Essa Alroc's Blog

I very much enjoyed writing novels, but I don't plan on finishing my first series. To the twelve people that read it, I'm sorry. Being a novelist is a big responsibility that I'm not prepared to take on.

Thanks for reading.

 

The Harvard Business Review published an interesting study recently. In it, they actually isolated a ‘drama’ gene, proving that certain people are more prone to drama than others. These individuals tended to blow minor slights out of proportion, view any criticism as a personal attack, and stay bitter about minor incidents for years afterwards. But the thing that struck me the most about these drama lovers was their most common trait.

The locus of control. The locus of control is simply a fancy psychosocial way of describing how you view your impact on the world. I have an internal locus of control, in that I believe that my actions change the world. On the flip, a person with an external locus of control would believe that the world changes their actions.

Just to give examples;

Internal locus of control: “Wow, my choice to tweet Holocaust jokes on Hitler’s birthday sure pissed a lot of people off.”

External locus of control: “Why is everyone attacking my political opinion about how the Holocaust never happened? Twitter is just filled with crazy liberals.”

Now me, I always thought that my own internal locus of control was the worse one to have because it seems narcissistic to think that the entire world changes because of you. But now that I think about it, coming at the world from an ‘everyone is against me’ standpoint is far more narcissistic.

I mean, how important do you think you are that people would actually seek you out to discredit you? Isn’t it possible that someone just thinks you’re an asshole? And Harvard backed me up because it turns out people with an external locus of control report higher levels of conflict in their personal lives.

Let me try to explain with an anecdote. I have this friend Gina. Gina is a lightening bolt when it comes to relationships. What I mean is that Gina goes on a date with a dude and ZAP; his relationship status on Facebook is updated and she’s moved half her shit into his place, while waiting to see if the pregnancy test was just a false alarm. She barely knows these dudes, moves in with them, and suddenly gets all shocked when it falls apart after three months.

Then, she calls them the psychos. She never recognizes her own culpability, nor her ENTIRE responsibility, for the situation. It’s always the world doing shit to her. I mean, she decides to let a jobless loser live with her after the third date, and three months after she’s surprised when he’s still a jobless loser? The girl who hates drama is causing her own drama.

I’ve found that to be the truth about a lot of people who claim to hate drama. They’ll talk all day about being above it all, but then, after a while you notice, that’s all they talk about. They are never responsible in their own heads, but entirely responsible in real life.   They’re just incapable of connecting the two.

So what that Harvard study taught me is if you spend a fuckton of time talking about all the drama that other people cause in your life, its not just statistically likely, it’s a scientific fact that YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.

Let’s look at it from a scientific point of view.

About 87% of computer viruses start as a form of human error. YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.
78% of adult-onset diabetes cases are a direct result of the nutritional choices of the individual with diabetes. YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.
Only 1% of identity theft claims are valid cases of criminal hacking. The other 99% are a result of individuals giving out their credit card information irresponsibly. YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.
Warnings about internet scams have existed for twenty years, but despite that, about 300,000 people fall victim to internet scams annually because they elect not to seek out advice. YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.
If everyone in your life treats you badly, your friends don’t like you and everyone seems to talk shit about you all the time…YOU ARE THE PROBLEM!!! Consider the fact that you might, just might, be a complete asshole who no one wants to be around

Look people, dickish behavior doesn’t happen in a vacuum. I know a lot of people who have a lot of drama in their lives and they all have one thing in common. They’re the kind of people who consider “you call me a bitch like it’s a bad thing” their catch phrase. Here’s the deal. It is bad to be a bitch. Bitches are mean. They’re rude, thoughtless and unpleasant to be around. They think niceness is a sign of weakness, when real strong people know that niceness is an asset.

It costs nothing yet gains you everything.

Dramatic individuals don’t get that. If you don’t, there is a very good chance that you have a lot of drama in your life. You think you’re not causing it, but you are. The world is not controlling you. You’re trying to passively aggressively control the world. But the world doesn’t react to passive aggression. So either embrace aggression, or reject it entirely, but don’t claim to be a victim of it. Because deep down, we all know one thing, and it’s been scientifically proven.

You are the problem.

 

There are three topics that bring people to my blog time and time again. In order of popularity, they are;

How to pass a drug test
How to use the darknet (ironic, because half the reason you’d need to pass a drug test would be because of shit you bought off the darknet)
When’s the 2016 Suzuki Hayabusa coming out?

