Crazy Talk #12

***this link is what I am really avoiding writing about, don't click it,  but please do***

Vroom vrooooom vrooooommmmmm!!!! Crazy Talk 12 neooooooowmmmmmm. I am a Ferrari at the starting grid of the Crazy Talk race. On your marks, set, go!!!

Neooowmmmmmmmm. 

I did some Wim Hof breathing yesterday! Wow, highly recommend. I felt light-headed and then really focused and then really good. I even had a cold shower this morning to celebrate life. I am Jim Hof. 

I am writing this today from Staffordshire University (hint to announcement one day!) shh don’t tell anyone. 

I did want to write about money today, oh wait I already have! But I wanted to actually write about something in crazy talk, even though I don't think about crazy talk, but this time I did in advance! Is that bad? I don’t know! George will love this post, because he knows how good “I am dead” is for me, more than anyone he knows how much I think and make life all so very hard for myself so when I told him that I am dead. He really understood that 1) Obviously I was alive and well because it was on WhatsApp sent from me and 2) That yes, I am dead! Who cares, stop thinking mate and just enjoy life. I was watching the snooker last night and I think Ronnie O’Sullivan is someone who would enjoy the money workshop, I could see it in his eyes. 

I have made a link where my readers can donate to me with money to say thank you for my writing. 

There I said it! Don’t click it on it if you don’t want to, but please do if you do? I would appreciate it. 

Basically I have been all a tither recently thinking about this newsletter I have felt like Tigger from Winnie the Pooh, rather than Pooh and I much prefer to be like Pooh. I have been worried. 

Because the crazy thing is I love this newsletter and I am spending more time writing it, thinking about it, responding to everyone who emails me and making sure I write stuff that is novel and good. 

And I am being offered things. I got offered some brand deal with a piece of accountancy software and they said they would pay me to promote it. I didn’t think twice to say absolutely no thank you my friends, I cannot literally think of anything worse than pretending to care about a brand I don’t care about and posting it to my audience to make a lot of money. I may as well put my morals and integrity in the toilet and flush. Bye bye. 

Yet I do want to be paid for my writing. There I said it. I do, I really do. Because it will help writing be sustainable for me and it will help me keep doing it and I won’t have to take on other things perhaps, or I will feel like maybe I could create a sustainable writing career. 

AND I DO THINK WE AS A SOCIETY NEED TO PAY OUR CREATORS! We can’t just keep selling our attention and our data and our brainwaves to google and Facebook, that’s not good. 

This is long winded and I am nervous because even the money workshop didn’t make me any less British when talking about money. 

Yet what I said to Sarah and George was that I would write all my crazy thoughts about money and this newsletter in the crazy section and then the people who I think are really crazy will hopefully respond and tell me what they think about money and the newsletter and paying. 

And then I said well I won’t try and go too fast too soon, I will just make this donation link, here it is again in case you missed it! And leave it out here like a busker does. 

I am a busker. 

I write every week. Writing my songs and singing them in this town square that you all come to. 

What I would really like if I am totally honest and crazy with you is to have a number of people pay a monthly subscription for my writing that was enough for me to feel like yeah ok this is good, this feels good. I am not going to take on lots of other work, I am going to write the best newsletter in Lisbon, London Stoke and UK and Portugal and it’s going to be valuable, and honest and meaningful and inspiring. 

That’s what I’d like. Where would I like to get to? Well initially, gosh I don’t know. My dream is a full time writing career. Where I can live well just from writing, crikey that feels like going to Mars. Right now even £100 a month would be magic, would be madness. It would be crazy talk. 

I feel a bit sick and scared and feel like my readers of 5 years and going to revolt and get the pitch forks out! No James no! I want to keep the newsletter free 95% but 5% I would like to be paid if that makes sense. 

It is pretty crazy that I put so much love into something every week and then almost feel like I am being very pious when asking to be paid in some form for it? Should I be grateful for people for reading or should people be grateful for me writing? That feels like a big question, it is a relationship I suppose. I know I’ll keep writing anyway, I’d just feel better with some financial exchange somewhere along the way. 

I now feel like I should edit crazy talk for the first time ever!!! If this was a race, I think I am 14th out of 20. Hamilton struggling at the back. Or maybe I am Verstappen I have gone off too quickly. 

I will stop writing now and shut the lid and send this newsletter and see what you all say because actually at the end of the day, I write this for me, and I write it for you and somewhere in between, so what you say will help me and then that will be good. 

Gosh I definitely do think too much. 

I matter. 

I am dead. 

Hi Mum and George and Aunty Jue Jue (don’t worry about me mentioning being dead I am totally fine and happy and healthy xxx)

Bye bye x