Confidence Club

I just ordered a CD on Developing Physical Presence from a site called Confidence Club.

Here are the results I'm promised:

"You will deal more effectively with potential confrontation. People will listen to you more regularly and more attentively. You will experience less difficulty in making your views known. You will feel more comfortable and relaxed when meeting new people."

I ordered this because I'd like to feel what it's like to be the Bill Clinton in a room, to have my version of his famous charisma to get my various messages across clearly. (This is perhaps a tad more than was promised.)

I'm not exactly shy now, to put it mildly. But a fair number of hello-in-passing acquaintances don't recognize me until I remind them. I'm mild and pale enough that I can blur with others who look like me.


And I know how to be invisible; I use this skill on days when I don't even want to say hello.

More than one psychic/intuitive/reader has told me that my aura is pulled in so close that it barely extends beyond my body. I sort-a like that, so I don't have to get involved with everything and everybody my eyes fall upon. However, I'd like to be able to expand with the speed of an air bag, as needed.

So I've ordered this hypnotic induction that is going to teach me how. I'll let you know how it goes. I'm quite eager to find out.

Age is No Excuse

In an L.A. Times article titled "It's Never Too Late to Create," an economist and the editor of The Chicago Review list some of the artists who have done "game-changing work" at quite grown-up ages.

Paul Cezanne created his influential work in his 60s, for example. Clint Eastwood is making his most highly-acclaimed movies in his mid-70s. Louise Bourgeois bloomed in her 80s. Etc. (L.A. is a town that needs to hear that, since there's such a youth bias in all aspects of the movie business.)

At the same time, being too young is no excuse for holding back either. There's little more pleasingly marketable to a publisher than a writer so young that it's newsworthy.


In fact, whatever we might view as an obstacle can become a news angle to draw interest when the creation is ready to go out into the world.

The Courage Spider

A writer friend of mine had surgery on her wrist that left a narrow scar running straight up her arm.


So she added a tattoo: At the bottom of that thread of a line, she now has an inked-in spider. That little fellow reminds her, many times a day, to have the courage to go into any dark places where her writing wants to take her.

That image might stop a lot of people. But not her. She has found the reminder that works for her. Which is what we each have to do: find what works, on this particular project, at this time.