The Time Bubble

People write and self-publish for many reasons. For some, it is purely for the sense of achievement. They want to leave their mark on the world and aren't worried if they don’t sell any copies. The fact that they've written the book is fulfilment enough. Others dream of writing a best-seller that they’ll load up to Kindle and will take the charts by storm. In reality it seldom works out like that. I have seen statistics which say that the vast majority of self-published books will never sell more than 100 copies. It’s fair to say that the quality of work out there is variable. Some people will load up poorly written books, riddled with errors that probably don’t deserve to sell. But what about those who have written brilliant well-crafted books that deserve to succeed, yet sit unloved on Amazon’s virtual shelves? How do the authors of these books feel, knowing they've written a fantastic piece of work that nobody is buying? Pretty demoralised, I would imagine. Ther...

I've been doing a lot of contemplating on the subject of life in general over the past few weeks. I seem to have found myself in a rather reflective and at times melancholy frame of mind. I wonder if it's normal and healthy for us as people to spend time reminiscing about the past, "the good old days" as we often refer to them, or whether we should be always looking forward. The fact is, I think I've been using the phrase "the good old days" since my mid-twenties which means either my life has gone progressively downhill since then or I'm just looking through rose-tinted spectacles at a golden era that probably wasn't as great as I remember it. Perhaps our minds subconsciously choose to remember the good bits and tune out the bad ones. Let's look at a couple of examples. Firstly, work. Last week, on Facebook, one of my old colleagues from Nielsen started a thread which quickly turned into a nostalgia fest. Over a few days, I had plenty ...