Six Weeks and more ideas

since my last post. Six weeks in which I kept trying to be everything to everybody and worked like a madwoman
(and still somehow, it feels as though I got nothing done).

But!

Call and Response. The Universe has started hearing me.

I am ramping up the Studio. Yep – students are beginning to come in again. And as they do, I feel like the old tortoise in the Neverending Story – beginning to remember everything I used to be so good at. (Sorry to toot my own horn. Hindsight is amazing!) Have not yet completed the new Studio website, but the front page and logo are done. Also, I think once it is up and running properly, I will offer similar small and efficient websites for a reasonable fee.

Writing: Taking a teeny backseat – though it is NaNoWriMo this month, maybe I should actually lean in and make a point of completing one of the stories. It doesn’t have to be massive. Arcana didn’t start massive (and didn’t end massive either – just a good story).

A thought on: Money

I believe that money is abstract.

Is money abstract? What do you think? If a company can take a product (say for example, a new gadget. Or, a new medication) and set a price tag of Insanely McAnything, and when the patent expires, and other companies start copying the product, the original drops its price almost 20 times? Or a car – who ever thought cars might become as expensive as houses? And how can one professional charge 5x what another asks, for a very similar service?

One reason only: Money is abstract.

The peeps running the money show—banks and governments—tinker with interest rates, inflation, and all those yummy economic twists. They hike prices 10% across the board, but your pay? It might nudge up 5% if you push harder and smarter. In this very shaky setup, that’s basically a pay cut for extra effort—or a bigger one if you just hold steady.

Want to step outside their rules, their spongiform money environment for you?

You’ll need creativity, courage, and some sharp sideways thinking, and you need to set your own price tag on it. We’re living in changing times. And this brings me to the heart of this post:

Stand for something!

What is important to you? What is sort-of the core of your life, your values, something inside you that you would defend to the very brink? Maybe, that thing is your mission.

Maybe it is culture. Maybe, family – or, the principle of family. Maybe it is to have the possibility to partake of nature.

Have you ever thought that maybe, it is so important to you because you are meant to be its ambassador?

We created machines so they can do the chores and we can have the fun being creative. Not so they take over the creative work and leave us only the chores. But, doing the chores is what pays well. And soon, when all the chore-work is done by machines and more recently AI, what is left for humans to do?

I believe that is a very relevant question. We would do well to start thinking about all the things that are relevant to humans, that only humans can really do. And then, pick one for ourselves and make it our mission.

I’d love to hear what your mission is…. but if you don’t want to share, at least do this for yourself:

Grab a piece of paper and write down, if you could do 100% what you wanted, what you would want to have created, what you want to see yourself doing, 5 years from now.

A real study by Dr. Gail Matthews at Dominican University showed that people who write down their goals — and share progress updates — are 42% more likely to achieve them than those who don’t. (Motivating, right? There’s your proof: Put it in writing!)

… signing off

~ gipsika ~

34 Years tonight

since I met you the first time.

2 months after we met: at my Graduation

7 months in – holidays

You me and our oldest daughter

Happy Times

With our Mini

Dad Times

“He’s no gypsy, my father, she said, he’s Lord of the Woods all over”

Iain.

In my heart every day.

We’re on opposite sides of the gate, and life gets busy (and I still have some years to go).

But tonight, 34 years back ,we met the first time.

Tonight, 9 years back, we celebrated our 25th anniversary of meeting – and the last one with you alive.

Thank you for those 25 years and 4 months in which you gave me my dream.

Next round we’ll aim for at least 50.

💜 missing you alive, my Angel Iain.

Dear Websites, I can’t see you!

It is beginning to seem to me that the Internet is turning into a game of hide-and-seek.

Was googling for extra storage. Well, there is plenty of self-storage, but one cannot compare prices, as one would have to call each of them individually. What a mission!

And then, I tried looking up garden storage boxes and sheds, and – well, the COOKIE NOTICES were so MASSIVE that they COVERED ALL THE CONTENT. You try clicking them away, try to deny cookies from every last website you visit (there is limited space on my hard drive y’know), and if you deny the cookies, either the website chucks up a PAYWALL (oh well, that’s that site gone, don’t mind if I won’t be buying storage from you), or it gets ENTIRELY COVERED BY ADS. Same ditto.

But the sum total is a completely frustrating internet experience. Hey, businesses – is that what you intended? That people close your websites without even looking at your wares, because your sites are so frustrating? Why did these businesses just waste my time?

And it has nothing to do with UK’s decision to make everyone show their passbook (“yes, master”) to prove they are over 18, for perfectly everyday sites (“Master, they are killing me! It huuuurts, master!”). (Okay okay, you want the reference. Those little Skerg slaves from the race of the Dark Elves in Spellforce. What a game!) Well, I’m not in the UK luckily, for some reason (fingers crossed and wood touched) I’m still dodging that particular bit of chicane….

I’m setting up a new studio website (because face it peeps, there is no way in the world that I’ll be able to repurpose our existing studio website, it just breaks my heart to look at it, even). The site will be simple, more like a business card; loads in seconds; compatible with PCs and mobile phones, it will say what it will say – and there you are, click!

There was a time I could set up such a site in 30 minutes flat. I suspect I still have that skill stashed somewhere, and maybe I ought to market it. At a very reasonable rate. Let me dig deeper into that concept; Iain and I did use to write websites for people.

In other news…

I’ve started writing again, there are 2 stories in the cooker. One is set in SA in the Drakensberg (I’m coming up against a special kind of resistance inside of me, but on the other hand, it’s fun to throw in the occasional “eish!”). The other is a tiny mini-challenge an AI “buddy” set me (for a writer’s reset). It is related to gipsika’s Arcana (I’m still not 100% sure how I’ll tag the two together but it plays in the same “world”).

