Maybe it’s because I have children. They’re the reason I wound up watching a lot of Thomas the Tank Engine videos, so bear with me while I take a trip down childhood lane.
 
Thomas the Tank Engine and his engine friends all care about one thing. They all want to be Really Useful Engines. They work hard to get the job done and to keep the North Western Railway running the way it should.
 
We all want to be Really Useful Engines. We all want to be valuable and contribute to society. We also want to make a living and support ourselves through our own efforts. We want to make money and be successful and to be able to buy the things we want.
 
So why do so many of us have trouble when it comes to finances and employment?
 
Finance and employment is the arena in which we demonstrate to the world that we have something valuable to offer. When we offer something of value to the world, we get paid for it. This is where our thinking can cause us problems.
 
The psychologist Erik Erikson developed a theory of child development that teaches us a lot about this subject. He outlines the different psychological stages of development and when and where in childhood people develop certain mental structures that stay with them for life.
 
Erikson’s model helps us understand how disrupted child development can implant damaged worldviews in our minds. These corrupted models stay with us long into adulthood and can become permanent unless we take steps to change them.
 
Negative experiences and childhood trauma corrupt our view of the world. They destroy the social contract that says the world is a fair, safe place where people get what they deserve according to their skills, gifts, and abilities. Corrupted models and worldviews destroy our sense of justice that bad people get punished for their crimes.
 
This violation of trust makes us question whether we’re really able to understand what another person is saying or if we’re misreading their true intentions.
 
These corrupted, misleading models destroy our ability to trust in a benevolent authority figure. Powerful people may have taken advantage of us and misused their authority to get what they wanted from us. They taught us that authority figures are malicious and can’t be trusted.
 
All of these issues impact our finances and employment. If we can’t trust an authority figure, we’re going to have a hard time working under any kind of boss or business owner who wants to tell us what to do.
 
We react to authority in one of two ways. Either we rebel against and push the authority away by saying, “You can’t tell me what to do!”
 
Or we knuckle under and obey. We put our boss in the position of authority previously occupied by the person who misused their authority against us the first time.
 
We cooperate out of fear. They recreate original power dynamic with our boss so we can get along and keep our jobs.
 
All of us received a message from our parents and society about money, employment, and our relationship with the outer world.
 
Our parents give us our first, most important programming about what money means, what we have to do to get it, and how we’re going to relate to the world through the medium of finance.
 
Take a moment to examine these messages. Maybe your parents told you to go to college, get a good job, and build a safe retirement account.
 
Maybe your parents taught you through example that you would never get a job and that you would be on welfare all your life.
 
Maybe your parents modeled for you that you should turn to a life of crime and spend your life in prison.
 
Once we understand this model, we can take power back into our own hands. We don’t have to do it the way our parents told us to. We don’t have to live in poverty and hopelessness anymore—nor do we have to be corporate wage slaves.
 
There’s a beautiful parable in the Bible that Jesus tells his followers on Mount Olivet. The story is called The Parable of The Talents.
 
In this case, the talents are actually gold coins used as money. Some versions call the story The Parable of the Minas (a coin of money) or The Parable of the Pounds.
 
In the story, a rich man gives each of his three servants a certain number of gold coins to see which of them uses the money the best way.
 
The first one buries his money in the ground to keep it safe. The master calls this man an ‘evil and lazy servant’. He takes the money away from him and throws him out on the street where there will be ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth’.
 
The other two servants invested their money and doubled it. The master calls them ‘good and faithful servants’ and rewards them.
 
He takes the money away from the one who hid his talent and gives it to the one who made the most profit. The master says, “For the one who has will be given more, and he will have more than enough. But the one who does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.”
 
This is an inspiring and insightful story that teaches us to use our abilities. In the story, the ‘talent’ refers to money, but we can learn a lot by taking the modern meaning of the word to understand he’s talking about our inborn gifts, abilities, and strengths.
 
Each of us was born with gifts. We all have skills and abilities unique to us. If we sit on them and hide them from the world, we might as well not have them at all. They won’t benefit us and we’ll wallow in misery for life.
 
Even if we get a good job, keep our head down, and build a safe retirement account, we’re going to come to the end of our lives feeling hollow and unfulfilled.
 
We’re going to understand at the core of our being that we didn’t live the best life we could have. We’re going to realize we could have done more. We could have been happier.
 
We could have made just as much money doing something we love and being our own boss. We don’t have to kowtow to someone else to get there.
 
The alternative is living in poverty and scraping by on hand-outs. A lot of poor people make the excuse, “I’d rather be poor than bow and scrape to someone else for a living.” This is their way of rebelling against authority. They refuse to play the game and obey, so they opt out and do nothing.
 
What they don’t realize is that there’s a third way to make a living—one that doesn’t involve obeying OR living on hand-outs. This requires that we to invest our talents, gifts, and abilities and turn them into profit. This means being our own boss and ruling OURSELVES more strictly than a boss ever could.
 
