What is it about- writing advice that no one needs

 Recently I have been given quite a few (unsolicited) chunks of advice in connection to my (limping) writing career. One of them (from a friend of mine who read maybe one of my works in the past five years) was to have an 'idea'. Because you see, a good idea is everything. You can be a great wizard of words but if there is no story, it just falls flat. Another advice though, given to me on the same day, completely trumped the previous one: anyone can have an idea, it's your style, it's the way it flows that captures the reader, otherwise, even the best story simply falls flat. Both of them came from people who didn't even write their own bachelor dissertations on their own. 

 To add to the above, none of them was actually a keen reader. I could probably go on forever listing all the bad advice I received from people who don't do what I do and who are not even a potential audience for my work. However, I am in many ways grateful to them, for an invaluable lesson: what advice not to listen to. 

 I used to be one of these people who valued everybody's opinion just because it is an opinion. And as social creatures we should value the opinion of others, as other people are recipients of our work. However, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of people who truly supported me over the years: those who congratulate me on my good result in a short story competition, came to see my play, read more than a few lines of my articles. That is of course, due to busy lives we are all running an nothing bad about it, if it wasn't for continuous advice I receive from people who have no idea what I'm doing. All this advice has mostly one and only result: immediate demotivation. 

 The human talent to demotivate others is nothing new, but has probably become particularly visible in social-media-driven culture of effortless success. Some people call it 'hating', I call it new, interactive ways of morning coffee-moaning. Back in time, people used to complain during breakfast over a newspaper. Nowadays, they google things- and then, all of a sudden their morning moaning can go viral, overwhelming us with crowds of DIY experts in different fields. 

 So unless you have a valid point, or you are specifically asked, or you have a genuine interest in exploring other people's capacities, if all you want to do is to fuel my lack of self-worth in forever-beginning authors world, your advice will just fall flat. And to those of you, who are losing their energy and passion over constant attacks of morning moaners, get a pair of ear plugs, and keep going. That should do the trick.

The Perfectly Bearable Effortlessness of Being

 As I was taking my clothes out of the washing machine, I noticed that a pair of my underwear got dyed a bit with a shade of dark red, and looked now surprisingly better. I took it as a sign. From now onwards I shall let destiny always take its' course and wait down here watching Netflix for a miracle to happen. Obviously there is little chance it will happen, but hey, if nothing comes then it's destiny and afterall, waiting for miracle is totally effortless. 

 Effortlessness seems to be nowadays somehow a goal as well as a value itself. There is a motivational quote swinging about the internet saying 'If you have to force it, leave it'. While it is probably quite healthy not to waste your life in order to chase something intangible, there is also a danger: a danger of letting go just because something requires hard work. 

 An obvious example is probably a simple pair of socks. My mother used to mend socks all the time. Who does that nowadays? Who mends old socks?

 These examples could probably go on, but what is particularly concerning to me is that people, while chasing effortlessness, often choose not to work on their skills. Not to pursue their dreams. Not to practise five hours a day if that what it takes. After that we start believing in 'naturals'. People who succeeded  due to their supernatural abilities and to whom everything was just coming, simply being thrown their way. That's probably the biggest myth of modern times.

 We like to believe that life truly can be fully enjoyable, stress free and not requiring any hard work. 'Nature over nurture' seems to overrule all our belief systems. Until we get to an opportunistic conviction that 'if something doesn't happen, it is not meant to be'. Such fatalism is of course nothing new: Denis Diderot explained it well enough and it seems that in our times believing in something 'written in stars' should be perceived somehow eclectic. Nevertheless, the media all seem to support the need of things coming 'effortlessly'. You are supposed to have fun at all times and see results coming out just because they naturally belong to you, and are given to you because you deserve it. And if nothing happens to you, it is because it does not belong to you by nature, ie. you don't deserve it. By proclaiming effortlessness a new trend, the culture of success once again left plenty of people behind. Those of us who need to work hard for tangible results. And after all our hard work, they will write about us, make documentaries, and once again they will prove to others that we had that come 'effortlessly'. 

Ode to Mary Quant

 Recently my mom has suffered a bit of an inconvenience. Her sixty-year-old friend wore a super short mini skirt for a meeting. 'It didn't suit her and it was not very aesthetic, to be frank'- sighed my mother, as she sadly admitted she gets more and more similar to her grandmother in many views. 

 Back at my university time I had a friend who was a great fashionista. Not only by passion, but also by her excellent sense of style. No matter what time of the day it was, she always looked like a million dollar. Once, as part of her assignment, she was supposed to write an essay about the most influential person in the world, in her opinion of course. She didn't have any second thoughts after choosing Mary Quant. Now I have a confession to make: I didn't know who that was. 

 But my friend quickly enlightened me: thanks to Mary Quant, women in the world can now comfortably wear mini skirts. I prefer a saying: women in the world can wear whatever they want. But I guess mini skirts wasn't too bad of a start.