Time Trials

Daily grind of contributing to 2 blogs, editing books, and managing a small business can wear you down. Labann doesn’t like to juggle, usually serves only one client at a time to devote all his attention and do his best. Time is THE most precious commodity. Do you fritter it away amusing others, considering ideas, or waiting for something to happen? People who care about ideas only care about their own, so why bother?

Connection with others is what everyone seeks. You can’t exploit someone unless you break through her/his defenses. So many look to hook their wagon onto someone else’s style of book, any manuscript that comes along that’s totally unique sings the wrong song. Do something different, nobody gets it. Yet progress requires innovation, something to spark interest. Innovators seldom secure sustenance, more intent on personal voyages than pots of goals. Only those who set themselves up to capitalize once a market exists profit off of pioneers.

Takes all day to go anywhere distant by bike. You leave at dawn, might make it back by dinner. Seems an extravagant waste of hours until you calculate all the costs of motoring, which easily devours annual pay of those who earn minimum wage or entire lives of whoever works for nothing in lieu of deserved compensation. Riding a bike gives you time to think of such inequities. When you’re making money and motoring back and forth, you don’t much care what else goes on.

Some anniversaries pass unnoticed. Began writing Bike&Chain in earnest 14 years ago. Have just completed its 3rd edit. Now must decide to leave up or take down. A few thousand visitors offered no encouragement. Blog entries blur book content boundaries. Readers expect content for free, must think someone else subsidizes. Did you ignore any advertising here? This has always been a free service at Labann’s expense for those who couldn’t afford to pay anyway.

Surveys call to ask personal questions and keep you from doing something more important to you. You don’t know who they are, really, or why they want your input. There are no secrets anymore. All has already been revealed. Yet they expect you to sift through your own ashes to find cogent lumps of coal to suit their nefarious purposes. Isn’t that a service for which clients ordinarily pay? Whatever bad they find in you they put there. Why expect stellar citizenship after years of active neglect and bad example? Personal choices are what society allows, encourages and fosters, nothing moreso than banned behaviors, which elevate deviant acts into religious fervor. Everyone plots personal coups d’etat. Until opportunity knocks, there’s not much else to occupy your time.