I spent 25 years unemployed and unemployable. I got fired from dozens of jobs. I couldn’t deal with authority and I couldn’t communicate effectively with other human beings.
 
I had been on welfare for nearly eight years when I became a professional freelance writer at the age of 40. I had lived under a bridge. I had lived in the back of a pickup truck. I had gone without food countless times because I had no money.
 
All of this came from one simple misunderstanding. I had a certain concept in my mind of what the word “job” meant.
 
When I thought about working for a living, I imagined getting up in the morning, getting dressed, going somewhere, working for somebody else, clocking in and clocking out, getting a paycheck, and having a boss tell me what to do.
 
I didn’t understand there was another way. I never could have envisioned the life I have now.
 
Let me paint you a picture of the job I have now. This will give you a perfect view of what I’m talking about.
 
Nowadays, I get up in the morning. I spend the first hours of my day taking care of my kids. I make their breakfasts and pack their lunchboxes.
 
I give out lots of cuddles. I brush and braid my two daughters’ hair. I do all this in between taking a shower, doing my workout, and getting myself ready for the day. I make sure the kids have their backpacks. Then I drive them to school.
 
I drop off my two girls at school and drive back home with my little boy. I work on the computer while he plays with his train set and listens to audiobooks. Remember Thomas the Tank Engine? Now you know how I learned so much about him.
 
I type non-stop from 9am to 3pm. Then I go pick up the girls from school. After that, I take care of home, do laundry, make dinner, clean the kitchen, help with homework and reading practice, etc, etc, etc.
 
No one tells me what to do. I communicate with my clients. I negotiate my contracts. I set my own schedule. I decide when I’m going to do a contract and when I’m going to complete it.
 
No one tells me I have to write a certain amount per day to get the contract done on time. I decide that and I’m the one who tells myself to write a certain amount every day. I push myself.
 
I’m a much stricter taskmaster to myself than any boss I ever had. That’s my job and I LOVE it. I’m doing something that is tons of fun. I’m good at it and I get paid really, really well. I support my family doing something that’s a game to me. I couldn’t ask for a better life.
 
Take a look at your own life. What did you really enjoy doing as a child? Do you have a passion you love doing? Are you really good at something?
 
Pick out two or three things you would absolutely LOVE to make a living doing. What would it actually take for you to make a decent living doing them? Would you have to market yourself? Would you have to create a portfolio of your work and apply for jobs?
 
A lot of people have a mental block when it comes to asking for money in exchange for something they did. We think helping people and making money are mutually exclusive and we can’t do both. All of that has to go down the tubes for this to work.
 
All of us HAVE to get paid. There is no reason on God’s green Earth why any of us should put time and effort into creating something, only to receive nothing in return. We’re giving value to the world and people should pay us for it.
 
Think of a fruiting tree. We draw nourishment from the soil to produce something other people value.
 
They should exchange something THEY value to get what we produced. No one would dream of going to the supermarket and taking a nice, ripe peach without paying for it. Why should my clients and customers pay nothing to get something I slaved to create? They shouldn’t.
 
Hobbyists and amateurs work for free. Professionals get paid. We can all keep being hobbyists and amateurs. We can keep working our day jobs, but that’s not going to make us happy.
 
Understand this: when we start getting paid to do something, it turns into a job. Say I’m an amateur potter and I want to become a professional. Once I do that and start making a living at it, I’m going to have to turn it into a job like any other.
 
I have to get up in the morning and go do my job. I have to spend a certain number of hours working in my studio and it will be work. Trust me on this. I don’t get to screw around doing whatever I please. I need a set schedule and I need to force myself to stick to it.
 
That’s what I do as a writer. I don’t sit down in front of the computer to have fun. It’s a job. It’s effort.
 
I have stress. I have to deal with clients and customers. I have to deal with people I don’t like. Artists have to organize venues to show their work. They have to keep their accounts in order and stick to a production budget. There will be times—lots of times—when we don’t want to do the hard slog and we have to do it anyway.
 
A job without stress is called a hobby. Amateurs and hobbyists don’t have stress. Professionals have stress. Professionals have a job. Amateurs and hobbyists have fun. They save the stress for the day jobs they hate.
 
We don’t stop working when we go out on our own to do a job we love. Most entrepreneurs work harder at their businesses than they ever did at a job. We have more stress and more responsibility.
 
There is one thing we will never have to deal with again. We will never have to deal with an authority figure again. That is a wonderful, freeing feeling you have to experience to believe. No one will ever tell us what to do, not even our clients. When we negotiate with them, we communicate as equals.
 
When I talk to my clients, I tell them how much they’re going to pay me. I tell them when I’m going to start the job and when I’m going to finish it.
 
This comes with a flip side. They tell me what they want, too. They tell me the specifics of the job they want me to write. I don’t get to write whatever I please. I have to make certain they get the product they want or I’m out of a job.
 
