So I’m sitting here Sunday night and I’m scared.
I’m scared for myself.
I’m scared for my life.
I’m scared for my finances.
I’m scared for my manhood.
I’m a 43-year old man and I’m not paying my bills. I’m just sinking deeper into debt every month.
I’ve paid for another seven weeks of Alexander Technique classes. That will leave me six weeks short of the halfway point of getting accredited as an Alexander Technique teacher. That’s about $14,500 in tuition left for me to pay.
I have $2600 in the bank. My living expenses are $2000 a month and my credit card payments are $600 a month.
For the past 13 months, I’ve been fitting my work around my Alexander Technique training.
If I can’t come up with a better way of financing myself, I’m going to abandon my Alexander Technique teacher training in seven weeks and concentrate on finding the best-paying full-time work.
I don’t like putting my dream of becoming an Alexander teacher on hold.
I feel like I am halfway to getting a real skill for which I can earn real money ($50 a lesson is normal).
I feel like I am failing as a man by failing to pay my bills every month (I pay them, but by taking on more debt).
The freelance writing work I used to do, the rewriting of real estate brochures, the consultations on internet reputation management, have fallen by the wayside the past six months.
I’m so scared right now because since 1pm today I’ve repeatedly told myself, “I’m so scared right now.”
My fright has overwhelmed all other emotions. I’m not even horny right now. I don’t want to play around. I hear about other people’s troubles and I have little concern. I’m mainly thinking about myself.
I’ve got therapy tomorrow and I’m wondering if I should walk in and burst into tears and say, “I’m so scared right now.”
Perhaps I should walk in with erect posture and talk about the wonderful challenge ahead of me and how it will make me a man.
No more excuses. Full bore ahead. No more early morning Talmud classes and long praying to God. Just say the minimum required by Jewish law as quickly as I can at home and then go full bore into blogging on refinance and other schemes.
Good God, I’m a wimp. I will now berate myself most sternly to show you how manly I am, how underneath my girlish writing beats the heart of a rugged caveman.
Good God, I’ve been borrowing money from people with families to support. I’m 43 years old for God’s sake. I should grow up. I should take action against my sea of troubles.
While taking pauses from my vigorous manly action, I’ve been listening to a book on CD — “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell.
It talks about billionaire investor George Soros. He does a lot of his investing decisions based on pains in his back.
I’m a master of the Alexander Technique so I know all about the back. It sometimes holds a lot of fear and clenching and downward pressure. Sometimes the pains in our back will tell us things that our conscious mind must scramble to understand. We can get flashes of insight from the pains in our back.
I’m stiff and scared right now. I’m flooded with fear. All thoughts aside from work, money-making and money-borrowing have fled from me. I’m bloody rigid. I’m an automaton. I’m a money-making machine.
I could pretend to be all empathetic right now about your troubles but the tension in my body is shouting I mainly care about my survival right now.
These are not unfamiliar feelings. I think they go back to my earliest childhood when I was moving from home to home and learning to survive.
It’s Sunday night. A lot of people I know get depressed on Sunday nights because they know that on Monday morning, they must return to work they dislike.
I hate doing work I don’t like. I’ve tried to design my life to follow my passions. Well, it’s not working out so bloody well right now.
I know people who do the same Alexander Technique teacher training work that I do and they hold down 40-hours a week of jobs on the side. Now that’s manly. They don’t codge loans. They just put their heads down and work. I could learn a lesson from them. But first I want to get my beauty sleep.
D. emails: “Listen well and listen good, Sunny Jim! I’ve had it with your fair-dinkum whinging and hand-wringing. You brought on your own problems. The main one of which is your fascination with the quackery of Alexander Technique. You may as well be throwing away your money on learning phrenology or some other pseudoscience. What a pathetic and gullible lad you are! What next? Throwing away your last penny on some magic beans? I ought to crack your skull and shove a burst cane toad down your gullet, mate, although I doubt that would help knock any sense into you. You had better stop this childish self-pitying, by cracky, and try getting a real job. If you were half the “writer” you think you are, maybe you’d be making some money doing that, but, obviously, you have abysmal talent in that department and as far as I can see, there’s not much need for a copy-and-paste boy in today’s hurly-burly world. Be more like your brother Paul, you little ponce. Now, there’s a lad that makes a father proud!”
Anonymous emails:
Hi Luke,
Hope this receives you well. At least better than the way you were probably feeling when you typed out the “Scared” blurb on your blog.
I fell on your blog via youtube.com (was looking up talks by Strauss and Bloom and fell on you — indeed, a fall).
I felt a kind word, some advice would do you well.
After reading deeper into your blog I wasn’t sure I wanted to write. But you need help. And I couldn’t help but feel like you were a brother in need. I would write, but anonymously–a prophylactic. You understand. You hurt people. You’re good at hurting people but bad at earning a living. Which is sad, because you write well. Try instead making people feel good, and as for the weaklings you expose, help them, let them know how you work on your foibles and how they may be able to help themselves. You never know, maybe there’s a living in that for you.
Here’s my advice: You can’t live in two worlds: Decide which one it is: gossip and rumormongering or Judaism. They don’t mix.
If you are still reading my words: Choose Judaism. Follow the instincts that brought you in the first place to make such a change in your life (assuming you saw the truth and peace in it I do, and not as a sick ploy to infiltrate the Jewish world and hurt some more. Unfortunately, reading over your blog I am still uncertain. I give you the benefit of the doubt for this email).
Maimonides advice in cases of serious rehab: Go “extreme” to the side of holiness. You’ll be able to find balance in your life after that.
Finish your Alexander Technique course. If it is good for others, it will be good for you. You can make a living making people feel better, instead of what you have done till now.
Get out of LA. You’re a marked man there. Besides, LA is empty. I know, I lived in Santa Monica and Malibu. It is beautiful and fun…and empty. If you stay there you will be back to porn and gossip. LA caters to crap. And dump the net site. It’s who you are now. And from what I can read your not happy with that.
Still feeling Jewish? Find out if their is a market for the Alexander Technique in Israel. This is part of the go “extreme” advice above.
Made it to Israel (it is heaven on this earth, despite what the morons in the media say), find a wife. There are so many terrific Jewish women in Israel. You can modify terrific as you wish, but it includes beautiful, brilliant, caring, etc. I married a terrific woman over twenty years ago (I am only a few years your senior).
My intention was not to talk down to you. You really need to make a change for the good in your life. You are young, smart, and have your whole life in front of you.
Don’t waste another moment. Stop writing about how scared you are.
Stop prodding into others weaknesses and affairs, you have your own to attend to.
