It’s time to get this place cleaned up. You can’t be afraid to live the life you always wanted or you’ll just end up hating yourself.

We’re shipping off the refugees and the prisoners and the rutting and rotting bonebags to lerch off elsewhere and moan about whatever it is they want, lust for riches and fleshly pleasures may begone, I prithee take your leave.

This is an art blog. No one is standing in the way of art and so it shall be. Is lifestyle art? If lifestyle is artistic and lends itself to creativity well I guess that’s okay.

Maybe that’s what I really need to work on. Not working.

Not working, but living!

I need to experiment with working in more diverse scenarios, so I can cope with being flexible in my environment when I am working.

Get my big 3g topped up just so I can practice skyping clients in weird places and doing such things naturally, but then wasn’t this supposed to be an art blog not some kind of productivity nonsense?

look, i’m trying to free my self from dependency on sales and dealing with clients and supervising stuff so I can do the living part, blog about it elsewhere, and just worry about art here.

Art! Art! Art!

The life aesthetic.

But it’s not just about the logistics of the freedom in working, but also those same conditions for doing creative work such as music and video.

I can write anywhere and that’s fine but we need to think beyond that so I can roll on and still produce new music and new videos, because right now I can’t produce jack, and I’m not even sleeping on couches, in hotel rooms, in weird countries with weird stuff going on.

Think about my costs if I was in a different country.

You see if here I . . . Man my lifestyle is depressingly about work. But hey, y’know poverty, deprevation, who needs it?

I don’t want to spoil myself I’m just holding the weight and feeling the contoured surfaces of what freedom could be.

If I spend $700 in expenses a week here, then that might be $200 in some other country, I’d only need to be making $1200 back home and pay me expenses and save $1000.

I could go for a holiday to the phillipines just to pimp out all my websites and . . . okay thats enough.

But the freedom to travel like that, yeah, I should try and work it out. Work out how to work on doing less.

And doing more art. Being more art.

not even fixing the grill on my other beamer (see bg pic) for next photos. So 1 of my beamerz got a grill missing? Whut it do? We gangzin yo

BUT ONLY A YEAR AGO IN THE TIME TRAVELLING ANACHRONISTIC? No, ACHRONOLOGICAL JOURNEYS OF ROMANTECH:

I’m very upset that my youtube blog from last night hasn’t posted.

I didn’t no who else to turn to. No use crying over spilt milk. Well I dunno. I’m like, y’know, artistic. I’m easily unsettled.

Today I think I said – I just felt very confined. I start to feel restrained by my business sometimes. It’s natural because deep down I know it’s what I have to do.

How boring why don’t you do something about it like travel through time and speak in tongues?

Unsettled. I’ll unsettle you. Anyway. That’s the point. I just had to sit there and do my business all the time before, now I finally have the chance to find out how I can go days . . . or well at least hours without even thinking about work . . . i’d like to be time travelling already . . .

WHAT?

what would I do? I’m sure i’d think of something. Practice going off and seeing what happens.

We have to bring the tiger penis back into the equation. The tiger penis is a chance and it’s a hustle. I just need to get ready to do this. If I can do this in auckland I can do it all around the country.

That’s art in it’s own way. There must be some inspiration in there.

I tried to travel through time but it didn’t work.

Perhaps I look foolish. I don’t feel silly. I started to do some stylistic stuff, which gave me a bit of a spark, doing things differently, and a little more thoughtlessly, more about flow. Trying something different.

I obviously still want to be artistic but I just seem to want to write right now and not so much music. It’s the thrill of just banging it out, I just write so much now, and now I’m starting to think about how it works out, because I must be getting better. And some stage you breakout and evolve and I saw what I was doing just before as changing and progressing, and perhaps bringing more art, more flourish, more illustration and less kind of navel gazing, boring, petulant, y’know, whatever, nonsense.

I think it’ll help my art, because I am looking for something more and I can’t see it . . . yet.

But this is where I am searching.

People might read it, I don’t know. It’s not a big deal. To me I think I said that blogging is like sparring, I’m getting in here, playing with ideas, learning to let ideas flow, because I definitely see how writing and music and video are coming together, and for me it’s most suitable to do what I do.