It’s very important to me that all my clients get the book they want and that they leave satisfied. That’s what makes me a professional. I’m not a child playing in the sandbox.
 
They come to the table expecting to spend a certain amount of money. In exchange, they want a product they can use that fills their needs. That’s what I provide.
 
When I apply for a job, I send them a cover letter that tells them my experience. I tell them that I’m absolutely confident I can deliver what they want and that I’m the best person for that job.
 
This comes from experience, but it also comes from believing in myself. It comes from believing I can do what I say I will do. It comes from an ironclad commitment to my work and to delivering.
 
So how can you get this for yourself? How do you build a life you love? How do you get a job that doesn’t include an authority figure?
 
Option #1: Freelancing.
 
If you’re a writer, graphic designer, IT whiz, architect, biologist, researcher, engineer, or just about anything else, you can freelance. You can make as much if not more from freelancing, all the while being your own boss.
 
The internet is your best friend. There are dozens of freelancing platforms where anyone can apply for jobs in any one of hundreds of fields. Get creative. Build a portfolio. Put yourself out there.
 
A portfolio doesn’t have to be perfect. Just get started. Your portfolio and your job will evolve over time. Apply for a job you KNOW you can successfully complete. Get paid. Then apply for another one. Put one foot in front of the other. Stack one brick on top of another. That’s how to build a career.
 
When I started freelance writing, I created a portfolio with two very generic writing samples on it. I fired off one very cookie-cutter contemporary romance and one piece of lesbian erotica. I stuck them up on a freelancing platform and started applying for jobs.
 
I started writing erotica. Then I noticed that one of my clients had posted a job for action/adventure. I asked him to give me a chance. That’s how my career started. I started at the bottom of the pay scale working for less than minimum wage.
 
When I started, I sucked. I studied writing craft. One of my clients gave me a link to one of my books that he had published so I could read the reviews. That’s how I got better. I honed my craft and I worked my way up to the top of my pay scale, which is where I am now.
 
Option #2: Commission work.
 
A commission salesperson gets paid based on how many sales they make. They have to hustle as they’ve never hustled before and that can be a massive motivational boost.
 
The more I work, the more I get paid. That salesperson has to get themselves up in the morning, get out there, meet their customers, and talk them up. Salespeople have to present a professional appearance. They have to communicate effectively. Most of them love it and thrive on the pressure.
 
They might have a boss, but their boss doesn’t tell them what to do. The salesperson has to manage themselves. They have to push themselves if they want to get paid.
 
Option #3: Start your own business.
 
Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket! This is a big step, but it can also be the most rewarding.
 
The sky is the limit when it comes to profit. A new business could become the next KFC. It could become the next Microsoft. Do you have something you love to do? Do you have an idea you’re busting to share with the world?
 
I started this blog on the side while working full time as a professional freelance writer. I did it in the small hours of the morning. I did it on weekends. I made a website and I started posting content. End of story.
 
Remember: the internet is your best friend. There is no one on the planet you cannot reach. Customers and clients are out there searching for you. They are hungry for what you have to offer. They are just waiting for you to come along, solve their problems for them, and they will pay you for it.
 
We all have a choice to make. Which would you rather have?
 
Would you rather have a successful job & acknowledgement from the universe that you’re a Really Useful Engine and people value your gifts and talents?
 
Or would you rather live the rest of your life wondering what might have been? Would you rather wake up one day and find out you’re old and useless and that you’ll never know what you could have accomplished if you only summoned the courage to take the first step?
______________
All content on the Crimes Against Fiction Blog is © Theo Mann. You are free to distribute and repost this work on condition that you credit the original author.

We get issued at birth with the greatest supercomputer ever designed.
 
The problem is that we don’t get issued with any instructions on how to work the supercomputer. We all have to flounder around using trial and error to figure it out, which can lead to disastrous consequences.
 
In the worst case, a malfunctioning supercomputer can cause us incalculable damage.
 
Thinking the wrong thing can do more damage to our wellbeing, our health, and our happiness than someone or something deliberately setting out to harm us. 
 
Life is the training manual for learning how to operation these computers we all carry around in our heads. Unfortunately, this process takes decades.
 
It might take us into our fifties or beyond before we master the basics so we can actually start living productive, effective lives. 
 
Some people never figure it out. They spend their lives miserable and destroying themselves and everyone around them.
 
This is a really, really stupid way to run the world, but I don’t make the rules.
 
So today I’m issuing everyone with an instruction manual for your brain. These techniques will make sure our onboard computers are functioning the way they ought to. These instructions will allow us to correct any errors or malfunctions that may pop up. 
 
Think of your life as a car you’re driving down a road. It’s up to you to get behind the wheel and steer the car where you want it to go.
 