Many of the people searching these terms had questions which my articles failed to address. In the interest of being thorough, I will address these questions now.

How much bleach do I need to pass for meth on a drug test?

Um, you’re fucking kidding, right? Are you asking about drinking bleach or pouring it into your urine? Drinking the bleach will definitely make it so you don’t have to take the drug test – on account of you’ll be dead. Pouring bleach directly into your urine sample will likely result in you being pulled for a higher caliber test, when it’s shown that your urine has more chlorine than the average swimming pool. Meth will stay in your system for three to five days, so just put the damn pipe down for a week and you’ll be cool. Don’t drink bleach and don’t put it in your pee.

Will meth help me pass a drug test for weed?

No, meth won’t help you pass a drug test. I cannot comprehend the idiocy which gave birth to that particular line of logic. Smoking meth to pass a drug test would be a bit like eating pancakes to cure diabetes. The only thing that will happen if you smoke meth to get weed out of your system is you’ll test positive for both and wind up in court-ordered rehab. I’m assuming that this idea comes from the fact that amphetamines speed metabolism, which could actually be counterintuitive. Marijuana has an oil base, which makes it attach to other oils like human fat. Speeding up your metabolism is more likely to release old metabolites than it is to get rid of new ones.

Time and water, those are your options. That’s it. Time and water. There is no magic cure. If there was, no one would ever fail a drug test and probation would be obsolete.

How do I buy meth on the darknet?

What is it with you people and meth? Look, the darknet is crazy expensive for everything but weed. Weed’s cheap because of legal competition. Meth, not so much. If you’re hard up, yes you can buy it there but it’s going to cost you a fuckton and to be honest, I’ve never met a rich meth addict. Check out the Darknet subreddit to get specific info regarding PGP, Bitcoin and black markets. Just note there’s a learning curve and if you’re one of those who can barely send an attachment via email, you’re not going to be able to do it.

When does the new Suzuki Hayabusa come out?

I have no fucking clue. I wrote the article a long time ago, for some scammer who never paid me, and slapped it up on my site so they couldn’t use it. The only info I can give you about any scooter is something my dad said a long time ago.

“Scooters are like fat chicks. They’re fun to ride till your friends see you on one.”

That’s all I got. Hope I clarified a few things, because I learned a few things myself. Those things are;

A lot of meth users come to my site.
The vast majority of those meth users are idiots who I should be encouraging to drink bleach
The Suzuki Hayabusa is the preferred mode of transportation for meth heads everywhere.

 

 

I am filled with deep shame. I came home to learn I had violated the Trash Code of Conduct and had been singled out as part of a special Trash Control Task Force (Or TCTF for short) when it was noted that I’d committed the following offense;

Side note; this is the place where I once saw a fully nude man, but for a pair of sneakers, attempt to burn his girlfriend’s apartment building down. And this was not the first, nor the last time outdoor nudity was fully embraced by my delightful Florida neighbors.

But that is no excuse for my behavior and I am suitably ashamed of my box. Despite my usual cleanliness with it, during the winter months I have a tendency to let it get out of control.

All sexually charged apologies aside, I did need some clarification on a few of the items in the OFFICIAL NOTICE OF TRASH VIOLATION. Please clarify the following;

Always use your trash can

Every single day, all the time? Seems a little impractical to carry that large box around everywhere I go, but hey I’ll slap some straps on it and carry it as a backpack. So my questions are; do you have any straps, and does the box come in blue?

Blue bags are for recycling only

All the blue bags? Complete autonomy on all my box and bag related activities seems a bit excessive for the cost of $25 per month, especially seeing I’ve never recycled in my life. I mean you aren’t my mother, stop attempting to control my life.  I have no desire to recycle my blue bags but if you have a blue trash can/backpack, I’ll trade you.

Trash must not weigh more than 25 pounds

What about my large gemstone collection that I’ve grown bored with? I suppose I will have Jeeves take it to my personal vault. My question here is; How rich do you think I am that I have at least 25 pounds of stuff to throw away? What do you think I do in here, run a bakery/meth lab?

Always tie and bag your trash

That seems too harsh. Can I gently caress it into submission instead?

Not really a question but an observation: Place your trash out between 5 and 7 pm

Technically we were within the guidelines, because I distinctly remember placing the garbage out at 5 AM on Thursday, before it was picked up promptly at 7 PM on Sunday.

