won’t let go until she has her story told.

I can’t place the blame entirely on my readers. I did after all spend most of last weekend working on plotting/developing/outlining and writing some key scenes of another novel entitled “Domestic Service”. Again this is a brief flash of inspiration that grew into an entire novel almost over night. It started with a couple of images of some Manga that I downloaded from the Internet (Ragnarock City if you must know) and some of the costumes caught something in my imagination and out popped a future history of an overcrowded earth, with 99% of the population living in poverty, not knowing where their next meal was coming from, and the elite 1% living in luxury enclaves behind hi-tech security in a 21st century paradise: flying to orbital space station spas for week long parties, having the latest medical procedures and their every whim administered to. The story is about a young girl, called Aimee, who enters “domestic service” as a sex slave in one of the luxury enclaves to escape the life of poverty that awaits her on the outside.
However Aimee is also a character with a mind of her own. Not content with being a sex slave in one novel she has demanded a trilogy where she ends up leading a revolution that overthrows the corrupt social order and the whole story is written “by her” as she sits in her prison cell awaiting the verdict of a tribunal set up to try her for crimes against humanity.
However Aimee’s story is now parked and I am once again concentrating on writing Terminal Singularity. Then I’ll finish Justine and then I’ll finish Alice. (At least that is the current plan.)

So Happy birthday Julie, you are now a character with her own story. And you get to star along side the third most important character in Justine. I say he is the third most important character because he plays a pivotal role in the development of Justine’s and John’s relationship. Although he still doesn’t have a name, he is just called “Master” in the story. But “Master” does suit his character. We will eventually see how Master instructs Julie in the finer arts of BDSM submission and self esteem. I say “we” because I don’t quite know what is going to happen in that story because it seems that all my characters have a mind of their own.
But I think I am looking forward to the adventure.

The fact is that most people who come to my blog come to read my free novels and stories and not my blog posts. Looking at my stats I find that individual chapters of my novels get 90-100 views a day, by best blog post gets 4 or 5 views. So most people are not reading my blog.
So for the most part I am pretty much relaxed about posting only once or twice per week. Quality is much better than quantity. There are enough spammers on the internet, I do not need to spam my own blog in a furtile attempt to attract readers.

Sci-Fi
Well Sci-Fi is for kids. Yes I know that there is a lot of adult Sci-Fi written, but there is still a large percentage of the general population that associates Sci-Fi with adolescent adventures. And of course there are quite a lot of adult Sci-Fi novels that are adventure stories, and I enjoy reading them. But for people who don’t you can still get some negative reactions when you say that you not only enjoy reading Sci-Fi, but that you write it as well.

Romance
Where do I start on this one. For an adult male to admit not only to liking romance but too actually writing romance stories is totally unbelievable for some people. I get all sorts of reactions from people, but most of the reactions stem from the fact that most people’s idea of a romance writer is Barbara Cartland and they just do not know how to handle the fact that I, a heterosexual, married(with kids), 41 year old man, write romance stories.
Heck even my wife didn’t believe that I would do it until I did it.

Erotic
Well that is just another word for hard-core porn. End of story. I don’t even try to convince people that don’t know, or won’t accept that erotica is not pornography, that I what I write is completely different from hard-core porn and that pornography and erotica are worlds apart. As far as some people are concerned I am just a filthy pornographer trying to dress up his smut in an arty-farty guise.

So when I tell people that I write Sci-Fi erotic romances the most common reaction is that they think that I am making a joke. That is where I usually leave it. If they ask “No, really what do you do.” I tell them “No, really I write Sci-Fi erotic romance stories.” Once they realise that I am serious all the above mentioned stereotypical reactions try to got off inside their heads at the same time usually leading to totally bemused puzzlement.
At which point I usually put them out of their misery by saying “It sells very well.”
And they suddenly relax because I am not some weird pervert, I am simply doing it for the money and they quickly move the conversation on to another subject. But I know that I will continue to get strange looks from people and there will always be a weary reserve from them.
Remember that when people ask “What do you do?”. They don’t really care what you do, they are just looking for a label to put you in a box. So for the most part I tell people that I make web sites and keep the Sci-Fi erotic romances as my guilty little secret.

