[Living Sensical] The Long Journey Continues, Twists Unravel, A Bright Future
A long view of surviving everything with your attitude intact, and despite a short-term deadline looming.
Hi,
Hope this reaches you well. Spring is just around the corner, but we have a chance of snow again in a few days - but it won’t last this time. Too warm.
Again, check your subscriptions if you’re getting too few or too many of these newsletters.
For most of you, the farming, writing, and new fiction newsletters seem to be a hit. (And hint: I could always use more paid subscribers - helps keep the lights on, and these newsletters coming to you.)
In this newsletter, in addition to the latest farm news, I’m going to bring you up to speed on the core books I’m working on and what drives me to get them to you.
Farm News - looking forward to spring grass
Writing News - an outline of key books and what they cover - research streams
Our Next 8 Months - what the apparent future holds for us, bad and good.
Farming News
Still stretching out these bales to last until the Ides of March, which is traditionally when they eat more grass and start ignoring the hay.
Again, my job to to keep these cattle fed, watered, and sheltered all year round, and thin out the herd as I can to keep the farm sustainable.
Their job is obvious. But the plus side is that they’re a docile bunch, and calming to walk around.
You’ll see in this picture where I’ve just laid out 5 more bales. The last five lasted 6 days, There’s a band of leftover hay they are both laying on and still grazing a bit. That’s from last week. There’s a set of bales with rings around them that are for this week. Beyond that is the rest of the hay laid out for this winter.
Even though it’s warmish - 60’s in February - the soil temperature is just getting back to the point where the grass will use its reserves to start reaching up for more rain and sunshine. Yesterday, I started limiting what I’m allowing them to eat, since if they nip off those early shoots, they will stunt this years grass growth. And we’ll need a lot of grass around for birthing this year’s calves.
Tiny Home News
My wife is teaching me to enjoy Valentine’s Day. Cuddles and cards. This old reclusive dog is always able to learn new tricks. There’s some advantages to marriage…
Meanwhile, I was recently able to go and visit the grandchildren and great-grand children, and other relatives on her side of our family. Quite a nice scene with several young babies toddling around and getting into mischief with wide smiles. (Nothing like holding onto a babe while they get fascinated with your beard.)
The Winter Bird Flock
We’ve had this flock all winter. Literally thousands of them. All those black dots in the tops of those trees - I haven’t been able to get good pictures of them. I don’t know how they find enough keep eating. A couple of nights ago, I watched them stream, about fifty or a hundred birds wide, from northeast to south west in an apparently unending flow of birds - for maybe five minutes. Mostly, they’ve been flying very convoluted patterns, the roar of their wings being the loudest sound. I don’t know if they are blackbirds or sparrows. As long as they stick to the trees, and we don’t have any Hitchcock movie repeat…
Writing News
Working up the marketing blurb on this overdue book. In all the cracks of time I have. There's always too much to get done. So you concentrate on the important items and leave the rest for later.
Anyway, this marketing stuff is a research line of its own. Because, as usual, most of what you’re told to do doesn’t work. You buy on hope, and move on after you’ve gotten what you can out of it.
The real short summary: Amazon and social media cost you both time and money. They are walled gardens which are there to sell ads and everything else they can make a profit on. You’re there only to help them fatten their purse. Sorry, not sorry. Just the way it is.
The real method of sales has to do with two things: 1) Damn Good Books, which are perennial sellers, regardless of ads, and 2) Continually Building Your List of Subscribers - which currently is by writing an engaging newsletter that also promotes our books.
Can you run effective ads and sell books? Sure - on Book bub and other avid-reader lists. But the ads on Amazon are an additional tax. Up to 25% of your book-sales income.
Oh, the analytics for marketing books has to be back-trailed from the ebook data, while most non-fiction (which sells longer and more dependably than fiction) is sold in all formats. But the “big sales” are in the three main fiction categories (romance, mystery-thrillers-suspense, and fantasy). In those areas, people are mainly buying big ebooks - because they are driven by avid readers who treat those books as mainly consumables.
The real business for authors is in building a backbench of books in all formats, including courses, which then you can pass on as a legacy.
And there you have it. The details are probably in yet another book. But more testing first - on the book I’m working to publish. But every book is yet another test, which then asks more questions. So the journey continues.
Hopefully, I’ll find some time this week to finalize this current book. And maybe write up what I found above using the Twitter/LinkedIn research from earlier.