I don’t really make awesome music. That doesn’t mean it’s not any good, it’s not incredible. Who cares? I make it because I can. I write this here because otherwise I wouldn’t be and it wouldn’t mean anything if I chose to spend this time sitting lost in my thoughts instead of at least trying to wrestle and box with them here and now.

Does that mean I have to make people like my writing now? Do I think I’m a writer? Damn. Hope not. I just hope that people will see that I refuse to not have my own buzz going on, and I will always do something.

In 2 of my time travelling episodes um stuff happened. Or well something. I was experimenting.

In the first episode I went full blown and traced it once agian back to heavy vibes that demanded my attention, and made no sense. It was possibility whether it a sea or a desert, drowning or dehydrating, something was . . . who would lie back, I fought.

Will strange metaphors be strung into a lifeline?

In the second episode I was packing a sad over some relativity issue and trying to come back to earth or something. I guess I’m just trying new ways to free my mind.

I think you can worry about your image, or allow yourself the freedom to be yourself.

When I was younger and all this was happening I had very bold ideas that perhaps weren’t that stupid. I never thought about money, I didn’t have any.

Did the limits of existance have to be so rigid and arbitrary, was it so indulgent to defy it, was art the only way to board the spaceship to another dimension?

Was it just a pretty toy, a bubble making machine to delight you?

Did I work out now that it is the stories, the endless churning gears that create that heavy force, that pressure on the soul, of narrative, of destiny, of all paths having ends of all possibilities having resolution, of happy endings, or of endings of any scrutability at all?

And so I write, and I wonder what a beat or scene I filmed can really say?

Is it okay to say it was a tigers penis? Is it okay to have a metaphor and then dump it, cut it away, disgard it?

It’s my story I only need to know what I want to say and then choose how I say it.

But writing dumb blogs isn’t anything anyone cares about. Who cares, I’m only sketching, only meditating only weighing different measures and lots. Let me think, what confidence can you have in anything important that is rushed?

Look really I just want people to read my blog. Yes it’s dirty terminator future buzz man zapping up in your dateline fresh from another dadaist jaunt.

It’s so much more exciting when nothing makes sense, but hey don’t take my word for it.

So yes, I need to be less self absorbed. How do you do that?

I’m talking about a better side coming through, y’know, if I started focusing on stuff other than myself, then it would be a heel of a lot more interesting than the normal dreary nonsense I go on about.

I am free. Which costs money. I am totally free, in my own house, living how I please.

I think I need to just put that there and appreciate it.

That costs money. That’s a privilege, having no job and a house and the internet hooked up so you can do as you please that’s modern freedom.

I’m hoping I will come to truly understand that more deeply.

t’s just the pressure of privilege. If I have this background, and I have this privilege, then why can’t I just have the perfect life, why isn’t it just easy for me to put it all together, dust off my hands and walk away?

Maybe I’m a storyteller, mine isn’t for the living, it’s for the watching and describing to those who will never witness it.

Maybe I’m not a winner, maybe I just have been shown enough about winning to better describe it to other people, and that’s my role, to be the storyteller, to help people understand that there were people who radiated more so than we.

You’re special too, just not as special as you thought.

And that ties in to with me getting myself off the stage and getting on with my own thing. Not quite sure how now, but- oh yeah, that no one’s interested in me complaining, so I guess I have to focus on someone other than me, despite the fact I’m so self absorbed.

Might have to bring the seething resentment into part of the story.

But how can I be resentful when I’m happy in my house? I haven’t been sent to die, there’s no one making my life a misery. I’m just hear, sitting round collecting a marginal wage for a marginal amount of work and paying most of it on my rent.

Maybe just like the characters in Lost, I have to “let go”.

But How now? Might have to call a song that, if I ever write any more songs.

See listen to me whinging and crying, it’s not very becoming is it? Maybe I need editorial? Well that’s nonsense. I’m flawed, I am. I am summoning great powers, if you think you know how it’s done I’d like to invite you to try.

