Ditched Corporate Life for Internet Self Employment
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You are crazy if you don’t…
Living at the end of a 1.5 km dirt road, in the middle of bush, 25kms from the nearest town tends to give you a different perspective to living in a suburban house 25kms from the CBD. I don’t know whether it is the wallaby droppings or the 2 stroke fumes from the brush cutter I have been wielding but I have suddenly developed a bad case of the angries about all the blather going on back in my home town around a certain social media conference.
I had every intention of going toConnectNow until I saw the price tag and then I had misgivings, would it be worth $700 to see Gary Vaynerchuk? Would anything I heard there, or anyone I met, give me at least a 2 to 1 ROI? Did I want to say hello to all of those @names that I follow on Twitter, but who hate me because I do that disgusting thing – marketing on the internet. In the end my partner made the choice for me and declared a compulsory stay in the bush for a week.
No problem, I can follow what was going in from afar. Helpful people like @Warlach is live blogging the event and I can drop in and out as it went along. Isn’t it cool how you can see what is going on in other places even when you aren’t there? Hurrah for information dissemination via online tools.
Yet I was left feeling unsatisfied. Worse I felt that I was witnessing a bunch of people stating the bleeding obvious, not people working the bleeding edge. I did mention my dissatisfaction via Twitter
Not really impressed with what is being tweeted out of #cnow . So we have taken human nature digital, yeah we knew that 3 years ago at least
I think it all has to do with a conversation I want to have with the nearest neighbour (about 2km away). We need to get the back area slashed and that means making a face to face visit and chat to someone we haven’t seen since we bought the place 2 years ago. I am not good cold calling on neighbours, and there isn’t a tool in the world that will make it any easier to communicate with them. Damn you social media, why can’t you help me?
Same with people in remote areas that desperately need assistance with food, medicine, shelter, unless somehow they miraculously catch the attention of someone looking for a cause celebre, they are totally screwed. Where is the REAL help from social media, I want to see the figures on how many lives it has saved.
A room full of privileged middle class people paying to hear other privileged middle class people rave on about how great it is to be able communicate is kind of sickening when you think of it in those terms. Especially when they start retweeting crap about relationships and connections.
Remember the scene in 2001 where the ape discovers the bone tool and all the rest of the apes go…ape shit? Imagine now the apes continuing to go off for days, weeks….years. That’s what it all looks like from this end of the universe. When does someone tell Ugg to STFU and build a house?
Here’s to the people out there that are using the tool…and that is all it is… a TOOL, to actually accomplish something other than talking about the tool. Communication is a natural human trait and most of us can’t help but rabbit on. Why is it that some would have you believe that social media is somehow revolutionising communication. The revolution comes when this shit starts solving some real world issues without causing others. Then I will be impressed with people talking about how cool it all is.
(*apologies to Devin Townsend and SYL)
Read Ten Years Ago part 1
Read Ten Years Ago part 2
After a lot of huffing and puffing my nipple ring was finally extracted (and ultimately lost), I was quite sad about that, and even more so later on when I realised I would never get it done again as I required MRIs every now and then. Into the MRI I went and while I quite enjoy being in enclosed spaces, being told not to swallow for minutes at a time was a real exercise in mental control. Try it some time.
Next came admission and my first night in acute care. The next day brought some surprises. Firstly I could no longer walk at all, I felt like an octopus with legs like string. No matter what I told them to do they would just flail about weakly not supporting my weight.
Then came a morning of tests by my neurologist that found that I had no sensation in my scalp, face and other places on my body. The biggest shock came when she asked me to raise my arms above my head. Brain said “arms go up”…arms went to about shoulder height and stopped, then flopped back down. I looked at them dumbly as they too were now traitors to me. I seem to remember letting out a “Woah!”.
My swift deterioration made me a cause celebre in the neurology department and I was asked if I minded being “presented” at some discussion thing at the hospital. Always the good girl I said yes, of course. Anything to help science and all of that.