If we got into a car and smashed our foot down on the accelerator pedal without bothering to steer, we would probably wind up sinking into the bay, not to mention threatening life and limb of ourselves and everyone around us.  
 
To operate our lives, we have to steer.
 
Think of the human body as a high-performance racehorse that needs proper nutrition and exercise to function at its peak.
 
We can also see our bodies as cars. Our bodies need the right fuel, the right maintenance, the right tire pressure. They break down and become unusable if we neglect them. The same thing happens to our bodies. 
 
If we had a computer that didn’t work right, we might say a few bad words to it. Then we would take it to a programmer and get it fixed so it did what we wanted it to do. 
 
If a car coughed, spluttered, and lurched down the highway belching black smoke from under the hood, we would take the car to the repair shop.
 
We wouldn’t get the car back until the mechanic fixed it—and I mean really fixed what was wrong with it and returned it to its proper state of functioning.  
 
If the mechanic tilted their head to one side, listened to us describe what went wrong with the car, and said, “How did that make you feel?” we would want to sue them for fraud. We would take the car from mechanic to mechanic until we found someone who could actually fix the damn thing. 
 
We all have things going on in our brains that work against our best interest. Our negative self-talk, outdated beliefs, and self-sabotaging doubts interferes with us living our best lives. 
 
We watch other people whizzing past us on the highway of life while we limp along the shoulder in half-dead jalopies strapped together with duct tape.
 
Our cars billow smoke across the windshield so we can’t see the road ahead while others cruise past us pumping music from their high-performance sound systems. We watch these people waving and smiling from their windows and it makes us feel even worse. 
 
Today is the day we get our cars and our onboard computers fixed so they actually work. 
 
The first step it to recognize that all this trash in our heads is slowing us down and even stopping us from living our lives.
 
A lot of this garbage needs to be eliminated. Other parts need to be repaired and corrected. Fortunately for us, it can be. 
 
Our thoughts, beliefs, feelings, doubts, and ideas as really just habits. That’s what our thoughts are. They’re habits like every other habit in our lives.
 
Repetition over time locks our brains into these entrenched ruts. We keep thinking the same things over and over again year after year, even when we know these things aren’t true.
 
These thought patterns become so habitualized that we don’t even recognize the patterns that keep those habits in place. 
 
Let’s take out our magnifying glasses and analyze a random thought I know a lot of you suffer with. Here is the thought we’re going to analyze.
 
“I’m worthless and everyone would be better off without me.” 
 
This thought is extremely counterproductive to a healthy, thriving life. It is poisonous and it is completely untrue. It’s a bald-faced lie and yet so many of us carry this around with us.
 
We spend year after year believing this and repeating it to ourselves. Why? Do you even realize how tragic that is? 
 
I could spout off a whole laundry list of other thoughts, ideas, notions, and doubts we tell ourselves.
 
“I’m ugly.” “I’m unlovable.” I’ll stop there. You get the idea. 
 
The thoughts we want to eliminate and reprogram are all either blatantly untrue, they’re supported by flimsy or nonexistent evidence, or they’re leading us to a conclusion that is against our long-term wellbeing. These are the criteria we’re going to use to identify thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that need to be changed. 
 
These thoughts and others like them are all habits. They’re mental habits.
 
Maybe our parents or someone else told us this in a way that the thoughts took root in our minds. Maybe these toxic people pointed out evidence they said supported these beliefs. 
 
How the habit became ingrained does matter, but it doesn’t matter nearly as much as breaking these habits.
 
We break these habits exactly the same way we would break any other unhealthy habit like smoking and drinking too much. 
 
How do we break habits? We dissect them down into pieces. We dismantle the habit into its support components.
 
We need to understand each segment in a continuous train of thought that brought us to the conclusion that we are worthless and that everyone will be better off without us. 
 
That conclusion is the endpoint of a sequence of other thoughts that carries us to the conclusion. 
 
Think about the support habits and entrenched lifestyle routines that keep someone smoking cigarettes year after year.
 
Maybe the person grew up in a house where their parents smoked. Maybe the person surrounds themselves with friends who smoke.
 
Maybe the person buys cigarettes as a matter of routine each time they stop for groceries or gas.
 
The person has to set aside a certain amount of money in their weekly budget so they can afford to buy cigarettes. They go through a series of steps that make smoking frictionless and inevitable. 
 
Now apply the same logic to our thoughts. We started out with a certain thought pattern that may have been implanted some outside source.
 
Now we go through a set routine that keeps the thought pattern going. We consistently focus on the evidence we choose to believe proves that the conclusion is true. 
 
We dwell on every tiny mistake or stumble. We magnify every awkward moment and turn that into more evidence to convince ourselves that we are worthless, that we will never amount to anything, and that WE are the problem that needs to be solved to protect the world from everything that is wrong with us. 
 
We do this while ignoring the evidence of our achievements, talents, relationships, and strengths. This is the evidence that we ARE valuable, that people love us in spite of our faults, that our lives are something good and holy. 
 