Let’s do the timewarp again – August 2010

STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS FROM 7 MONTHS IN THE FUTURE

Okay well yeah.

Sort it out.

Anyway, so um there could be a good thing, there could be a lot of good things there could be a door slamming, a squeal of tyres, my mind, in my eyes, in my mind eyes see thoughts of something, the night the door way to a million possibilities. A million possibilities served with a smile, your one is waiting and made fresh. Is that a contradiction?

We’re trying to take our existential experiment further, it’s possible there’s nothing left to say that will impress anyone any more for any reason that doesn’t matter so that’s why I write rather than ride some dream, play with my toys, leave them strewn across the room so that some woman might pick up the pieces and change my nappies.

If growing up is to be miserable and starved of culture then that is my tantrum, screaming on the floor demanding attention like a child.

I can’t enjoy my own experience if I’m locked in the expectation I will behave because I don’t want to and as long as I don’t have to then why should I?

Is it what people see or are they too busy looking at themselves? Can we not all see we are flawed, if not desperately striving to better ourselves, mutants, mutating, reproducing, testing thoroughly, nothing if not thorough.

I was walking down the street not luck enough to be interesting but I only have myself to blame for being half dead and traumatized by my own existence. It was too frightening to live so I died a little each moment and they never realised until they buried me. It was most unfortunate, but rebellious I was in thought. The mind was willing, willing to dream, as long as a dream was good enough.

I thought it was merely a jigsaw puzzle and an obstacle course but perhaps I wasn’t suited, perhaps there were too many pursuits, too many alleyways I found my self recedivising in – all while I didn’t know how why I could also meant I wouldn’t and I was a secret agent for an ongoing tragedy.

My orders were simply to await further orders and maintain my post until that time however secondarily there was perhaps a subplot in which I felt a great weight however it was mysterious as to it’s nature and nothing I could obtain instruction on.

I tried to look at the problem from new perspectives and try new approaches, but like layers of an onion they unpeeled and left not more wiser but thinking anything else but htinking of it was infinitely preferable.

Maybe a practical approach was required or no approach at all. Willfully reductionist we look for new purity in simplicity only to find our own deficits and shortcomings ambush the convoy riding through the valley, who were bringing much needed supplies of hope and delusion to the pilgrims and settlers.

Uncertain times call for uncertain, unmeasured measures. Any sense of surity is of value and yet everything mysterious is a gamble unless it is known and defeats the very adventure of it.

This is just a note from the future where we tried to time travel to the past and it was only a dark rainbow through which nothing but crude yet but maybe charming illustrations were portrayed.

I figured I had nothing to say to those I had outgrown, did it comfort anyone to forcefully and somewhat awkwardly let it be known? Some burn bridges so that they might never turn back, and I only sought for the outlet that felt right in my reaction, I was only the flowing trickle seeking the path of least resistance but perhaps another path lead to a better place, one can always wonder, and perhaps wonder too much.

It’s only to be said that you don’t have to make sense in order to spread a message, you don’t have to be understood to be an artist, otherwise you’re just an attention seeker.

Maybe I don’t have to understand life, I just have to live it but letting vital mysteries, vital nonsense, vital life, spasms of vitality, they only have to have innocent life to cavort, they needn’t know.

I struggle to hard for meaning. Or I onlu understand achievement and failure. Maybe I’m still not getting it . . .

I don’t even really know whats going on with this update it’s probably not a big deal that i didn’t update for almost 3 weeks, but I did do a whole lot of writing because of my new idea of just writing and using it for marketing and maybe posting whatever I liked here that didn’t make me seem like I was constantly under strain, when y’know – I’m just sorting out my affairs. I’m very thorough. Except where I’ve just got ideas and postings all flying and I don’t know what’s going on.

There are always lots of ideas and you should think about them, they could be good for getting things you want. Y’know.

So I need to get my own place which is sweet so I can get on my own vibe.

Well that’s what I thought 6 months ago, and I did so I should be happy.

But this place is too big. I can’t relax because the rent is so high, every week I gotta make that rent.