Then I had visitors, my kids. I hadn’t asked for them to come but their father had a minor panic attack when someone rang him and told him I was in acute care. I really didn’t want them to see me in hospital as it was going to freak them out (they were 10 and 8). When they turned up I was less than polite to their father, looking back I can see that he was concerned, but he didn’t bother to check with me and I was pretty sure this was all going to be a big mistake and I would be released really soon. Still they seemed to enjoy pushing me around in my chair.
That afternoon I went off for one of those really fun things, a lumbar puncture. If you have ever watched House MD. you will know that people wince when a needle is inserted into your spine to withdraw spinal fluid. Of all the things I have had done to my body, my least favourite thing is a lumbar puncture…very very unpleasant. Especially when the punturer announces that they hit a blood vessel and not only I was bleeding, but if the blood has contaminated the sample too much they will need to do another.
The next day saw questions about the possibility of me having AIDS. This finally flipped me out and I totally freaked. I rang my mother in tears and asked her to come (when things get bad I need my mum). She dropped everything and was there within an hour. She calmed me down, told me that whatever was wrong with me we would deal with it like we always did, and that until a diagnosis was made I just had to roll with the punches as they ruled everything out. She tried to get more information from the medical staff but they were being very tight lipped (because they still had no idea).
That night I was hooked up to a mega dose steroid drip. Whether the dose was wrong, or I was sensitive to the drugs but my veins felt like acid was going in and I cried some more and asked the nurses for pain relief (and I NEVER ask for pain relief…yeah i was one of those crazy martyrs). They gave me the bad news that all they could give me was paracetamol as they had no authority to give anything stronger. That night was agonising and I bore it by crying quietly all night rather than make a scene and demand help.
My final day in hospital was really strange. The neurologist on duty came to see me and said “Good news, we know what you have it’s only Multiple Sclerosis” before I had time to absorb what that meant, he went on to say “We thought you may have had an aggressive tumour that would have seen you gone by Christmas”, he then told me that I wouldn’t need to be presented to their discussion thing as MS wasn’t very interesting (or that was how I heard it). I was to be released later in the day if the steroids had done their work, and I needed to do a visual acuity test to see if I had lost any sight.
And that was that… just like that. I was given no information, no prognosis, nothing. Just a reminder to see my neurologist after I got out and see you later. 99% of what I have learned about MS I have learned through research rather than medical advice. But that is for another blog and another day.
A decade ago I learned that I had an uninteresting incurable auto-immune disease that would make the rest of my life even more unpredictable than the average person’s. Would I change having it for the lessons I have learned about myself in those 10 years, on a good day I say no, on a bad I say yes. I am still learning though, and that is the main thing.
‘Steel wheels @ Fishermans Wharf, Low…‘ by timparkinson via Flickr
Image is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution licence
Read part 1 of Ten Years Ago
The next day I drove again for an hour to my mother’s house. She worked in hospitals for 30 odd years, and I knew I wasn’t going to fool her with my staggering gait and my flailing arms. Instead I chose to tell her straight out that the day after our girls night I would be presenting at the doctor, and that is what I did.
I felt like a fraud sitting in the doctor’s waiting room. Sure it was harder to walk than it was the day before, and somewhere along the way I had caught my wrist on something sharp and there was a bit of a gash that I couldn’t feel and didn’t notice at the time. Nothing hurt, I didn’t feel “sick” and I was pretty sure if I concentrated hard enough I could walk a little bit better than if I didn’t.
The doctor rang the closest neurologist and insisted I get in to see her NOW. So I drove round the corner to her rooms and she saw me during her lunch break. There was some co-ordination tests, some walking in straight line tests, and lots of hitting with a reflex hammer. Her next words stunned me.
“I want you to go to the emergency room. Don’t go home to get pajamas or toiletries. I will tell them you are coming and they will admit you straight away”
That sounded serious and when I told my then boyfriend who was waiting outside he went the colour of dirty milk. Still wanting to feel in control I drove myself and the boyfriend to the hospital and checked in at the emergency room. The ushered me into a curtained off bed and the waiting started for a bed in the hospital proper. I still felt like I shouldn’t be there, that I wasn’t really sick, just a bit wobbly. I didn’t feel scared, just interested where it would all end up. I was still heavily in denial.