… and in other other news,

I’m upscaling the Studio. No surprise here. It was inevitable. My soul is thirsty for music. If we are going to have long dark winter evenings anyway, let there at least be music!

…gipsika over and out.

Sunday Thoughts… a life in flux

This blog used to have a solid theme. It was about publishing, writing, music and my children (so everything about being a mom, including homeschooling and fun stuff like that.)

It broke, as our life did, when my hubby was murdered. We experienced a shifting of the universe. That was real. In a split second, one pretty exciting and busy living family was changed into a case of survival.

8 years have gone by. We’re living in Ireland; in that strange in-between phase when some have found what they want to do and some not yet. Including me, as the family landscape seems to shift almost from week to week.

So this is why I’m currently battling to find the theme of this blog again. I’m working for a company and therefore can’t at this point publish other authors. I’m squeezing in a few violin lessons weekly after hours, but while the students are doing well as they should, it’s not enough volume to justify 2 studio concerts a year or any Ceilidhs at all. Also I’m being told that Ceilidh is more about dancing (something my Irish m-i-l didn’t tell us back then, and we had no way of finding out), our “thing” should be called a Ceol, pronounced “ciahwl”; but here in the ROI it’s better known as a “sesh” (whereas a “sesh” could also refer to as a drinking session, which our Ceilidhs were not! They were always child-friendly.)

My blog, in short, was about writing, music and culture, and integrating it all into family life.

There is a corner in my living room/ study & writing space / teaching space which I call P’kaboo Corner. I’ve had a P’kaboo Corner in our original place in South Africa too; it was bigger, the cupboard (“P’kaboo Cupboard”) was spacious, beautiful of Oregon pine, and full of print runs; it now graces my sister’s dining room. We wouldn’t have the space. But my “P’kaboo Corner” houses a cupboard full of print copies, as well as other stock products, and on top, my instruments – the violin, the viola, an old iMac, on the wall a battered old balalaika I found in a second-hand store. And some appropriate musical art and paintings. And that is more or less the condensed version of what I brought with me, that and my children.

I look around the rest of the room and see, except for little shrines and mementoes of Iain everywhere, a whole lot of Random.

5 adults live here, all with different interests and styles, and it reflects. The only other instruments present are my son’s cello and guitar. Not, as it should be, on a stand; inside its box for safety.

We used to have everyone’s violins up against the wall, out of their boxes and in easy reach for daily use.

The pic is from 2013, Christmas (hence the tinsel on the one violin). Oh and cameras weren’t at all what they are now…

So essentially, this is a blog in flux, a life in flux and a family in flux. Give a little time. Direction will be found.

…gipsika over and out …

Thoughts on a Tuesday: So AI replaces our jobs…

Why can employers allow AI to do their CV pre-filtering?

Because for employers, it’s a “buyer’s market”. People are being replaced (likely even by AI and other automation, and believe me, customers are feeling it), so there is a flood of people looking for jobs out there.

An absolute deluge.

Leaving not much hope for a first placement, to school leavers or new college graduates. How does a newbie compete against tenured specialists who have been “downsized”?

Many years in the past, a friend summarized the kind of jobs that will always be needed.

1. Food-related jobs. I would include food hygiene, quality control, and many other aspects in this, so I don’t think bacteriology will go out of fashion in a hurry. But, cheffing; also catering; restauranteuring; it’s a wide field.
2. Entertainment. From Wedding planning to the music business; photography to art; humans express what humans feel in entertainment and art. People need to be entertained. I understand that during WWII the professional orchestras kept performing and people kept on going to the concerts even though bombs were falling. Music is the vision of a better world, it takes us away out of the everyday, and there will always be a space for it. – And yes, that includes stories. In whichever format.
3. Health-related jobs – and while I believe many procedures and details can be enhanced and made easier and possibly more affordable using accurate AI-supported technology, the decisions will still be made by human doctors and nurses. Also, your local witchy herbalist, I believe, will always have clientèle.

But what to do if you’re not in one of those fields?

If you are one of the countless people who were working in e.g. helpdesk and are at risk of being made redundant to an AI system?

There comes a time when each adult in charge of their own life has to look into the mirror and ask themselves what they can do that brings real value. We all have skills, and if we don’t, we can learn them.

They say, dig your well before you are thirsty. What skills do you have (or can you learn) that are important to you, that you can fall back on, should your entire job category fall away to new technology? And how can you start practising these skills today, and start up small, so that when (if) the time comes, you can be off to a running start?

Sounds simple, right? .. but, is it?

I have done a bit of a deep-dive and found a few options for people, to do things on the side.

An SME is a small-to-medium enterprise. Classically a one-man-show, a mom-and-pop-shop, or a handful of friends getting up to something.

There are two types of SME. Those who trade products and those who trade services.

Services usually have the lower start-up cost (gardening, thatching roofs, teaching an instrument) but need you to have or learn the relevant skill.

Products: You’ll either have to create them (art, crafts), or source them. This kind of SME has a start-up cost; but, if you play your cards right, it is scaleable and you can eventually reduce your hours while increasing your profits.

There are further models of part-time businesses that can be scaled; some of which have pre-made plans and have a “mother ship” company creating and supplying products. If one can’t think of a service to render or a product to create by oneself, or wants the assurance of being backed by a large, established supplier, then that might be a good path to take too.

But whatever you do, don’t do nothing. Doing nothing and waiting for your doom? Hoping you’ll be lucky and escape the great job-purge? Well, you may actually be one of those highly valued people; for all I know. But if you don’t do anything to secure yourself and it turns out you’re not the golden boy or girl of your company – werrlll….

… gipsika over and out.