It’s funny what can happen when you’re working on a blog post. Shit can get achronological, and nonsensical. That doesn’t mean I care enough to edit it out.

Look I can put an ad here. That’s editorial for you.

But someone might turn up and move in, so that’s all good. It’s brilliant really. Because minimizing an overhead is way way better than ensuring the same in income.

A drop in overheads is just what I need. Less to worry about, more to contribute to better stuff. My jam was all out of sync. Sure I only spend about half my income, but over half what I spend was my rent, it wasn’t right. Now I’m a little bit more free

Eventually I’ll want to go back to grey lynn. But I want my space. Money seems to buy you more flash, but not much more space. So I’m going to wait and hold out for the right thing, if my money is going so sweet why shouldn’t I?

At some point I’m going to have paid off every single bill and written off every debt and I’ll just say well, let’s get out of here. Let’s get back to grey lynn. Or it opens another avenue on the shop.

But back to the original vibes.

There’s always something else.

That’s what I like about camping. There’s nothing else. The food you’ve got and the bed and everything has to be good enough because that’s all there is. That’s what I like about tour. You may aswell enjoy a drink and a smoke because there ain’t nothing better to do.

Maybe that’s life, maybe I should just enjoy myself because there’s no point in chasing girls who won’t ever give a shit, and there’s no point screaming your guts out trying to get attention for your art over everybody else’s if that’s how you want to spend your life.

When you live with someone else, there’s always something distracting you, so when you live alone it’s easy to obsess over your problems.

oh well thats sorted out.

It’s easy to wake up thinking of nothing that’s inspiring, because there’s nothing to distract your mind from the immediate shortcomings of your life.

Sometimes you feel great, usually I feel better than I have in the past, as I’m not stressed out.

but yeah things move on, new challenges present themselves.

Don’t think we’ll be going camping somehow.

Yeah back on the dateline, not only have my overheads dropped but some good business just jumped in, can I manage not to care though? Find out next time at existential bass camp!

Alright so I’m up early and ready for action.

Last night was pretty silly just blogging myself into the ground trying to basically justify how little I could make and still survive so that I can twist my attention around from money and basically get on with my life.

Put like that it seems pretty unlikely, so it’s not as if it’s not a little ambitious, and not really a waste of time if it works out.

What else was I going on about? Ending up with no woman or some crazy chick who drives you up the wall. Forget that.

When I woke up this morning I recognised the issue was that I have no plan. I have no strategy to start meeting more women. That’s the issue. If I had a million dollars what exactly would I do?

Well a million is a bit different. But y’know. If I truly put my money issues behind me, how am I going to start acting differently?

I think was the point I was making – I have to start acting like a roller to become a roller. Flawless hygiene, stylish, and seen in the right places.

Do I really want to go to some swank hip joint and hang out there by my self, waiting to zero in on chicks? How creepy.

This whole game thing is a joke. It’s just way too cheesy and you think you’re going to meet any decent girls that way? Well maybe but it’s a lottery.

Except a lottery ticket you shell out some cash for, and you’re in the draw. Game you have to work on relentlessly night after night.

Listen to me. “oh its all so hard to become a millionaire dripping with ladies and with a fresh style on the creative scene” Well yes, it is kind of hard to be a huge success, balanced in all areas of your life.

But one must endeavour and endure, mustn’t one?

What if I just need to start acting like a roller and thus make it so?

Probably.

I think that’s the thing that fails to strike, it’s not that I make great money, though I do, relatively, it’s that I don’t really do much. Like seriously, I don’t do that much, it just seems like a lot because I think about it too much. Because I see how easy everything becomes. That’s why I’m obsessed with these ads I put on my sites, they make like a few bucks a day.

I don’t really think about it, I just get a check for $100 every month or so.

I like that. imagine if it was $20 or $50 a day, I wouldn’t even have to think about it! I’d just ponce around with the money coming in. Sure I maybe wasting the last of my youth on a thing such as money, but I see now how you set it all up and y’know, like I said. You make your first million, you’re set. You’ve done it, you’re rich.

Half a million, well you’re still driving a beautiful car and living the life.