A nurse eventually popped her head in and told e to strip down to nothing but underwear and put on a gown. She also told me to remove any jewelry.
“Any jewelry?” I asked
“Yes, anything metal. You are going to have an MRI and it is a giant magnet, you need to remove anything metal.”
My boyfriend and I looked at each other and started giggling like schoolgirls.
“Do you have needle nosed pliers?” I asked the nurse ” I have a piercing that I will need to take out”
She sighed in an exasperated way and went off looking for the medical equivalent of pliers.
To be continued….
‘Tools‘ by adactio via Flickr
Image is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution licence
I was working in the IT department of a casino and we had been ramping up for the devil that was Y2K. The hysteria of the time had led to lots of government and corporate attention on our systems and the general feeling was “bugger planes falling out of the sky, we have to make sure the punters don’t get a new year’s bonus if something goes haywire”. In the last weeks of December many long hours and practice runs took place to make sure we were ready for anything.
Sometime during that period I noticed I had a patch on my right upper arm that had this weird burning feeling. Like sunburn, but it didn’t hurt to touch and there was no red mark or anything. It was more annoying than alarming and so I chose to ignore it.
New Years Eve passed as we all know with no ill effects and all of the stress and long hours were left behind with a sigh of relief and a lot of “told you so” between us techie types. I had some leave booked and was looking forward to sitting around doing absolutely nothing. The kids were with their father for the school holidays and while I had some social stuff planned, for most of the time I planned to be on IRC talking to friends and playing computer games.
It was a fairly hot January and where I was living had no air conditioning. I have never liked the heat much and so had a fan set up to point at me and the computer. The PC was not happy in the heat and would shut down every now and then and I would take the opportunity to take snoozes till it cooled down.
The burning feeling on my skin had migrated to my chest area and had grown to quite a large amount of skin real estate. On top of that the ends of my ribs developed a nasty pain. I wrote that off as being something to do with bad chair I was sitting in and my posture was bad. Also it seemed that my feet would occasionally tangle around each other and I would trip up, but as I wasn’t really moving around much I could ignore it.
It’s amazing how your brain can absorb and adjust to things such as these. I truly had no surface fear that something was terribly wrong. Even when my daughter’s birthday rolled around and eating the chocolate mud cake produced the weird effect of tasting like chocolate on one side of my tongue and tasted like poo on the other side. Probably a cold coming or something, nothing to worry about at all! Denial is an amazing thing.
The denial was sustainable while I was by myself, but a week later I went out with friends for dinner to celebrate Australia Day. I drove for an hour across the city to where we were to meet and staggered (literally) out of the car. As I grabbed onto anything that would support me as I walked into the restaurant I saw the face of one of my friends, and ex ambulance driver. The change from smiling to this horrible shocked look was like a splash of ice water, it suddenly hit me I was in trouble, there was no hiding it.
I copped a major lecture about going to the hospital ASAP and why hadn’t I seen a doctor. I remember that nothing was said about what it could be, probably not to freak me out, but I should have known by the shocked look that he thought that it was something serious. I managed to talk my way out of it pointing out that I had to go visit my mother the next day and that we had a date to go to the local club for a girls night out. I promised that I would get it seen to (whatever this was) after I had seen her.
To be continued….
‘Fireworks (Yellow-Red-Blue+Green)‘ by BONGURI via Flickr
Image is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs licence
There are so many people out there that try to convince the unwary that value lays in big numbers. They try to sell the fallacy that a billboard that has a million cars passing by it is worth more than a newsletter to 100 people passionate about the subject. They try really hard to say that hundreds of zero second visits to your blog is better than 50 x 5 minute visits. They try to tell you that a thousand twitter bot followers are better than 200 who listen and respond to your tweets.