Each of us has the tools and screwdrivers and soldering irons necessary to fix these computers in our heads. First of all, we need to roll up our sleeves and take the thing apart. We need to expose the wiring that is interfering with our operating systems. 
 
Next, we trace exactly where our thinking is malfunctioning. We identify the lies and manipulation other people used to screw us up. We attack those thoughts and replace them with the correct programming that serves our best interest. 
 
Our thoughts and feelings are systems we put in place to make our brains function in a certain way. Thoughts and feelings are blocks of code made up of many lines, each one an idea or thought on its own. These lines combine to form a single mental process that carries us to a conclusion, an outcome, or a life function. 
 
All we have to do is go through the same process of habitually repeating the opposite thought or belief to replace the old one.
 
We got like this by thinking the negative thought again and again for years. Now we have to do the same thing in reverse.
 
We need to hold up and focus on the evidence that we are valuable, that we are loved, and that we have something priceless to contribute to the world and the rest of society.
 
This evidence is all around us—in every facet of our lives. We just have to look for it. If it isn’t there readily available where you can see it, you can create it.
 
All you have to do is accomplish your goals, be kind and loving to those around you, and start living your life on purpose in a way that proves to yourself that you deserve to be here.
 
This process isn’t easy, but it’s a whole lot better than living in misery with all these horrible thoughts in our heads. These thoughts can either wreck our lives or build us into something happy, beautiful, and thriving.
 
Each of us can and should take it upon ourselves to make sure our brains are running the right programs.
 
Mental illness, negative self-talk, or other malfunctions are all the end-stage symptoms of an operating system infected with viruses or programming errors.
 
We can reprogram these out so our brains function properly and bring us the fulfilment and happiness we all crave. 
________________
All content on the Crimes Against Fiction Blog is © Theo Mann. You are free to distribute and repost this work on condition that you credit the original author.

Lost somewhere in the mists of fantasyland dwells the elusive unicorn who can eat as much as they want of whatever they want whenever they want.
 
This mythical creature doesn’t have to worry about their health, their weight, or their appearance. 
 
The rest of us have issues with food. Everyone reading this has body image issues, weight problems, and eating disorders.
 
We’re constantly at war with ourselves over eating too much or too little, weighing too much or too little, or thinking we’re eating or weighing too much or too little.  
 
Nearly every blog article or self-help outlet begins the discussion on food, weight, and body image with the idea that we should all just love ourselves a lot more.
 
That’s all really wonderful, but it doesn’t do much to improve our health. It definitely doesn’t help if we have an eating disorder. 
 
So what are we supposed to do about it? 
 
I struggled with anorexia for twenty years. Then I had three kids and struggled another twenty years to lose the weight I gained when I was pregnant.
 
So whichever side of this issue you’re on, take this as a message from someone who has been where you are now. 
 
Let me paint you a picture of a healthy attitude toward food. 
 
Let’s say we bought a prize racehorse worth $50million.
 
We would make absolutely certain that the animal got the right amount of the right kind of food at the right times of the day.
 
We would probably pay a lot of money to hire a veterinary nutritionist to tell us exactly what, when, and how much the horse should eat.
 
We would weigh every meal down to the microgram. What the food looked and tasted like would be so far down on the priority list that they wouldn’t even show up on our radar.
 
We would make sure the horse got exactly the right amount of exercise, not too much and not too little, balanced with adequate rest, to ensure the horse performed at its peak.
 
We would give the horse a comfortable place to sleep so nothing disturbed it and so the horse would feel relaxed and well taken care of. 
 
Why would we go to such lengths to do all this? Because we recognize the horse’s value. We would want to protect our investment and make sure the horse could run its best race.
 
Now let’s apply the same logic to ourselves.
 
We don’t go to the same pains to ensure that we get the right amount of the right kind of food so that we stay in the peak of health.
 
Why don’t we do this? Because we don’t value ourselves.
 
We think we don’t matter, that it’s too much trouble, or that we don’t deserve that kind of care, attention, and effort.
 
Disordered eating is a form of self-sabotage that keeps all our other problems going.
 
If we’re already overweight, we tell ourselves that one more donut won’t make any difference, so why not?
 
We tell ourselves that one more day of slouching on the couch won’t make any difference, so we might as well put off exercising until tomorrow.
 
We tell ourselves every lie in the book. Meanwhile, the negative health consequences of eating this way keep piling up and getting worse as we age.
 
Our bodies become less able to cope with the stress of dosing ourselves every day with toxic poisons.
 
These substances don’t just fail to provide the nutrition we need. These foods actually strip away any nutrition that we do consume.
 
They rob us of the building blocks we need to live. That’s why our bodies break down and stop working.
 
A healthy approach to food treats us and our physical needs the same way we would treat a high-value racehorse. It treats us as our most valuable investment. 
 