Anyway, that’s what I’m saying. it only took me 3 years to get here, what’s to say a little more work couldn’t put me there, knowing that as long as I do a little this and that, it will all work out. As I keep saying.

I’ll never work as hard again as I did in 2007, 2008 and 2009.

Never.

That’s almost a fact.

Now I realise, I only have to make $100,000 a year to one day be richer than I really need to be.

And here I am talking about the possibility of never meeting the right girl. Yeah right. It’s just when I wake up in the morning sometimes I feel so empty. Maybe if I don’t use these years now, I won’t get a sexy young thing, but hey. Is that really that bad? I know how this goes. One day you will meet a chick who is awesome and by that stage I will be quite obviously pretty secure.

Anyway $100k. What big shots my age make. Pretty much what I make now. As long as I can maintain and replace active and location based income with passive income I can deliver from anywhere . . .

Maybe I should be a skype therapist. Listen to peoples problems for $50.

I could do a lot of stuff like that. I could get on with my list building, and build my list around romantech or whatever else, just a whole bunch of junk I like.

But anyway, If I only have to make that much, then rather than focusing on making more, I can focus on working less for the same amount.

Maybe I need to get my graphic design business working properly. I get offered work virtually everyday but graphic design is so unrewarding.

The clients are always demanding, and will dump you in an instant – you got to get the money upfront or they’ll just piss on you, and you can’t ever charge that much. But as I say if I could find a way of making a few hundred extra here and there without doing much more than turning on skype and blabbing, then I’m all for it.

It doesn’t matter if it takes a lot of hard work, as long as I don’t have to do it!

What could I sell on trademe?

A1 posters: $20 ($9 profit)

dvd maori childrens songs: $15 ($13 profit)

the ten for ten kurb deal: $12  ($9 profit)

All power: $90 ($77 profit)

RWC souvenir $15 ($13 profit)

me + clients discs $6 ($5 profit)

random kiwi pack/random packs $12 ($9 profit)

I read this on a site.

<em>I was wasting a lot of time looking up people who had ‘normal’ lives and comparing myself to them and seeing how I’ve ‘failed’.

it does have to do with what you mention: I am prone to comparing myself to others, the “normal” people who tickle my fancy because, as Sadie points out, they embody my insecurities and perceived failings. And so I project on my object of admiration, and it really is true that it is about the fantasy that you create in your head and it has nothing to do with who the other person really is.

</em>

I’m obsessed with comparison. Relativity. Again it astonishes me. The average guy my age earns more than most and gets about $900 in his hand. Teachers and Cops are getting like $800 in their hand. How fucked is that. Even if they’re single: $200 on rent, $100 on your car, $200 on groceries and bills, $100 on entertainment, you gotta have $600 just to live a normal life, and what if you do have kids?

Clothes, Medicine, Holidays, nice things, it doesn’t really leave you with much more than $200 to stuff under your mattress even if you are a big shot young guy making 80k and thinks he has the life.

Even if you’re 40 and the heavyweight making $100-150k, that’s $1500-2000 in the hand, you’re supposed to be the big man, but on top of all those costs, it’ll cost and extra $400 p/week to look after your family. You’re easily left just putting away a few hundred on top of your mortgage, and where does that go if you’re to roll in a ride of suitable standard?

Well the point is, the dude builds wealth. After 10 years he’s got $100,000, after 20 years he’s got a house and $300,000, or maybe 2 houses, and every 10 years they double in value. so that’s how a 60 year old ends up rich in the end if the average dude making $60,000 can just put $200 away each week.

Well it’s just like my A+’s in school, if I’m at the end of the curve then I’m not missing out on anything anyone else does.

Oh yeah but maybe others have lived more, travelled more, experienced more, been more artistic, built more meaningful relationships. I just built a business.

So maybe enjoy your holiday, enjoy your harem of admirers, at least I don’t have to get up for work until lunctime and well, I work half as hard and make twice as much. Clever me.

But what did I just say:

And many days I see it. There’s nothing stopping me from getting in my beamer and living the life. Well except if I do spend the next 5 years wallowing because the days of being youg, stupid, of trying to be some producer guy seem to be over. Will I ever be that hot young DJ or writer or youtube guy or whatever with my smoking hot young girlfriend? Maybe not.