Here is a fragment of the scene when she achieves “enlightenment”:

“So he never loved me,” Justine.
“I can’t say what he felt,” Master replies.
Master and Justine are silent for a moment
“So do you love me?” Justine
Master sighed, “What is love?”
—————-
“Are you asking do I like you? do I need you? Do I desire you? Do I want set you free?
Justine looks up, “Do you want to set me free?”
Master smiles, “I can’t set you free. No person can set another free. Only you can set yourself free.”
“He enslaved me.”
“No one can enslave you, only you can make yourself a slave.”
“I didn’t want to be his slave.”
“Then why did you stay with him?”
“Because I loved him.”
“Did you?”
“Are you going to tell me that you know what love is, and what I felt wasn’t true love!”
“Since time began countless philosophers, poets and general layabouts have tried to define what love is. None have ever succeeded. You can’t define love, you can only feel love.”
“I felt love for him.”
“Did he feel love for you?”
Justine started to answer, then paused.
“No,” she answered after a long moment. “He didn’t love me. He doesn’t love himself, so how could he have ever love me.”
Master smiled, “Now that you have looked into your heart of hearts and seen the truth, now you can set yourself free.”
“And once I am free?” Justine looked up at Master once more.
Master broke into the widest smile Justine had ever seen. “Once you are free, then you can fine true love.”

“Master” might at some stage get a name.

It is only a fragment of a first draft, and it is of storyline that happens before the action in Justine, so I will probably never finish the scene. But after telling you the other day that she had had a fight with her first lover that “tore her apart emotionally and left her slumped on the ground crying her eyes out” I thought that you might like to know that her story has a happy ending.

And for me taking that first step is the easiest thing in the world to. It is taking the second step, and the third step and the fourth step, step after step, day after day, even year after year, that is the hard part.
I have taken so many first steps that I’ve probably completed 1,000 “1,000 mile journeys”. But because they have all been first steps I have completed relatively little. I have just walked 1,000 little steps around and around in a circle. An uneven staggered circle as a burst of enthusiasm propels me in one direction, and then the next big idea propels me in the opposite.
And so at the start of each journey I resolve to myself that this time I will complete my journey. I will make a map, a plan of what I want to archive. I will list my goals. I will do a to-do list. I will take all the necessary steps needed to complete my journey.
But even then I don’t want to take all those little steps. I want efficiency. I want speed. I want instant gratification.
I don’t want 1,000 little steps. I want one great leap forward. One giant step to take me right to the end. One lotto win that will make my life perfect.
I have started so many journeys not looking at all the little steps, but looking only at the result. “I am looking at the big picture,” I tell myself. I visualise myself standing on the summit of the mountain, not bothering with all the rivers and gullies that stand in my way.
I look for one burst of enthusiasm, one big jump that will take me over all those little rivers and gullies. And then I will magically find myself at the rainbow’s end.
But all those big giant steps look so big. Each one is such a big leap. Each one such a irrevocable commitment. Each one so momentous that I just can’t make myself take the plunge. I just stand, tethering on the edge, until my next brilliant idea takes me back in the opposite direction.
But now I have realised that they are all the same journey. All those false starts are my journey. I have only one life, there is only one journey and each day I take another step, regardless of whether or not I wish it. Each day I am one step closer to the end. I get no choice in whether or not to take each step. But I do get a choice of what direction I take. Each day I get a choice of doing what I want with that day.
Now I no longer look for that great leap forward. I no longer want to suddenly be transported to the end. I want to take one little step forward: write one post on my blog, write one page on my novel, help my children discover one new, exciting thing about the wonderful life they are leading.
And that is all I need to do. Just take one little step in the direction I want to go in. And enjoy each and every moment of this wonderful life that I am privileged to live.
And in due time I will reach the end of my journey, as all journeys must come to an end. But in the meantime I intend to enjoy as many of those little steps as I can possibly squeeze in to my life.