Food is not a form of entertainment. It is not a form of recreation. 
 
Food is not a carnival ride of sensations to constantly stimulate us with adrenaline rushes of excitement.
 
We do not eat food for pleasure. Food is not what we do when we go out with our friends or what we do when we’re bored.
 
It isn’t there to give our hands something to do while we watch videos.  
 
It isn’t a reward for surviving our stressful lives or to make us feel better about our how worthless we feel.
 
Food is a tool. The purpose of that tool is to maximize our performance, both mental and physical, and to keep us alive and in the peak of health.
 
If food doesn’t accomplish that, it isn’t doing its job. It would be better for us not to eat at all than to eat foods that doesn’t keep us healthy and alive.
 
There is no magical barrier between our brains and the rest of our bodies. The same blood that flows through your brain also flows through every other part of your body, including your gut.
 
Serotonin is the chemical most anti-depressants try to mimic and the majority of our serotonin is produced in the gut.
 
What happens in the brain affects the rest of the body and what happens in the body affects the brain.
 
If we have any mental health problem at all—which is most people reading this—our first project should be to start eating correctly. 
 
Depression, anxiety, body image issues—they all come down to what we put in our mouths.
 
What we put in is what we get out. Food is the foundation of everything. Garbage in, Garbage out. 
 
Food is not our friend. Food is a tool. 
 
Food is not optional. What we eat, when we eat, and how we eat are not optional, either. 
 
Athletes, dancers, celebrities, supermodels, bodybuilders—all the people whose bodies we admire—they all treat food as a job.
 
These people aren’t out there eating whatever they want. No way. They count every calorie going in.
 
They don’t eat trash. They weigh their food down to the microgram and account for every macronutrient.
 
These people wouldn’t dare to treat food as anything else because everything they do depends on what they eat. They can’t eat a bunch of trash and expect to get the result they want. 
 
They value the result so highly that they make certain they eat accordingly. They treat food as a job because it IS their job. 
 
I can hear the protests now. Some might argue that this approach robs eating of all its pleasure. I would ask just how much pleasure we’re getting from this kind of disordered eating. 
 
Eating compulsively or unconsciously doesn’t give us any pleasure from our food. This kind of disordered eating is exactly the thing that is robbing us of getting any pleasure from our food.
 
If you went out and stuffed your face with a candy bar right now, it wouldn’t give you any pleasure. It wouldn’t make you happy. You would get a few seconds of a nice taste in your mouth.
 
You’ve probably tasted that same candy bar a million times before. You could probably get exactly the same feeling of pleasure by NOT eating the candy bar and simply remembering what it tastes like.
 
Eating it won’t do anything for you except to make you ashamed of losing control of yourself.
 
Disordered eating habits definitely aren’t giving us any pleasure if they’re causing us mental illness or unhappiness. Anorexics definitely aren’t taking any pleasure in food. 
 
Disordered eating habits make hate our bodies and feel terrible about ourselves. This feeling isn’t worth the few seconds of pleasure we get from putting something sugary in our mouths.
 
We can take far more pleasure by valuing ourselves. What could be more pleasurable than biting into a crisp, juicy tomato or a ripe strawberry?
 
We can experience a rush of gratitude when we put this food in our mouths and truly appreciate the taste for the joy that it is.
 
We can get more pleasure and genuine fulfilment from that than we would from cramming a whole chocolate cake into our mouths.  
 
The energy, well-being, and pride we feel from being healthy and active gives us far more pleasure than eating a whole pizza at two o’clock in the morning. 
 
Expressing gratitude for our food is another essential key to changing our attitude about what we put into our mouths and why.
 
I love the scene from The Road Warrior (1981) where Mad Max is sitting next to his car using a spoon to eat dog food out of a can. He finishes eating and throws the empty can to his dog to lick out.
 
This is what food is. It’s there to keep us alive. That is its only function in our lives.
 
Imagine we were prisoners in a concentration camp. We would get maybe two small bowls of rice a day and maybe some vegetables if we were lucky.
 
We would feel so unbelievably grateful for that food. We would cherish and keep track of every grain of rice.
 
We would get far more than our current allotment of calories—and it would be enough.
 
We wouldn’t resent not getting more. We would be too relieved and happy to get our daily food. We would thank God every time the prison wardens put the food into our bowls.
 
We could all feel that way toward our food right now. We could experience that level of bliss, gratitude, and appreciation every time we sit down in front of our meal to eat.
 
We wouldn’t care what the food is. We wouldn’t care if it’s a certain number of calories less than what our entitled brains thinks we deserve.
 
Now imagine what that prisoner would think if he or she could see us stuffing our faces with all this trash.
 
Imagine what that prisoner would think if he or she saw how dangerously overweight we are and we’re still out here stuffing ourselves as fast as we possibly can with the absolute worst poison money can buy.
 