Or maybe I just have to work twice as hard. It’s probably true, and having money behind me will certainly help.

So I just did the easy part, really.

So what if I’m so clever I never take the opportunity to create a family that might compromise my freedom?

It might be a lonely road, and an unlikely one. I get richer, life gets easier, I mean that’s the point I see: in my 40’s, a millionaire with no real connections and no need for any more money.

You can always make friends, you can always make money, you can always make art, you can always make love.

But whats the point of a million dollars if every morning you wake up thinking of the girl you don’t have, the recognition you haven’t achieved, the chance you lost because you wasted it while yo were young?

What do you do with a million dollars? You buy a nice house, a nice car, buy nice things, travel the world, then what?

You see what I mean? Money isn’t really a means in itself to a better life.

But if I don’t ever have a family, if the line ends here, well it compounds the situation. Richer and lonelier.

That’s the purpose of being selfless. Put a little love in your heart. Haha.

If I’m lucky enough to meet a chick then sweet. If not, oh well, such is life. I’ll do my art, I’ll pay my hosting so that I’m alive through the art I did for 100 years or more. There we go.

Tomorrow is another day, a day where I can do as I please.

Hopelessness is in my head, not like when you’re stuck in a dead end job, have to give up what you love to support a family.

I think I’ve got to start living in the present a little bit more. It might have been youthful misadventures and wonder in the past, and hopes of a secure and salubrious future, but in that I lose the opportunity for secure adventures now.

Some mornings I get up and I don’t feel so hot, but in a lot of ways the hard work has been done. I’ve got this far.

So what about tomorrow? I might go to 7, go to the laundromat, try and get back to this video and song I’m working on, problemantech.

I’m in my “problem” period

Winston Churchill called it the Black Dog. I call it John Kirwan, after a sports star who fronts the depression awareness for men campaigns here in New Zealand.

It’s hard to tell, despite my awareness, whether I’m feeling depressed, or I’ve fallen into some trap because I base my happiness on how much money I’m making and it means if I’m not making money I feel like shit.

One is natural, one is my own stupid fault for thinking like an idiot.

Why am I like that? Because money is easy. Girls get boring if they don’t get bored of you first. Art is such a dangerous and essential path, one that really offers you the least reward.

These last couple of mornings, even after spending these last few weeks really working hard to put my mind at ease and move on from money as the centre of my life, I’ve been waking up feeling really rotten.

I’m aware that if I get up and get going it will pass, but still, it seems to be a reminder . . . a memo . . . Was I talking about here about how the fact that I live alone really changes things because I just don’t have the opportunity for distractions that I once did. So inevitably I end up thinking about my problems, in a situation where “problems” may simply be the fact that my life isn’t perfect which gives depression a chance to sneak in and party up and stomp about the place screaming “you don’t have a girlfriend, you never will, and your art is going nowhere, you’ll just be a cold, lonely and desperate asshole sitting there clutching on to your modest million dollars or whatever bullshit it was you gave up your opportunity to truely be happy for.”

ouch. What a prick! Amiright?

I even thought about affirmations. How frickin . . . y’know? Affirmations.

And I pictured myself doing exactly what I’m doing now. Oh, you’ll just post a blog about it and you’ll feel fine.

Blogging therapy. I don’t want to wake up like I’m in this empty world. It’s not real. I see my sweet Beamer parked up and I’m like hell yeah! I see some girl walking down the street and I know she’s love it. I wouldn’t be singing Fuck You “If I was richer” I am rich. Well not rich but that’s where it’s going.

That’s where it’s going but I allow myself to feel miserable if I go 48 hours without making at least a few hundred.

And many days I see it. There’s nothing stopping me from getting in my beamer and living the life. Well except if I do spend the next 5 years wallowing because the days of being youg, stupid, of trying to be some producer guy seem to be over. Will I ever be that hot young DJ or writer or youtube guy or whatever with my smoking hot young girlfriend? Maybe not.

