Blue Willow rolled out for yet another party!
Then I tutored Samir for a couple of hours.
Afterwards, he hit me up for advice.
It’s hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that Samir is a mere two years older than RTT: Samir is so mature, and RTT is so… RTT.
Samir is constantly being hit up by people who want him to go into business with them. Cell phone repair shops!
“Thirty percent!” he told me. “I assume none of the risks, and I get 30% of the revenues!”
“Thirty percent of the revenues or thirty percent of the profits?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” he admitted.
“Also, what business structure is this person proposing? ‘Cause they may do it on a handshake in Algeria, but that’s not how they do it here. If you want to protect yourself against risk, you’re gonna have to set up an LLC.”
A few months back when I was trying to talk Samir into doing the ice cream truck cell phone repair thang – instead of the Mister Softie jingle, the truck would play, Oh doncha weep, and doncha moan! Samir is here to fix your phone! – I showed him how to do the Quick & Dirty Biz Plan, which is a kind of grid divided up into four sections.
He’d drawn one up for this latest scheme, too – quick learner, Samir! – and I pretended to look at it.
“Here’s the deal, though,” I said. “You have a job. I get that your boss is underpaying you, that he’s a complete jerk. Nevertheless, you have a job. You’re saving – what? A thousand bucks a month?”
“A thousand dollars a month,” he confirmed.
“There is no possible way you can keep working your present job, launch a new business and keep studying for TOEFL and the GRE. None. You can do two of those things. Not three. I can’t tell you what to do –“
“But I want you to tell me what to do,” Samir said.
“But I can’t do it,” I said. “It goes against my nature. What I can tell you is that you’re brilliant, really brilliant, and that I think it would be a shame if you didn’t get your PhD. Because that would set you up to snag a position at Google or Apple or one of the big corporations, or to launch your entrepreneurial dreams on a big scale. You didn’t start studying electronics so you could start a cell phone repair business.”
“I want to get the PhD,” he said.
“Right,” I said. “TOEFL is a difficult test. The GRE is a difficult test. You need to be studying 20 hours a week. So that means you either quit your current job to pursue the new business startup, or you give up on the business startup.”
From the look in his eyes, I could see perfectly well he was thinking, I’ll do all three. I just won’t tell her.
But hey! I’m not his mother.
“In this country, people don’t get rich by working, Samir,” I added. “They get rich by owning stuff, by having the value of the equity they’ve invested increase, by collecting passive rents. If you really want to get rich, I might advise looking at real estate. Or looking at stocks. Although I wouldn’t buy stocks right now; seems to me the stock market is overdue for a correction.”
###
Once home, I was in a happier mood than I had been in several days.
Everyone in the world was calling me.
Then I read a blog entry from Jon Carroll, who used to be a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and whom I kinda/sorta know.
In the blog entry, Jon discussed all the reasons why he didn’t feel compelled to write very often anymore.
And these hit home.
Why does one write?
For money?
For approval?
Because everything is going wrong?
Because one has a story that absolutely needs to be told?
All of the above?
I’m still having just the hardest time in the world organizing my fiction-writing. The words on the page are just words on the page. And yes, I mean at this point, I have enough craft so that my words on the page are purt-ty good from a literary point of view.
But sans juice, I’m just not excited about writing them. I’m writing on spec; my life these days is pretty even-keeled although yes, of course, I’d rather win that Nobel Prize for Literature while I’m still alive than have it awarded posthumously. My stories are interesting, but then every story is interesting, really.
###
I guess I’m feeling like my stories, my preoccupations are not particularly relevant.
What old people feel, I guess.
At the party yesterday, I spent 20 minutes chatting with Old Bob – I’d prefer to call him “Mr. Scheffer,” but his progeny insist I call him “Old Bob” – who is 96 years old and perfectly lucid. He still lives on his own although in the Schaeffer compound, the old farmstead where years and years ago, he built houses for his five children. Three of them still live there.
“Getting old is very boring,” Old Bob told me. “I have a friend who decided he just couldn’t take it anymore, so he went to his garage, got in his car, rolled up all his windows, and turned on the motor. But I don’t drive anymore, so I don’t even have a car. I have a gun, but I think that’s too messy.”
“Ummm – your father is sharing suicide ideations with me,” I told Old Bob’s oldest daughter. Before she retired, she was a nurse practitioner.
But she didn’t seem particularly concerned.
So maybe this is just Old Bob’s party trick. Who knows?
###
Last night on the phone, Ben was talking to me about all the fabulous new music he’d heard in the last couple of weeks – he works with a bunch of 20-somethings, and he builds his music library by hitting them up for recommendations.
“I’ll send you a thumb drive!” he promised.
“Great!” I said enthusiastically.
But, of course, I will never listen to the music on his thumb drive. I’d rather listen to Prokofiev and Frank Sinatra. I've heard Prokofiev and Frank Sinatra a billion times before.
And then there are the pals of my own age who like to keep up with all the most recent social media controversies, particularly the latest Twitter Storms.
The WELL inoculated me against social media. I’m so-o-o-o over thinking social media is any kind of meaningful gauge of what’s really happening.
That something really is happening, I have no doubt. I can feel its vibration at that deepest level of collectivized consciousness.
###
I keep returning to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
katestine's coral reef metaphor for humanity. Yes, yes, yes – you may be the red spot of coral surrounded by yellow corals! But at drone level, 20 meters off the ground, all corals look the same.