Finally, you guys left an area open for comments so I did have one observation I wanted to add. Have you ever noticed, when faced with a really aggressive bee, it feels like it’s singled you out for attack specifically? Like it’s a fully sentient being out for revenge, because maybe you killed its bee grandfather 20 years ago? Doesn’t that creep you out? I friggen hate bees.

 

Remember what I said about never commenting on reviews? Fuck it.

I was doing my six-month review of reviews update when I saw a neat little gem among my erotica reviews. The reviewer’s main complaint and reason for giving it a one star?

The book had spanking in it.

This would make sense if I wrote cozy mysteries and slapped in a spanking scene out of nowhere. But I don’t write cozy mysteries. This book was written under a pseudonym which is a well-known spanking author, published as spanking erotica by a well-known spanking fetish publisher and given a sales blurb that clearly indicated it was about spanking.

For the reviewer to complain about spanking in the book is like me buying a jar of olives at the grocery store and then attempting to return them because there were too many olives

And as of right now, my policy on not commenting on reviews? Done. I have changed my mind entirely.

In the past, I’ve kept my mouth shut about bad reviews out of some mistaken sense of decorum. I thought I was being a professional. I used to be all like “well, Stephen King, he gets one stars all the time. Janet Evanovich, she gets one stars every day. They don’t respond.”

But I’m not Stephen King and I’m not Janet Evanovich. I don’t have millions of dollars in sales to comfort me when someone calls me a pervert on the internet.  I’m a fucking nobody and what does it matter if I do whatever the fuck I want, whenever I want?

You don’t get to tell me how to behave. So you’re a reader and you have an opinion? Well I’m a breather and I have an opinion too. Most of the time, that opinion is “you’re a fucking moron.”

In the past, I’ve held myself to a standard out of some mistaken sense of decorum, but tonight I realized I’m dealing with people who can’t even be bothered to read a sales blurb before they complain. Why the hell am I trying to act like this consummate professional when people feel no reason to respond in kind? The customer isn’t always right. In fact, most of the time, they’re just being an asshole.

And now it’s my turn to be an asshole.

So here’s my responses to all the reviews I’ve gotten, that I’ve been dying to respond to, but held my tongue on.

Let’s make this clear. You paid to read all of my Sal books, but don’t like them?  Then stop reading them! Seriously, no one is forcing you to read your way through an entire series that you don’t like. In fact, I’m genuinely requesting that you stop reading everything I write right now. You’d be doing us both a favor. Also, side note, I dig being corrected on grammar by someone incapable of turning their caps lock off.

Seriously, suck it.

It probably obtained the rating it did because other people than you actually liked it. Imagine that. Your tastes aren’t everyone’s. If they were, we’d all be wearing sweater sets and creating macaroni pictures of Jesus at some shitty community center while planning birthday parties for our cats.

If I insulted Christians and portrayed them as fanatics, you have my utmost….thanks. Most Christians are fanatics. The very definition of fanatic is “a person filled with excessive and single-minded zeal”. Now, I don’t know about you, but I consider basing my life on a rule book of 2000-year-old riddles and praying to an invisible father figure who lives above us in the sky fanatical. I do indeed consider those people crazy fanatics and have no issue at all with the fact that they disagree with me. In fact, I’m a bit relieved by it. It indicates to me that at least all my facilities are still intact and I’m still capable of logical thought.

So that’s all I feel like commenting on for now but I can’t guarantee that this will be all. I’m thinking about setting up a page where I openly respond to reviews that piss me off.

I’m not afraid of badly behaving author’s groups or stupid internet campaigns because I know three things. One, if you get a real fire going on a book, all the bad reviews in the world won’t stop it.( See Stephen Leather). Two, the vast majority of you book reviewers one star me while drooling over the next piece of vampire erotica, indicating to me that you wouldn’t know good writing if Earnest Hemingway rolled out of his grave and bitch slapped you with A Farewell to Arms.

And three, I have nothing to lose. The vast majority of my books are languishing in the dregs of Amazon. What’s the worse that will happen? I piss off a bunch of people and make myself EXTRA-unsellable?

What will I do without those extra $27 in royalties every month?

Well, guess I’ll just create a new pen name. Yeah, that internet anonymity works both ways. The bitch you hate this month could be the author you love next and you’ll never even have an inkling.