We are all so unbelievably lucky to have good, nutritious food in front of us to keep us healthy and alive.
 
Changing our broken relationship with food requires a key change in perspective.
 
We need to realize the food’s true role in our lives and fully appreciate what a blessing it can be—but only if we treat it with the respect it deserves.
 _____________
All content on the Crimes Against Fiction Blog is © Theo Mann. You are free to distribute and repost this work on condition that you credit the original author.

If anyone in the world has seen the terrible side of human nature, it’s me.  I’ve seen and personally experienced the worst that humanity can dish out.
 
No one can deny that evil exists in the world. Evil people are out there doing evil things right now.
 
I have also seen the good in the world, especially the good in people.
 
Good people are out there performing heroic and even angelic acts of goodness every day—far more than evil people are performing evil acts.
 
Life wouldn’t work if evil outweighed good or even if they were equally powerful.
 
We can all live in our houses, drive our cars, and raise our families because the vast majority of people do the right thing every day.
 
Raising children is a perfect example of this. The vast majority of parents work extremely hard to do the right thing for their children. Parents do this every day at great sacrifice to themselves.
 
The human race wouldn’t exist if bad parents balanced good parents in equal numbers. We wouldn’t be able to raise enough children to adulthood to keep our population going.
 
Parents perform these microscopic, unseen acts of heroism every single day. These parents go unsung by everyone—everyone except their own children.
 
It only takes the smallest twist of logic and perspective to see these acts of goodness.
 
Any of us can make a choice at any moment of the day to see how good the world is. All we have to do is open our eyes.
 
We are also making a choice when we turn a blind eye to these acts of goodness and fill our sight with nothing but evil. No one is making that choice for us.
 
Let’s take a look at the poem, “Good Bones”, by Maggie Smith, and before you ask, no, this isn’t the same Dame Maggie Smith, the actress of Harry Potter fame.
 
You can find both the poem and a photo of the poet here.
 
I will reprint the poem here for any of you who don’t want to follow the link.
 
Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.
 
This poem presents several problems right from the outset, so let’s begin our critique with the very first line.
 
First of all, we all know that life is short and ends in death. No one in the human race escapes this truth. There is absolutely no reason to keep this truth from our children.
 
Keeping this from our children, glossing over it, or lying about it would be an extremely manipulative and harmful thing to do to a child.
 
It would be tantamount to emotional abuse of the worst kind. Any child would be within their rights to despise a parent who did this.
 
The statement that the world is at least fifty-percent terrible and this is a conservative estimate is also a bald-faced lie.
 
If you actually believe this, if you’re so depressed that you actually think the world is such a terrible place and people are so terrible, if you actually can’t see all the good happening around you every single day, you better not be telling your children that.
 
Better yet, don’t have children at all.
 
It would be morally reprehensible for you to bring children into a world you think is so bad.
 
If you actually believe your child has a fifty-percent chance of winding up murdered and bagged at the bottom of a lake, then you are the monster for bringing that child into such a world.
 
It would also be incredibly wrong for a parent to keep from their children the fact that strangers might pose a danger to them.
 
Every parent is responsible for teaching their children about these dangers and preparing the children to deal with the situation should it arise.
 
None of this means there aren’t a lot of good people in the world. In fact, the majority of people your child will meet will be fundamentally good people.
 
Sure, they will be flawed people, but we’re all flawed. That doesn’t make a person evil.
 
It is also our responsibility as parents to teach our children to accept the good people that they do meet, to give people a chance to prove themselves, and to develop trust in the right people.
 
That won’t happen if a child goes out into the world armored against everyone and thinking the world is a terrible place.
 
The last part of the poem encapsulates the poet’s message. She’s trying to sell her children on a world she doesn’t think exists. She believes the world is a shithole.
 
Seriously, if you really believe that, you shouldn’t be here at all. Show some gratitude for all the blessings in your life.
 
Teach your children to be grateful for the blessings and goodness surrounding you.
 
Teach them to appreciate the actions of so many good people that come together to create the comfortable life we all enjoy.
 
The poet is advocating outright lying to our children. The world she’s selling them—the world she doesn’t think exists—is the good world, the beautiful world, the world where people care about each other, help each other, and love each other.
 
This world exists right outside your window. In fact, it probably exists right inside your home right now. It exists all around you and even in you.
 
This world only exists because all of us contribute to it and work for it. We are the ones who make it that way with all our love, care, and effort.
 
This poem is a picture of depression. It’s a picture of someone so nihilistic, hopeless, and buried in negative thinking that they’re incapable of seeing the beauty and goodness around them.
 
This is a picture of someone so narcissistically self-absorbed that they aren’t capable of seeing the horrific repercussions their own negative attitude can have on those around them.
 
This is a picture of someone so mentally sick and lacking in real-world perspective that they think it’s okay to pass this negative attitude on to others.
 