Humans like the thought of big numbers, after all doesn’t it mean you have won if you have the biggest number? Thing is a million times zero…is still zero.
Here’s to 2010 being a year of great numbers for you. Not the biggest, but the best numbers. Professional numbers, not shyster crap.
‘2010‘ by doug88888 via Flickr
Image is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution licence
The internet lets us be whoever we want to be. Most of us choose to be ourselves, or the slightly annoyed versions of ourselves, but we maintain our inner goodness and judge others by our own moral compass. That is why so many people are caught out by emails and websites that promise the world and then proceed to rip off good people who don’t have money to waste.
We expect people to be just like us
Some times it is obvious that people are not like us, we can make that call immediately. On the internet though, in text, it is hard to make that judgement call without some investigation. We give many people the benefit of the doubt because we are good people, and that is what good people do.
It is a difficult thing to chose what to do when someone you thought was just like you, turns out to be something completely different and not in a good way. In my experience, the best road to take is to cut off contact with that person and let them be. If they are dangerous and you want to warn the world then there is the price to pay as the whistle-blower and you need to be aware and prepared to pay that if you want to go ahead.
So saying that, any conspiracy of silence is unacceptable to me (and to others as we have seen in offline events regarding crimes against children) and the price I have paid in lost productive hours investigating the events that led to this post are more than justified by the thought that innocent, well-meaning people, will not be falling for the facade that had been created to encourage them to part with their money.
It all started with one headline that was too good to be true. Make sure you do your due diligence before committing to anything that requires any kind of investment from you.
About 12 years ago I started work as a voice communications specialist in an IT department of a casino. Attached to the casino was a hotel, and I looked after the voice network in both. The people in the hotel expected crystal clear reception on their analogue phone sets*.
Throughout the rest of the casino phones were on a digital network, and again the expectation was that the phone reception would be crystal clear.
Two years later when I went to do the same job at IBM there was a change in expectations as to quality. You see the flakiness of mobile phones, with the drop outs, terrible reception, and interference from outside noise mean that people put up with less quality voice for the convenience of being able to take calls wherever, whenever. Along comes VoIP or IP Telephony and no one batted an eyelid when the desk phone call quality of service also dropped. They had been conditioned to accept that voice calls were no longer perfect.
In the space of 10 years the expectations of 100 years of telephone experience and expectations were completely wiped out.
Now we all hope that voice quality and reliability will bounce back, and it most definitely will. Until the next thing comes along to advance the science/technology, but create teething problems along the way.
I see the same thing happening with various old-school pockets of expectations on the internet. Journalistic integrity and quality, marketing and advertising efforts, social media engagement of b2c and b2b. Nothing starts out perfect, and as we go forward we do have to settle for less as part of the process of innovation. So when you see the dreaded Beta on an application or you are developing and bringing to market something new, forgive yourself of the thing is not perfect, or if the customer loses something along the way. Sometimes that is necessary. Humans are adaptable creatures that can handle a certain amount of rough edges to get a bright shiny new thing.
* if you have ever wondered why they put phones next to the toilet in hotel rooms, it is for safety reasons. Lots of people have slips and falls in bathrooms. Unfortunately those slips and falls also happened to the handsets and many is the time I had to fish them out of the toilet.
Just booked my accommodation for the 30DC Home conference Melbourne in February and noticed I get a free full buffet breakfast for 2 each day in the price. “What an opportunity” thinks I, “I can offer a free breakfast for the company of someone new to network with each day”. So I am!
If you are going to the 30DC Home conference OR are a small business person in Melbourne and fancy meeting up for bacon and a chat, I would love you to join me.
The days I have available are
Friday Feb 19
Saturday Feb 20
Sunday Feb 21
Monday Feb 22
Tuesday Feb 23
Wednesday Feb 24
You can join me on any, or all, of those days, but the free breakfast will get shared around. Drop a note in the comments and let’s meet up! I am booked into the Mantra Southbank (4 star) which if you hurry you can get at $149 a night with the breakfast deal too
Thanks to SecretLondon123 for image