So all that stuff I said about never commenting on reviews? Fuck it. Comment away. If someone has the nuts to say something nasty about a person online, they should have the nuts to back that opinion up when confronted. People who get upset when an author comments on their reviews are being hypocritical assholes. You’re allowed to comment on someone else’s writing, but they can’t comment on yours? Because that’s what a review is. It’s writing. And based on your own definition of reviewing, someone else is entirely entitled to give you an opinion on that writing.

You know how so many of you say “if you can’t handle a bad review, don’t write?” Well, here’s Essa saying; “If you can’t handle a bad review of your review, don’t write.” Works both ways.

The internet isn’t a glory hole where you get your rocks off and walk away. Sometimes shit comes back, and sometimes it comes back because you were being an idiotic asshole. And no one, not other readers, not writers, not the god damn president, is required to be nice to you while you’re being an asshole, regardless of what medium you choose to be an asshole in.

That’s life. Deal with it.

 

 

 

 

This is what Epcot looks like when you pass out in the parking lot

Epcot is one of the few Disney establishments I like. It’s got nothing to do with what they offer. Nope, when you pay the $100 cover charge to get into Epcot, you’re mainly paying to get into a bunch of gift shops with equally overpriced crap. It’s not their rides. The one I did go on managed to combine my two most hated things; Martin Short and Canada.

It was like the “It’s a small world” ride at Disney, only far more boring and twice as annoying.

So despite the annoying merchandizing, shitty rides and foreign tourists, I still manage to like Epcot. Know why?

Drinking around the world, motherfuckers.

See Epcot has cashed in on the one thing adults like when they’re forced to go to a Disney Park. Alcohol. No joke, I will tolerate endless amounts of Jasmine and Nemo, provided I’m allowed to get loaded in the process. And in Epcot, they offer something amazing.

The ability to drink in every last country that they’ve created based on an Americanized stereotype.

So the opportunity to both get super wasted and be offensive to foreigners in one fell swoop? Consider me in. Well played Epcot. Well played.

Anywho, we started off in Canada. As I’d been drinking heavily the night before, my brother became concerned as I developed the sweats while chugging a very heavy Moosehead Ale. But he had no idea. I was simply getting my early second wind.

See, me and my brother, we’re about as different as two people could be. He’s a republican. I’m a paranoid libertarian. He has a real job where he’s important and takes phone calls on the weekend. I would be both shocked and horrified if any one of my clients called me on the weekend. He’s a clean freak and I’m pretty sure I’ve grown a new form of bacteria in my toilet. He’s a health nut who regularly goes to the gym.

The last time I went to the gym was March of 2013. I needed to use their vitamin water machine to get something to mix with my booze.

So being the healthy, trim dude he is, it’s completely reasonable that he thought he’d be able to out drink me through 13 countries. What he didn’t get was 13 drinks isn’t really a challenge to me.

I call that Tuesday.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I treat my body like a temple. And by temple, I mean one of those wild, drunken orgy bathhouses in ancient Rome. I can’t remember the last time I actually ate solid food.   When I did, I assume it was some kind of fried meat. I don’t do vegetables. As far as I’m concerned, vegetables are nothing more than the product I use to lure my meat into a fryer.

As a result, my body adapts. My shriveled, probably green liver, isn’t even part of the process anymore. The booze goes right to my stomach, then slides its way into my bladder thanks to a heavy coating of cholesterol.

It’s important to have a system.

Anyway, we made it through all the countries in Epcot before passing out on the ground near the giant golf ball. At that point, I led him out to the parking lot to find our mom’s car.

You ever heard of the blind leading the blind? Well, this was the drunk leading the drunk. My brother passed out in a parking spot as I wandered like Mad Max leaving Thuderdome until I wound up in a Wet & Wild Parking lot about 4 miles away…where I led a small nation of people who had also lost their cars forever.

After about two hours of drunk wandering, I finally found our car…about 3 spaces from where my brother passed out in the first place.

So I did the reasonable thing. I loaded his ass into the back seat, peed behind the back tire, and called our mom to take us home.

Because drinking around the world is no joke. It’s hard. Going in there unprepared is a bit like attempting to run the Boston Marathon after one spinning class.

You can’t just jump into that shit. Your body needs practice. You need to know if you’re ready

Here’s a test to help you decide;

Have you ever drunk mouthwash after you ran out of beer?

Yes
No


Do you consume more than four drinks a week?

