Have you heard of having AI (Artificial Intelligence) Write Blogs?

 This is the most insane thing I've heard this week.

 

Are people so desperate to have a blog they will let a computer write it for them?

 

What happened to the expression of oneself?

What happened to the need to practice to perfect one's skills?

What happened to pride in one's own accomplishment?

What happened to use your brain to create content and complete it even if it stinks?

 

Guess I'm from the old school.

 

A reader asked me this morning that since they were having trouble coming up with content for a blog, should they use AI?

 

I wanted to scream.

 

I told them that writing with AI stinks. 

 

Our phones can write messages, and now AI can write blogs for us. Pretty soon, AI will have our babies for us. 

 

We bloggers who, through blood, sweat and tears, have muddled through with content, some good, some bad, but genuine, can just get wiped out.

 

And will that AI content be fascinating to read, and will it meet all the SEO clicks necessary to get ranked at the top of the google bot lineup?

 

Yeah, I know; why do we bloggers blog?

 

Why does a muskrat guard his musk?

 

Because it's his, he appreciates it and wants to preserve it and share it with others. Presumably, the Creator didn't give him his musk for his olfactory senses alone.

 

This brings me to a project I've been working on.

 

Does it smell like musk? I don't know. 

 

I need to look into this miraculous programming of the subconscious mind. We all know it can help or hinder us, for since it is a recorder, it gives back what we have put into it. Or what has been programmed into it by others.

 

We want control of it, and since the fear of poverty is the number one fear, even above the fear of illness, or death, talking about money is an excellent place to begin. 

 

It isn't spiritual to talk about money, say some.

It's a hot button, say others.

People will turn off if you talk about money.

 

I don't think so.

 

I think money is on our minds, whether people have it or don't, and everybody needs at least some of it.

 

I'm talking about how one's mind sets them up for a certain level of wealth.

 

This Money Talk began as a Newsletter, and then I took it down, and the next thing fell into place. I listened to a presentation on how we ought to write a course. Everyone has an experience or information, unlike others, that can be entertaining, fun, or beneficial. And we ought to share it.

 

I chickened out a few times, for while this writing fell into place, it also fell apart. But then that's my style of writing. I put it back together again and named it "Money Talk." 

 

The Hawaiians have a phrase called "Talk Story," which means to catch up or discuss something, and sometimes talk story can go on all night. I first heard that phrase from the building inspector, who offered several options on getting our Tiki room approved for a permit. She told my husband and me to "Talk Story."

 

Here we're talking money. 

 

I'm mentioning it now because I'm releasing Money Talk this coming Tuesday, August 23, 2022.

 

And I'm not putting this course of 8 chapters, 8,999 words, out indiscriminately, only to people who think they might benefit from what I offer, or are willing to gamble. It will come as an attachment in your email file. So, I will need your email address. 

 

I'm charging 12 bucks, cheap for clearing your private streams—as muskrats, like beavers can do.

 

The Free Introduction will come out on Tuesday. 

 

Tell me what you think.

 

Thanks once again for joining me. I appreciate you.

Jo

 

What makes a King out of a slave?

Courage! What makes the flag on the mast to wave?

Courage! What makes the elephant charge his tusk, in the misty mist or the dusky dusk?

What makes the muskrat guard his musk?

Courage! What makes the sphinx the seventh wonder?

Courage! What makes the dawn come up like thunder?

Courage! What makes the Hottentot so hot? What puts the “ape” in apricot?

What have they got that I ain’t got?

Courage!

--Lion from the Wizard of Oz

 

                                                                 Muskrat

 

 

 

 

Calling All Entrepreneurs, or Maybe I’m Whistling Dixie

 

For you Entrepreneurs, I am passing on information I got from one of my favorite writing gurus Steven Pressfield. He borrowed it from Dan Sullivan, a Strategic coach.

 

(So, this is he said, he said, she said.) 

 

Sullivan says that every entrepreneur must make this statement: 

 

“I will expect no remuneration until I have created value for someone else.”

 

(That just says you shouldn’t expect to be paid unless you give your precipitant something of value. It’s doesn’t say you shouldn’t create to give value to yourself.)

 

To further quote: “Create value” is a hard-boiled business term. There’s no art to it. No romance. But you and I, as writers and dancers and actors and photographers, live exactly by that dynamic—whether we realize it or not.

