How to live in a connected world?

I am wracked with self doubts which are strongest when I turn voyeur—when I peer in on the lives of others, seeing images I am conditioned into thinking constitute my real life. Been there, done some of that, none of which brought me the promised feeling of euphoria, that sense of peace, that attainment of something permanent—Duh! I sure was looking in the wrong place for the wrong kind of stuff. 

The media (and I am one of them) propagates a false myth of what it means to be happy and the power of the written and spoken word is such that indeed it also influences many others into thinking that this was the stuff dreams were made of. It is when I look to the outside for inspiration that I am most vulnerable. When I think back to what I could have done or to the future of what could be that I feel insecure.

For deep down I always know what makes me truly happy. What makes me live life in all its glory—with its ups and downs, the joy of feeling every living waking moment as if it were my last and the pain of separation, of not having that which is most dear.

The question then is how to balance the inside with the outside in today’s connected world? It is only by being discerning in what I take in—in what and whom I connect with—that I can tune out the noise. By having the strength to exercise my right of choice I give myself the permission to bridge to my real reality. Fading out the confusion of the outside. Try it, and tell me how it feels.

For more go to LAXMIwrites

Opting for life

The sound of the bar crashed over me, wetting me in the detritus of past failures, mixing with the bile of envy, which bubbled up from somewhere deep inside me till I could taste the loss on my lips.

I swallowed and closed my eyes, willing my racing heart to quieten, shutting down my inner conscience so it could not ask me any more questions, pushing back the sharp sounds of gaiety which bathed me in its technicolour hues, cutting me with its forced happiness. Her face stared back at me.

But why—I wondered—why was I so upset?

For I had moved on, hadn’t I? Had found another life.

Yet she had brought back memories, the comfort of the known, the mind numbing routine which robbed me of my line of thinking, seducing me with its comfort of not needing to feel.

To live life on automatic, not feeling what it meant to be really alive. No highs or lows, just the in between. I had opted for life. The pain of creation, the excitement of feeling. 

A space where I could feel my heart as a part of me. Where I was in myself, not living a separate existence. I realised, as long as I lived in the present it was so alright. 

No projecting into the future on the what I may not have.

Not dwelling on the past and what I had once had.

The present, when I was alive, healthy and had the warmth of my sweetheart’s arms around me welcoming me back.

That was what I had, this was my reality, and it was so right.

Lust for life - How Anja got her story

I met Anja Hebner at a Guardian Masterclass run by the wonderful Greg Mosse and fabulous Kate Mosse. Thanks to this workshop, I got the synopsis of the third novel in my Bombay Chronicles Series. I also discovered a brilliant writing guru in Greg Mosse, and a lifelong friend in Anja Hebner. This is Anja's story of birthing her first novel:

"An old man who had moved me with his lust for life and touched me with his intriguing story, died and left nobody. That's when I decided to be his heir and write his story down. I saved some money, took three months off my regular job, got a great send-off at work and many questions: 
How are you ever going to finish a book in only three months? I had no idea. 
Are you going to earn money on this? I don't think so. 
How on earth did you come up with the idea of writing a book?It's my dream.

Anja Hebner

Without further ado I sat down on day one and wrote until my fingers got sore. I wrote the entire story that was living in my head, without sequence and structure. I wrote what was there. I stole from his letters, some of which he had kept for 70 years and invent stories to the photographs in the sailor's leather suitcase that had served him through half a century of seamanship. I imagined, made-up, burst out and erased, researched and deleted pages and pages on end. This man ought not to be forgotten! Then I met a professional writer. He did not read a word of my prose and asked me:

What is the perspective?
Which type of plot are you using?

Who do you want the reader to identify with?

Who is delivering your message?

What IS your message?

I did not know. I had produced 200 pages of potentially random, meaningless, unconnected text that couldn't be used to anything! I stopped writing. I couldn't even look at my text again. It looked ugly and wrong.  It took a weekend in London at a Guardian Masterclass to hear author Kate Mosse say: "The most important thing with your first novel is to finish it. Drop all complexity, all those extra layers, times and flashbacks. Finish it as fast as you can." And it took fellow student Laxmi to say: "You will learn everything by writing your first book. That's what you're writing it for." 

I wrote more pages and some more. I edited all these sheets of words and characters until they blurred before my eyes. Two months after I had written word one, did I send my complete draft one off to the people who had volunteered to proofread it for me and would let me have their honest and competent opinion. It was more to prove there was actually something I could present: my book.  As immature and incomplete and imperfect it may be: I made the old man's life unforgettable and my dream come true."

For more go to LAXMIwrites 

How much do you value yourself?

A friend who is self employed, called me up excited that she had been offered a role with a publishing company—only hitch, they did not have money to pay her then, but if she were to come on board and help out then perhaps they would pay her in a few weeks or in a month’s time. Listening to her I realised that I myself have been in this position in the past—and when you are in it you never know how to react. The temptation is to reach out and take what is in sight, just so you can keep the illusion of being busy, of having a purpose. The mind is a nervous monkey and so if you keep your hands busy, it does not have time to think. Perhaps this is where she was coming from.