Yes
No


After a heavy night of drinking, have you ever woken up and used more alcohol as any ‘eye opener”?

Yes
No

Ok, so those questions? Copied off of a “do you need AA” website. If you answered all yesses, I’ve got good news and bad news. Bad news first; you’re probably an alcoholic.

Good news? You can totally handle drinking around the world.

Rock on Epcot, rock on.

 

 

 

 

 

If there is a phrase that I hate more than the phrase “street smart” it’s “the school of life.”

A lot of people who never bothered with college use it to make themselves feel better for not going to college. Like “I didn’t need to go to college. I have life experiences.”

Yeah, you know who doesn’t agree with that? Capitalism.

News flash, everyone has life experience. Everyone has attended the school of life. Hell, even people in comas are in the school of life. They’re like the equivalent of those kids who slept through class in high school but passed anyway.

And people who fall back on the school of life as their only education are yet another group of people who want credit for doing absolutely fucking nothing. It’s like when guys get pissed because girls don’t like them, even though they’re nice.

“Yeah, I’m an overweight dude with no job and questionable personal hygiene, but I’m nice! Why don’t supermodels like me?”

For the same reason no one wants to pay you $100,000 a year to stock shelves. You don’t get extra credit when you do the bare minimum. The fact that you don’t punch a girl in the face on the first date is not something to be proud of.

It’s expected behavior.

Same with the school of life. The only requirement to passing in the school of life is not dying. Well, hell, I’ve been doing that for 35 years now….and I also managed to get a college education from a real, accredited university. Imagine that.  I’m like a double major.

And don’t bother with messages about how Einstein was a high school dropout and Bill Gates flunked out of college. For every one Bill Gates, there’s about 10,000 janitors with GEDs. The exception proves the rule. Extraordinary people don’t go to college because they don’t need it. The fact is, many people tend to think they’re extraordinary when they’re utterly ordinary.

Here’s the test to tell if you’re extraordinary. It’s one question –

In your free time you…

Watch TV, play video games and update your educational status to “School of Life” while expecting people to pat you on the back for doing everyday things like parenting, not breaking the law, and going to work.
Spend time in the garage that you’ve converted into a small-scale nuclear reactor in order to continue studying the potential of cold fusion

Here’s a hint. Chances are if you’re the kind of person who answers “number 2”, you’re not on this page.

You don’t get credit for being alive, so no, the school of life is not a thing. If the fact that you haven’t died yet is your biggest accomplishment, you seriously need to reevaluate your life, rather than brag about that.

Not being dead isn’t an accomplishment. It’s a status update.

You want credit, get a real education. Do something with your life. But stop saying you graduated from the school of life. From personal experience, I’ve found the people who attend that university are only experts at failing.

So recently, I decided to get my video game addicted son a bike. I had a deep-rooted fear of him spending his life sitting in front of a computer, typing away, his breath labored from the effort it took to just sit there, as he pounded beers and ignored his skin turning slightly green from a mixture of jaundice and lack of sunlight.

In short, I was afraid he was going to turn into me.

Now we Alrocs, we don’t do sports. We don’t do nature. We are an indoor, tech dependent bred.

No joke, my plan for zombie apocalypse? Suicide. I have no desire to live in a world with no air conditioning or microwavable burritos.   That, and a Kirk Cameron ‘pray away the gay’ camp are two perfect settings for my own individual hell.

So yeah, I decided to get Logan a bike, in the hopes that he might actually enjoy it. But as I lack a large SUV and any knowledge of bikes at all, I did what I always do. I ordered the bitch online with the intention of putting it together myself.

Surprisingly I can be pretty handy when it comes to tools. It comes with being a chick who hates leaving the house. Seriously, I get Christmas cards from my pizza boy. So I order everything online, some assembly required to avoid those outdoor trips. I figured that building a bike would be just as easy as many of the stationary things I’ve built in the past.

Turns out, shit gets a lot more complicated when you add wheels.

But I’m a determined chick with too much time on my hands, so I got it done. Now, let me share my knowledge with you.

Step # 1.

That owner’s manual, the one that’s filled with words that sound like you need an advanced degree in bike technology to understand (what the fuck is a valve stem neck shaft?)? Yeah, rip that bitch in half. Use one side as a coaster, and the other to roll yourself a nice fat joint*. You’re going to want to be high for this.

Step #2.

Chances are, the manual gave you a listing of tools you’ll need. That’s crap. You only need two tools.