Or maybe I just have to work twice as hard. It’s probably true, and having money behind me will certainly help.

That’s sometimes how I see it: I spent the last 3 years getting it together, making sure I had my money game tight. Now it’s time to move on, as long as I can maintain then I’ve still got a lot of effort to contribute to a girl or some artistic statement, but in both of those areas, it’s hard to know where your time is best spent.

If something is worth doing it’s worth doing properly. I never really followed that idea, I’m just trying to get from A to B to Z, but perhaps when it comes down to what you really want, it’s worth making a little bit of effort. And that’s my problem, I don’t try, too busy worrying about my money.

I think about girls I’ve liked and I think yeah, they make you want to chase them. Otherwise it’s just going to get boring if it’s a “she’s a nice girl” situation.

My art is almost at a new low. I’m barely doing anything.Yes I am soldiering on with a new track and putting it to a video which I guess is a first.

I keep coming back to the concept that I have a very uncommon pain, the pain of space. I always realised if I didn’t have art, there’d be the pain of that space, just feeling like a complete, anonymous square.

Most people out there have a crap job, or a relationship with a crap person that is toxic, kids, and responsibilities that are stifling, they would love my problems.

Money doesn’t set you apart. Art does though. I don’t have anybody in my life causing me pain like most people do, I don’t really have anyone in my life. i may feel unhappy at times, but I am never tested by the weight of my relationship to anyone.

I’ve weeded my garden. I’ve napalmed it, really. But what can I grow? By getting desperate and trying to be a player and an artist without doing anything real, you’ll just end up in the same spot.

Do I just want to have the same pain most have, the common pain of having made the wrong choices, trapped with somebody, forced to do what they hate?

Cheer up, I’ll never be held down by some shitty situation, as long as I can accept that I can die alone and I don’t care what people think of my art, then as long as I can make my money then I’m free.

I’m free because I am financially independent, I do my art because it makes me who I am, however, whatever, whenever I do it, and finally I am free because I am not going to let some chick tell me what to do.

Things happen and you’ve got to accept that you’re best off not to care. You’re best to protect yourself.

That’s me, I have high expectations, I don’t expect people to turn into nutters and act irresponsibly, I don’t put up with it, I’m out the door.

Only to wake, once again, alone. That’s the price you pay for being smart.

More discussion from Roissy / Chateau / Citizen Renegade

What’s with all the different names? What do you think of the points made?

I’ve been lucky to have a few hot girlfriends, but I never had a chance. Maybe with this I could have been even half prepared?

If your girlfriend is complaining about your selfishness, you’re doing it right.

Your gift to her is that you don’t go around sleeping with other women.

Meaningless acts of romance are far more meaningful to girls than meaningful acts of romance.

Similarly, spontaneous expressions of romance will linger in a girl’s memory far longer than elaborately planned romantic gestures.

‘Romantic gestures’ is redundant. *Any* gesture done for a girl who already likes you is romantic.

Role-playing is worth ten diamond tennis bracelets in a girl’s captured imagination.

A girl’s urge to pressure you to marry is inversely correlated to her depth of love for you.

Corollary: a marriage ultimatum means she is on the cusp of falling out of love with you.

Love is as corrupted as any other barter in the mating market, but its great advantage is that it never feels that way.

Marriage counselors could save more marriages simply by uttering these two words: tease her.

The alpha male way to apologize for a minor offense is a shoulder rub. The alpha male way to apologize for a grave offense is cunnilingus.

All regrets and apologies should be expressed long enough after the offense was committed that a direct connection between offense and contrition is plausibly deniable. This is known as the Betafication Avoidance Buffer.

A strong relationship is defined as one in which your girlfriend’s friends all want to sleep with you.

Once a girl falls in love with you, she will stop taking the counsel of her friends’ opinions regarding your compatibility with her.

Corollary: You are then free to piss off her friends as much as you want.

Love is margin for error.

Love like an idealist, think like a cynic.

Relationships are more erector set than blank white canvas.

But when the time comes to paint, paint with the entire palette.

If she wants to see you one more day per week than you want to see her, you’re doing it right.