From the outside it was easier to see that she needed to step back and reconsider her options. If they did not have the money, shouldn’t she just wait till they had money before she joined them? Or tell them what her time was worth and negotiate with them to be paid in retrospect? Easier said than done, and when you are in it, its really tough to sit back and turn down something that has come your way, so what if it did not pay just now.

I have been guilty of the same on many occasions—giving before getting, seems to come naturally to me. As I was mulling over what to tell her I chanced upon this piece by Seth Godin, entrepreneur & blogger who I hugely respect: “The new economy often involves trading in things that don’t cost money. There’s no incremental cost in writing an essay, composing a song or making an introduction. Since it doesn’t cost money to play, we have the ability to give before we get.”  And this I truly believe in. 

So in my life as an author I have seen the work I create as something to be shared towards building my platform. I price my books at 99cents, to encourage new readers to try me, I spend time on social networks, connecting with those around the world, sharing thoughts, opinions and meeting some incredible people in the process.

Seth goes on to say “Tribes of talented individuals who are connected, mutually trustful and supported by one another are in a position to create a movement, to deliver items of value, to move ideas forward faster than.” Isn’t this what we within the Indie writing community practice?

Yet when I talk to many of my self-employed friends they emphasise that I need to value my time, my effort, my connections first. If I don’t value myself how will the others value me? And if they did not value their own time and charge for it, how would they survive?

So how does one find the balance? How does one form one’s own tribe by trading in that which is not just money, yet not be out of pocket? One way of course is to hold down a job, while you use your own time to find those connections that matter. Pretty solid approach, except that over a period of time, as you find your individuality you realise that you need a more independent platform(s) of self expression, and of course this needs to pay.

The other way is what John Purkiss and David Royston-Lee call the portfolio career in their best-selling Brand You, where you follow your different interests at the same time. An interesting option isn’t it? So you don’t have to stick to just one linear approach. You can define yourself in a more multi-stranded-fashion. Taking a leaf out of our own genetic programming, perhaps we can be more like our own DNA, weave in different strands of interest so that together they make a strong bundle? 

I can be a marketer and an author. All I have to do is first believe in myself, in my worth, in what only I can uniquely offer. And then put this into tangible words so that it is clear to the outside world too. A tall order but surely possible?

What do you think?

Find Seth Godin’s blog here, and read this excellent post from John Purkiss.

The outside or the inner voice?

I realized that I had been looking for something for many years now, since I was five. Its a quest which I can openly say today, that that many of the people I meet are on. We are many of us seeking out a truth to the way of living, a purpose it would seem. 

I have always turned to the outside; to ask people about their life and what brought them to the point of today; in the hope that I get a kernel of something. A rare insight into that energy which has propelled them so far. Yet I know on some level, that is often always not so. What you see from the outside is never the entire truth. 

Gunn Haglund a yoga teacher who runs Planet Energize is of the opinion that rather than try to do something about it, you should take a step back, just relax. I played with the words in my head, parking it for the future for just being is not something I do very well.

Then I asked John Purkiss, a mentor and author of Brand You - The best-selling guide to building your personal brand a question: how do I prevent myself from falling back into old patterns? His answer was that sometimes the best thing to do was not do much. It was time to listen to the inside rather than just follow the outside.

Two very different people -- both with me a similar message. My instinct said they were right. Yet I wondered how to do this. My solution : to carve out a few hours in the day, when I don't let life admin get in the way. When I shut the window to the outside, cut the worry chords and gave myself permission to just write, to flow with my thoughts and meander. 

What do you think? The outside or the inner voice?

...To be a jellyfish

Did you know that some species of jellyfish, that these protozoans (in the parlance of the big-bang-theory-world of geeks) never die. According to a report in New York Times — at any stage of its development  — this species can transform itself back to a polyp,  the jellyfish's earliest stage of life, thus escaping death and achieving potential immortality. 

This then negates one of the main laws of life as we know it, that we are all caught in the eternal cirlce of life and death. Ferdinando Boero, the author of the science paper who revealed this phenomenon likened this species to a butterfly that, instead of dying, turns back into a caterpillar or  an old man who grows younger and younger until he is again a foetus. 

While the publication of this paper Reversing the Life Cycle did not raise much eyebrows, for me it is exciting. What if at some point in the future, scientists were to figure out a way to tap into the genes of this jellyfish, and what if then we could all have access to this secret, to find a way to reverse physically, and thus mentally, and emotionally everything we have been through in life so far. That way the we would have a choice of wiping out the conditioning we grew up with, that very barrier that holds many of us back from being what we wanted to be in the first place. What if I could actually change my own destiny by choosing which avatars I wanted to be in this very life? Imagine.

Hence I am naming this blog page Immortal Protozoan, after this incredible jellyfish that I want to be. This page links back to my main Young Adult site. The Immortal Protozoan will cover anything to with reinvention, creativity (ie. those who die a thousand deaths)  especially people (authors, et al) who dare to live many lives in one life time. Stay tuned.