Then I tutored Samir for a couple of hours.
Afterwards, he hit me up for advice.
It’s hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that Samir is a mere two years older than RTT: Samir is so mature, and RTT is so… RTT.
Samir is constantly being hit up by people who want him to go into business with them. Cell phone repair shops!
“Thirty percent!” he told me. “I assume none of the risks, and I get 30% of the revenues!”
“Thirty percent of the revenues or thirty percent of the profits?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” he admitted.
“Also, what business structure is this person proposing? ‘Cause they may do it on a handshake in Algeria, but that’s not how they do it here. If you want to protect yourself against risk, you’re gonna have to set up an LLC.”
A few months back when I was trying to talk Samir into doing the ice cream truck cell phone repair thang – instead of the Mister Softie jingle, the truck would play, Oh doncha weep, and doncha moan! Samir is here to fix your phone! – I showed him how to do the Quick & Dirty Biz Plan, which is a kind of grid divided up into four sections.
He’d drawn one up for this latest scheme, too – quick learner, Samir! – and I pretended to look at it.
“Here’s the deal, though,” I said. “You have a job. I get that your boss is underpaying you, that he’s a complete jerk. Nevertheless, you have a job. You’re saving – what? A thousand bucks a month?”
“A thousand dollars a month,” he confirmed.
“There is no possible way you can keep working your present job, launch a new business and keep studying for TOEFL and the GRE. None. You can do two of those things. Not three. I can’t tell you what to do –“
“But I want you to tell me what to do,” Samir said.
“But I can’t do it,” I said. “It goes against my nature. What I can tell you is that you’re brilliant, really brilliant, and that I think it would be a shame if you didn’t get your PhD. Because that would set you up to snag a position at Google or Apple or one of the big corporations, or to launch your entrepreneurial dreams on a big scale. You didn’t start studying electronics so you could start a cell phone repair business.”
“I want to get the PhD,” he said.
“Right,” I said. “TOEFL is a difficult test. The GRE is a difficult test. You need to be studying 20 hours a week. So that means you either quit your current job to pursue the new business startup, or you give up on the business startup.”
From the look in his eyes, I could see perfectly well he was thinking, I’ll do all three. I just won’t tell her.
But hey! I’m not his mother.
“In this country, people don’t get rich by working, Samir,” I added. “They get rich by owning stuff, by having the value of the equity they’ve invested increase, by collecting passive rents. If you really want to get rich, I might advise looking at real estate. Or looking at stocks. Although I wouldn’t buy stocks right now; seems to me the stock market is overdue for a correction.”
###
Once home, I was in a happier mood than I had been in several days.
Everyone in the world was calling me.
Then I read a blog entry from Jon Carroll, who used to be a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and whom I kinda/sorta know.
In the blog entry, Jon discussed all the reasons why he didn’t feel compelled to write very often anymore.
And these hit home.
Why does one write?
For money?
For approval?
Because everything is going wrong?
Because one has a story that absolutely needs to be told?
All of the above?
I’m still having just the hardest time in the world organizing my fiction-writing. The words on the page are just words on the page. And yes, I mean at this point, I have enough craft so that my words on the page are purt-ty good from a literary point of view.
But sans juice, I’m just not excited about writing them. I’m writing on spec; my life these days is pretty even-keeled although yes, of course, I’d rather win that Nobel Prize for Literature while I’m still alive than have it awarded posthumously. My stories are interesting, but then every story is interesting, really.
###
I guess I’m feeling like my stories, my preoccupations are not particularly relevant.
What old people feel, I guess.
At the party yesterday, I spent 20 minutes chatting with Old Bob – I’d prefer to call him “Mr. Scheffer,” but his progeny insist I call him “Old Bob” – who is 96 years old and perfectly lucid. He still lives on his own although in the Schaeffer compound, the old farmstead where years and years ago, he built houses for his five children. Three of them still live there.
“Getting old is very boring,” Old Bob told me. “I have a friend who decided he just couldn’t take it anymore, so he went to his garage, got in his car, rolled up all his windows, and turned on the motor. But I don’t drive anymore, so I don’t even have a car. I have a gun, but I think that’s too messy.”
“Ummm – your father is sharing suicide ideations with me,” I told Old Bob’s oldest daughter. Before she retired, she was a nurse practitioner.
But she didn’t seem particularly concerned.
So maybe this is just Old Bob’s party trick. Who knows?
###
Last night on the phone, Ben was talking to me about all the fabulous new music he’d heard in the last couple of weeks – he works with a bunch of 20-somethings, and he builds his music library by hitting them up for recommendations.
“I’ll send you a thumb drive!” he promised.
“Great!” I said enthusiastically.
But, of course, I will never listen to the music on his thumb drive. I’d rather listen to Prokofiev and Frank Sinatra. I've heard Prokofiev and Frank Sinatra a billion times before.
And then there are the pals of my own age who like to keep up with all the most recent social media controversies, particularly the latest Twitter Storms.
The WELL inoculated me against social media. I’m so-o-o-o over thinking social media is any kind of meaningful gauge of what’s really happening.
That something really is happening, I have no doubt. I can feel its vibration at that deepest level of collectivized consciousness.
###
I keep returning to
katestine's coral reef metaphor for humanity. Yes, yes, yes – you may be the red spot of coral surrounded by yellow corals! But at drone level, 20 meters off the ground, all corals look the same.