Texting is a great way to get out of hour-long nightly phone conversations, while at the same time keeping the embers of infatuation burning.

If she plans three dates for every two of yours, you’re doing it right.

A girl in love is one who withers as much from withheld compliments as from supplied criticism.

Give her an email address that you rarely access. There are many ways to stoke the female yearning for an elusive man.

Her infidelity is an automatic relationship or marriage terminator, except under one circumstance: she was cheating with your other girlfriend.

If she sneaks away to reapply her lipstick after every make-out, she is afraid she’ll stop pleasing you. Or she’s a street walker.

A bay window, a cool summer’s night breeze, and ambient light backgrounding fettuccine alfredo and pinot noir is the female equivalent of receiving the perfect hummer.

The neg never dies. It just fades away.

If she assumes the doggie position unprompted, you’re doing it right.

If she gives you mouth love without you having to ask for it, you’re doing it more right than you can fathom.

“You make me feel happy” is the pre-cum of a girl’s oxytocin-greased mental ejaculation. Her orgasmic “I love you” is less than one month away.

A good relationship is one in which you joke that you are her king, and there is an undercurrent of wishful seriousness in her playful response.

If you tell her you feel a little under the weather, and she comes over to your place with OJ, herbal tea, soup, and cough medicine, you’re doing it right.

Don’t rush the naturally emerging stages of the relationship. Men who rush things are insecure about their staying power. Men who have options are comfortable taking their time getting entangled with a girl. Most hot young girls prefer the latter; cougars, fatties, and single moms prefer the former.

If you are significantly higher value than the girl you are dating, don’t underestimate the degree to which she can become obsessed with you. An available alpha male giving signals of commitment is like finding a giant diamond lying on the ground in a state park; it just doesn’t happen for most girls.

When she starts inviting you on her vacations and business trips, she loves being with you. When she pays your way, she hates being without you.

Better she is an infatuated lover than a loving dilettante.

If you haven’t had an argument within the first two months, you’ve passed an important test. If you haven’t had an argument within the first year, you’ve failed an important test.

Girls take seriously their pets’ opinions of you. One purring cat can shave off seven hours of courtship.

Beware girls who always want to go to “events” or “do interesting things” with you. They fear the connection will break without the scaffolding of a contrived shared experience. If she’s happy sitting on a park bench with you people watching she’s a keeper.

Joyfully fornicate with girls who are always drunk when they’re with you. But don’t date them.

If a girl loves you, all problematic matters that would have presented an obstacle to the initial seduction become irrelevant or are actually turned in your favor.

After one month together, you will be astonished at how often and how vigorously a girl in love will qualify herself to you without you even trying to instigate it. Don’t interrupt her when she’s doing this.

It is a girl’s natural state of mind to question your worth when she is not in love. In contrast, it is her natural state of mind to question her own worth when she is in love.

When a girl is down on herself, do not try to lift her up. It is enough that you are there listening to her.

Saying less is always preferable to saying more. She will be inclined to imbue your silence with positive connotations, and your loquacity with suspicion.

Girls will sometimes preemptively break up with you if they suspect you are too much alpha for them. In these cases, the impending breakup is best averted by nuzzling your head in her boobage for ten minutes. Your body language should mimic a cat’s.

Occasional displays of testosterone (ODTs) are more effective, require less effort, and are more fun than “talking it out” when the relationship is rocky. Curse profligately, punch a wall, slam a door, grab a wrist, break a lamp, menacingly wield a heavy object, and disappear for days at a time — then sit back as she swoons and resubmits to your authority.

Preternaturally serene mindfucking is the ultimate ODT, but should not be attempted by men low in intelligence or feeble of will. Do not mindfuck girls who are less than an 8; you could destroy them for any future beta desperate to settle down with a has-been and populate the country with future generations of danegeld-paying cogs.

You know that song “Love is Like Oxygen”? There’s no such thing as too high.

You could spend $100,000 on a lavish wedding, but the thing she’ll most fondly remember is that erotic note you hastily scrawled on a cocktail napkin and passed to her under the table. Think about it.