Tool 1: Fingers

Tool 2: One of them metal L things that came included with the bedframe you ordered off Amazon six months ago.

Step #3.

Assemble everything in a way that looks bike like and start screwing. Ignore the ameneties.

Adjustable seat? Fuck that. Ten speeds? Completely unnecessary. When I was a kid, adjustable seat meant that your dad just wrapped the seat in extra duct tape, and bikes only had two speeds. Stop and go.

Step #4.

Cover bike in the tarp from your barbeque and let sit for three months.

Bike riding in a flat state is way harder than I remember bike riding being when I grew up in the white mountains of New Hampshire. Then again, I don’t think I ever pedaled in New Hampshire. I just went to the top of the hill and coasted.

As a result, the bike I assembled remains in pristine condition, after being ridden once and walked home. Which leads me to the final step in my guide to bike assembly.

Step #5.

Buy a bus pass.

 

 

 

*Please note you should not smoke the joint if the manual came from a foreign country, as lax regulation virtually guarantees that manual is made of equal parts asbestos and lead.

The littleness of my dog makes me live in fear every time we go outside. I fear hawks mistaking her for a rabbit. I fear her getting her tiny dog legs stuck in a sewer grate. But most of all, I fear giant dogs thinking she’s a chew toy.

 

Now, I didn’t get a little dog because I have a preference for little dogs. I got a little dog because I don’t have the time, energy and resources to care for a big dog. As a responsible pet owner, I think the first step to that responsibility is recognizing your limitations when it comes to buying a pet.

And there are a fuckton of people out there who don’t take that first step.

So, in my ongoing crusade to help everyone do everything better all of the time, here are some signs that you can’t handle a big dog.

You live in a one bedroom apartment

If your dog takes up more than 25% of the square footage of your living space, you’ve gone too big. No joke people, that’s like putting a yacht into a swimming pool. Of course shit is going to get ripped up! The solution is not to compact his space even further by leaving him on your fucking porch all day while you’re at work. That’s just a dick move, not just to the dog, but to the neighbor next door who has to listen to him whimper all day.

I can’t handle that. I’m one of those assholes who cries at those Sarah McLachlan ASPCA commercials.

The dog outweighs you by 100 pounds or more

I have a rule that I never date or own anything capable of kicking my ass in a fight. That’s a good rule as it saves me from regularly getting my ass kicked.

What can I say? I’m very annoying.

This morning I saw a tiny Asian woman trying to walk something that looked like a hybrid between a sheepdog and a moose. Only it didn’t look like she was walking him. It looked like the dog was flying a kite shaped like a small Asian woman. This bitch was flapping in the breeze, clinging to the leash for dear life as her dog dragged her down the street, running faster than the top speed of your average Prius.

This is not a good way to show your pet who the alpha is.

You’ve never owned anything that actually requires training

If you’re upgrading from a turtle to a Leonberger, you’re doing it wrong.

Look, I’m going to openly admit that my little dog, she’s not trained. Sure, she’s housebroken, but she ignores anything I tell her to do, begs for food, watches me pee, and regularly tries to have sex with my pillow.

But that’s no big deal because she weighs 9 pounds. Even though plan A failed, and she’s completely untrainable, I still have a plan B.

Pick her up.

That’s it. All I have to do to get her to stop doing what she’s doing is pick her up. This strategy works whether she’s tossing licentious looks at my body pillow, all the way to if I think she’s about to bite someone.

You can’t do that with a big dog.

So when we’re at the dog park, and you, for some inexplicable reason, have decided to let your untrained 170 pound Siberian Fucking Moosehound run wild, all your assurances in the world that “he doesn’t always listen, but he’s friendly!” mean shit to me when he’s sizing up my Sophia like she’s a god damn chew toy.

In short, if your big dog does not immediately stop what it’s doing when you say the words ‘sit’ or ‘stay’ it is your responsibility to society to keep them away from other people (and adorable little dogs — especially mine) until they do.

Recognize the fact that there have been 325 dog related fatalities in the US in the last ten years, and 350,000 people visit emergency rooms for dog bites annually. My point is that the vast majority of those owners whose dog attacked someone probably thought their dog was friendly too.

But then it wasn’t.

If you must have a dog, but don’t have even a remote understanding of training, go small. You never hear of a five pound Yorkie ripping someone’s throat out.  Sure, they might eat their owner’s face after they’re already dead, but there’s a difference.