 

“We write a book. It’s got to find readers. It’s got to sell. It has to ‘create value’ for the person who lays out hard American greenbacks for the privilege of scanning through its pages. Otherwise, we’re not artists; we’re artistes. (A person with artistic pretensions.) We’re living in a dream world.”

 

 

For a long time, I have written because I liked being in a “Zone.” That is going with the flow, entering into a no-time space. But if being in the zone doesn’t produce anything of value, then I might as well be meditating. At least not expect to be paid for spewing my thoughts onto paper.

 

This is a hard look at the facts.

 

“Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t” (The title of one of Pressfield’s books.) Not that you shouldn’t write; you should keep doing it until your work isn’t sh*t. That’s his point.

 

 

 

I’ve followed blogs, only to have them drift away, or I got tired of them and just stopped reading. 

 

I know those writers have put time and effort into writing their posts. They are sharing their lives, but readers, of which I am one, have so much time, and where we use it becomes of primary importance. 

 

I’m sure that applies to you as well.

 

I wonder, as a blogger, if I have added value. 

 

Yes, at times.

 

Some say blogs are passe’. I don’t know. Seth Godin, a primer blogger, blogs every day and says that everyone ought to. It’s a process. It teaches us to observe, to think of something every day that we haven’t thought of a million times before. But that’s for our own edification.

 

I do believe that expressing oneself creatively has value to oneself whether anyone sees it or not. Most creatives who are are expressing themselves in some manner, are not out in the streets raising a ruckus. They just love doing whatever they are doing—writing video games, making videos, painting, sewing, knitting, painting, you know, whatever.

 

As a blogger, I’ve been learning, and I am grateful to all the readers who have traveled with me. 

 

I’m at a crossroads. Should I keep blogging, or is it time to move on?

Where Do You Want to Go?

 

“When I write something that really happened, people read it and say, ‘Sounds like bullshit.’When I pull something completely out of thin air, I hear, ‘Wow, that was so real.’”—Steven Pressfield.

 

 

 

Where does this leave us?

 

Write what’s real, or make it up?

 

But don’t lie and say it’s real if it’s not.

 

Pressfield’s point is, Write everything as though it is fiction, even if it’s true.

 

I’m trying to learn to write since, for some stupid reason, I feel compelled to do it.

 

I remember the day it began. Well, not the specific day, but the place. I had driven my two girls to school, a 45-minute drive from home. One daughter was in the first grade, the other in the third. Sometimes I didn’t want to drive right back home, and often I would stay away the entire day. It took 45 minutes to drive back home, do a little work, then drive 45 minutes back to pick them up. That’s when I started to write.

 

Bless their hearts, they gave me a profession. 

 

 As I sat on a hill above Fashion Valley in San Diego, California, having just ordered orange juice and coffee, I asked one of those pertinent life questions. I had graduated from college and had my children. Now they were in school. My question? What do I want to do with my life?  

 

“Well, I’d write if I had something to say.”

 

I wrote my first little children’s story that day. And I haven’t shut up since. I am not a verbose person, but I enjoy putting words on a page. 

 

Am I an illustrious writer? Nope. However, I have filled copious notebooks since. I didn’t know about blogging then—come to think of it, neither did anyone else. 

 

Some 40 years later, I had a book published. I remember reading that it takes 20 years to become a writer . I said I would do it, but I wanted a guarantee at the end of those years.

 

Life doesn’t come with guarantees, but I’ve had a damn good time with the process. This adventure has taken me to fascinating places. I studied and wrote about Cosmology—which is the origin of things. I told another writer what I was writing about, and he thought I said Cosmetology (About make-up and hair.) 

 

I studied metaphysics and came to some understanding about where I was regarding religion and such subjects. I wrote about Africa, and I made up stories. Then, somewhere in the midst of it all, I became involved with horses and self-published a book called, It’s Hard to Stay on A Horse While You’re Unconscious, that no one can manage to spit out the title. To my detriment, I was rebelling against the need for short titles. However, it was pertinent, and in Hawaii, Mrs. Chiropractor got it right off the bat. You can’t navigate life too well when you are unconscious. 

 

The unconscious part is both philosophical and literal. Sierra, my mustang, once knocked me in the nose, and I didn’t know what happened until I woke up on the ground. And there followed a week where I had racoon eyes.

 

I’m still trying to learn how to write. I still can’t keep my fingers on the correct keys, but so what. You plunge ahead, right?

 

So, Natalie Goldberg (Writing Down the Bones) was correct when she said, “Writing will take you where you want to go.”