STOP!

Now is the Time For All Good Men to Step into Their Power!

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STOP!

This was the one-word response from a recent subscriber to my last post.

“STOP!” is the entirety of the content that some of my detractors have to say to me.

Stop means “Stop expressing your view” or, in the more supportive words of a song, Stop “stepping into your power”. Some detractors argue with my point of view. The order to stop is unintended recognition. Why would anyone care what I say, unless they think that being influential might be ”my power”?

When I posted this chart on Facebook displaying the current state of inflation, one of my detractors told me to “Go get a real job”. In that context, I interpreted “a real job” as work directed by an external system that controls the time, output and purpose of the work. If the worker is an employee they work at facilities owned by the employer, A “real job” could also be accomplished as an independent contractor working in the service of another’s interest. Managing one's own time, work process and space is the key distinction between an independent contractor and an employee as I wrote about in a previous post:

The Bad Guy Wins, Too Bad for TOOBIG Inc., but is it an opportunity for small scale makers?

Managing one's own time, work process, space, and purpose is the key distinction between someone who is self-employed and an independent contractor.

The idea voiced by another of my detractors reasoned that investing time in independent writing establishes that I am a failure in life, the rationale being that if I were not a failure, I would not have time to write because my time would belong to someone else. It’s a twisted rationale but its main goal is to denigrate, which the speaker felt was something that needed to be done, so the comment was a recognition that I possess self-esteem that needs to be stopped. I need to stop thinking that what I have to say adds value or can affect the world.

Other detractors interpret expressing one’s voice as arrogance but arrogance is an attitude toward others. They are confusing arrogance and confidence. That’s because they want to frame self-confidence as a negative, so they came up with arrogance as the words kind of rhyme.

AI Overview says : Confidence is a genuine sense of self-worth, while arrogance is an inflated sense of superiority.

Self-esteem is one of those qualities identified as necessary for developing psycap (psychological capital) which so much is written about in the academic-corporate culture which seeks to develop psycap in their workforce so that their workforce will use its psychological capital to make the corporate investors rich.

Essentially, PsyCap refers to our mental resources and their ability to help us get through tough situations.

Just as you may have financial capital (home equity, valuable possessions, and so on) to draw on when money gets tight, you also have psychological resources available to sustain you through challenging times.

These internal resources are defined as:

Hope: your willingness to plan for the future and strive toward goals.

Efficacy: belief in your ability to successfully manage tasks.

Resilience: the ability to "bounce back" following adversity or failure.

Optimism: having a positive outlook for the future.

Combined, these resources represent your HERO – your overall psychological capital.

From "Psychological Capital" by Fred Luthans, Carolyn M. Youssef, and Bruce J. Avolio. Published by Oxford University Press, 2006. Reproduced with permission. Mind Tools

So there you have it. I need to write to sustain my psycap to get me through tough situations. I do it for myself and I do it for the future of the world. I need to write to keep myself balanced and whole. Writing is how I access my support network. Today I write because I am in pain (can you guess?). At other times writing makes me feel the pain. Writing is a struggling process, today I struggle to figure out what it is I am trying to say, first I let the words flow freely and then I weed them, defining a path to my destination. When I write I feel connected somewhere, somehow.

But writing does not provide an income. and I need a better and consistent income. I have over 2000 subscribers but only seven of them are paid subscribers and that hasn’t increased in a year.

Still, first and foremost I need to write to sustain my mental state of well-being, because as you can see from all the focus on psycap, mental well-being is necessary for other types of well-being. That is why corporations seek to create a fertile space for harvesting psycap. Now I need to develop a fertile space for creating material well-being.

a portion of Andersen Design’s Ceramic Bird Page

I was raised in a start-up business in a home without the aid of venture capitalists, using the old-fashioned capitalization method of pulling oneself up by one the bootstraps, which requires a lot of psycap. The development of the line was completely self-directed. No market research was done to determine what was in that year. The inspiration for the next design emerged from within. Money was thin but the meaningfulness of the work filled the air which I absorbed and identified at an early age as the purpose of work.

I imagine my Dad had to deal with the mean-spirited among the community who would say “He should go get a real job” about anyone not making choices exactly as they did. When that faction saw Dad succeeding they stopped him from building on his property, which was ultimately a fatal blow, at least for the time being.

It’s my life mission to restart the business and leave its assets in the hands of others. It is a seemingly insurmountable challenge without any community support.

Every business needs a team and capitalization. and community support.

It’s been looking pretty bleak the last few years but I wonder, will the dark days ahead wherein Trump implements tariffs that can potentially deconstruct global commerce, cause a reassessment of the value of businesses like Andersen Design, made in America out of raw materials sourced in America and with an inventory of unusual assets that can only come about by years of involvement in a work process?

Mother and Baby Seal, There was never market research done to decide what to design, it was all internal inspiration, and there was no market comparison to be made,

Before the election people could tell themselves that Trump didn’t mean what he was saying but the week since the election says otherwise with plans for mass deportations going into high gear and the cabinet of our government being mostly filled with people who have no qualifications or experience for the very serious and impactful shoes they are being nominated to fill. Can America and the rest of the free world survive an American government led by unqualified people?