But if you don’t want to go little, and choose to have a large dog, or a vicious breed, you have a responsibility to society to ensure that dog is trained. That is all there is to it.

I guess my point to this whole post is dogs aren’t god damn impulse buys. They’re not a keychain you can pick up at the convenience store and then return when they don’t suit you. They’re a major adjustment and that adjustment goes up with every single pound the dog gains. So before you head on out and get a giant dog, consider your limitations. Because that kind of responsibility weighs on you.

Literally.

 

 

 

 

One of my favorite shows, Nashville, did a cliché I hate last week. They showed this songwriter, this pure hearted songwriter, being forced to write a jingle for a car dealership. I guess I was supposed to feel bad for him. I guess I was supposed to say “what about his art?”

Ironically, the photo of a musician who sold out on his dream of being a musician to become an actor

This man, this desperate man was forced to prostitute his art for the masses. I guess I was supposed to be outraged. I was supposed to say “how dare that dirty car company demand he sully his art by writing a jingle?”

But the thing is, I’m real. I’m a novelist who hasn’t taken the world by storm, but I fully intend to.  And as a person with true ambition, as a real writer who files writer on her tax returns, I think you got to pay your dues.

I get a lot of flak from my writer friends for selling out. See, I write a lot of advertising material. I ghostwrite. Not everything I write is a novel I’ve been dying to write… Some of it is just more advertising fodder.  I write to pay my rent. And I get flak from people who work as cashiers, dog groomers, pizza delivery guys and more for not staying true to my art.

And it’s time I say this.

You’re fucking kidding me, right? You really think working in a cubicle, punching a time clock or flipping pizza dough for forty hours a week makes you more of a writer than a girl who actually writes all week?

Yeah, I could work in a cubicle too. Hell, by now, I could have a corner office with actual walls. I could work every day of the week in a job I hate, making enough money to keep me in SUV payments and my very own modular home. I could have complete stability. But I don’t. And you know why I don’t?

I’m all in.

Every word I write makes me a better writer. The work I do to pay the bills is me practicing my craft, every day, all day, and seven days a week. I don’t work forty hours. That would be a vacation for me. It’s 8 pm on a Friday night. I’m a smoking hot chick with disposable income who should be out partying. But I’m still writing.I’m writing for clients at the same time that I’m working on the coursework for my MFA in writing. My life is writing.

And every word I write makes me better.

And every pizza you make, it makes you a better pizza maker. Every person you check out makes you better at math. Every phone call you take makes you better at customer service.But nothing you do every day makes you a better writer. You do what you got to do to pay the bills and you write when you can.

To me, you’re the ones who sold out.

I walked away from a high paying job a long time ago. I could have rested on my laurels and been like you, only better. My SUV would have been a Lexus and my modular home would have had a foundation.But I decided having passion for what you do is more important.

So I took a real risk. I went all in. I worked my way up from the dregs of content mills to being the kind of person who makes more in one article than you make all week. I did it because I love writing. I loved it so much that I gave up stability for it. My passion made me land on my feet. I’m all in and that means I’m willing to pay my dues. I’ll write anything, as long as I’m writing. I’ll write until my fingers bleed.

Because every word I write, that makes me better.

So no people, I’m not the one who sold out. Writing in a genre different than the one I anticipated does not make me a sellout.

Working in a job that has nothing to do with writing makes you one.

I’m all in, but you clearly don’t have the balls to be. I get it. Being all in requires bravery. It requires you giving up your cushy nine-to-five gig and trusting your talent to carry you. It forces you to accept the fact that you might not be as good a writer as you thought.

It makes that cash register seem awful cozy.

I took the risk. I get the reward. You could have taken the risk too. You didn’t. Instead, you chose yourself a comfortable career, where you work for someone else 40 hours a week, and spend about four writing. Then you call yourself a real writer, because you’re writing the stuff you want to write! You’re super cool and in fifteen years when you finish that novel? You’re going to set the world on fire!

But really, you’re not. There is a very strong chance that you and your writing are going to disappear from the world without making a dent.

But me? My writing, regardless of the genre, is going to be there forever. I don’t look down on the writing I do for clients like it’s some kind of sell out. I look at it as yet another opportunity to display my passion to the world. Because regardless of what I write, I’ll always shine and I will never look down on the people that got me there.

I’m all in.