The Next 8 Months
I generally say away from politics and religion in my writings, for good reason. Like it or not, we have to keep track of these in our “news”. And it’s not religion as formal churches, but rather balancing out our spiritual needs with our physical needs.
What brought this home yesterday was finding a 7 December interview by Tucker Carlson of Alex Jones. It’s just over 2 1/2 hours and is a fascinating one.
You probably now my back trail by now. I spent 20 years after high school in a corporate self-help cult, and then another 20 years resolving that mess for myself while I reclused myself on a working farm, learned how to make a living from my writing and publishing, and at last figured out everything to a simple working life-system.
Many of you have been along for the last part of that long journey, and I’m forever grateful to have your acquaintance, even if it’s mostly just your opening my newsletters routinely.
Anyway, that Jones interview ties a lot of loose ends together. Worth a gander.
Now, this “8 months” number comes up to the November election season. We’ll see what we’ll see. If things go really south (I don’t expect it, as below) then most bets are off. The gory details are in that interview, which are also in Revelations, interestingly.
There’s reasons I’m calm about this. I have my cows to raise, and my books to write. And my wife to love.
About November 2021, I reached a point where I all my research completed. A lifetime’s. Done. Wrapped. I’d solved everything down to the core of realizing that everything now added up. And that was when I found the power of expectations. (You’ll see most of that in the Strangest Secret Collection. None of this is new. Nightingale talked about it in 1956, in his titular recording. And he got it from Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, who in turn distilled it from even earlier works.)
And at that time, I wrote a short story, Death by Marketing, which became its own self-fulfilled prophecy. I met my soon-to-be wife, took a vacation from most writing, built a tiny home. July last year, we got married. It’s all in that book.
As usual for me, I find something out and then I test it. Then I write it up.
Real vs. Actual World
I tell you this now, so you can start employing the most powerful and personal tool you have in your arsenal. One which can let all these predictions and prognostications just slide by. Because the actual world around you is built from what you expect. The “real” world is what the media says and the bulk of humanity out there believes. But your own beliefs, identities, and desires are what creates your world. This is also what makes you buy in stores and buy into in the ideas that are pitched your way.
(If you don’t have a copy of that book, email me - or reply to this newsletter you get in an email - and I’ll send it to you. Free. )
It does have to be internalized. And it’s will always be a work in progress. But once you get that concept, your life changes forever. And you can see the “news” and these prophets for what they are - and how they are effective where they are, if they are. It’s all in what you believe, identify as, and adopt as a burning desire.
For me, I have books to write.
The lineup is still - for now - the same. And you’ll see me start cranking these out as they follow that core belief of my own - that our expectations create your our actuality. In spite of everything else. Everything.
Now, that November date isn’t set in stone. There is enough to destroy this planet several times over, and the lunatics are running the asylum. For real. But the secret weapon you have is to listen to yourself. Start looking around you for what you expect out of life. See if these are showing up. Test this with parking spaces. Adopt the idea that you always have a great parking space wherever you go. And they’ll start showing up. The secret is to be grateful. And then you’ll start seeing more of what you expect to show up.
I’ve covered all this before, and referenced the books and movies that explain how this works in its mechanics. The rest is up to you.
8 months is just another test. For me, I expect it all to blow over. It sound serious, and I’m taking it that way. And upgrading my own expectations to match. Something like “Joe Versus the Volcano” with a young Tom Hanks.
Anyway, woke up with morning after watching that Jones interview last night. Then got up and wrote this all down for you.
As usual, I think life is great and getting better. And hope you expect yours is, too.
Thanks for being there, opening this.
And leaving a rating on the Living Sensical site for the stuff you buy there.
And also leaving comments on my Substack site.
As well as leaving recommendations on Bookbub in addition to reviews anywhere else.
You know, that "paying it forward" kinda thing.
Oh, yes - buying my books, paying for a subscription, all that keeps these newsletters coming to you.
Do keep sharing these books and this newsletter with your friends, too.
I hope your life is not too interesting to be overwhelming, but sufficiently engaging to keep you amused. (Like some of us here...)
Robert
PS. Again, you can always email me about anything.
PPS. Again, do upgrade to the paid newsletter version. That helps me keep the lights on - so I can keep all this coming to you. As much or little as you want…
PPS. Sorry about all the typo’s this week. Added the ProWritingAid plugin to my browser, so this should help…