Ironically, the person who first shared this poem with me did think the poem was written by Dame Maggie Smith, the actress. That apparently gave the poem some credibility in this person’s mind.
 
The person also suffers from severe, life-long depression. She shared me this poem because she resonated with it and presumably thought I would relate to it, too.
 
If I had to tell my children one thing, it would be this. This poem is a lesson in how not to live your life. Take all the advice and worldview of this poem and do exactly the opposite.
 
See the world as good and people as inherently good. Embrace all the beauty and goodness life has to offer. Fill your mind and your sight with nothing else.
 
Do this and watch the evil of the world shrink away to a tiny pinprick on the horizon.
 
That is how you build a happy, productive, good life that you and your children can look back on with pride.
 
I hope this helps someone. God bless you all.
________________
All content on the Crimes Against Fiction Blog is © Theo Mann. You are free to distribute and repost this work on condition that you credit the original author.

My father committed suicide when he was fifty-eight years old. My grandfather, my father’s father, also committed suicide when he was fifty-eight.
 
My father suffered from lifelong depression. He lived reclusively, avoided relationships of all kinds, and drank and smoked to excess.
 
He developed widespread cancer in his fifties. When it progressed and made him weak, he shot himself in the head.
 
I never knew my father. He and my mother divorced when I was an infant.
 
He withdrew from my life and avoided relationships with me and his other daughter. He continued to avoid relationships with his own children right up until the day he died.
 
I tried repeatedly in the last ten years of his life to establish an ongoing relationship with him. He always avoided it.
 
When I heard that he was sick and in the hospital, I wanted to drive down to San Francisco to visit him. His mother, my grandmother, told me not to because he wouldn’t want that.
 
I knew she was right, so I didn’t go. A few days later, I got the phone call that he was dead.
 
I was in the middle of a painful period in my own life and struggling with mental health issues myself at the time.
 
His death infuriated me. Suicide is the ultimate fuck-you to the survivors. It’s a strong, clear message that the person doesn’t give a shit who they hurt as long as they don’t have to deal with the fallout.
 
I hear this story from the surviving relatives of suicides all the time. Suicide doesn’t solve anything. It doesn’t make anything better.
 
Suicide accomplishes only one thing. It dumps your problems onto the people left behind.
 
As bad as you think your life is right now, you would be passing the buck to your surviving loved ones for them to solve those problems in your place.
 
This is the lowest, most despicable, most cowardly thing any human being can do.
 
In many cases, committing suicide makes the problem worse. That is the mess you are leaving for your loved ones to clean up while you escape out the backdoor with your tail between your legs.
 
Most people who feel suicidal think to themselves, “I don’t want to live anymore.”
 
Think about it.
 
What you’re really saying is, “I don’t want to live like this anymore.”
 
Things can change. Things can improve. Whatever your problems are, the resources exist somewhere in the world to solve these problems.
 
There is no reason on God’s green Earth for you to believe that things will stay like this forever.
 
Everything changes. That’s the one iron rule of Life 101. Nothing stays the same.
 
You’re playing the victim card if you believe you’re trapped in this situation forever with no way out.
 
You’re making an excuse so you don’t have to do the work, roll up your sleeves, and put in the effort to change your circumstances.
 
Most likely, you’re a chronic complainer who focuses exclusively on the problem instead of the solution.
 
You get your kicks out of bitching and moaning about how bad things are.
 
In reality, you’re just a weak, pathetic coward who would rather complain than actually do the hard work to fix whatever it is you’re complaining about.
 
If I sound like I’m ranting, you’re right. I’m the surviving daughter of a father who committed suicide.
 
I’ve also spent many years suicidally depressed, so trust me, I know what I’m talking about.
 
Suicide is the coward’s way out.
 
My father could have spent the last years, weeks, and days of his life giving me something I never had from anyone else.
 
He could have helped me. He could have told me that he loved me. He could have made me feel like I had a father instead of leaving me completely on my own.
 
He did none of those things.
 
People who commit suicide are the most selfish people on the planet.
 
They are so self-obsessed and self-centered that it never once crosses their minds that they might gain some fulfillment from dedicating themselves to others.
 
There will always be someone somewhere in the world who needs your help. You’re suicidal right now because you aren’t looking for these people. You aren’t thinking about what you could do for them and how you could help them.
 
Your experience—the pain you’re going through right now—is the very thing that would help them. It is the one thing someone needs from you the most.
 
The movie Me Before You offers us a perfect example of this.
 
Will, the male lead of the movie, is paralyzed from the neck down, severely depressed, and decides to end his life. He makes a pact with his mother that he will stay alive for six months before he commits suicide.
 
In that time, he develops a romance with Louisa. Their relationship brings new joy to his life, but in the end, he still chooses to end his life even knowing how much it will hurt her.
 
This is such a classic example of suicidal mentality. Will is so consumed with his own imagined problems that he would deliberately hurt the woman he loves.
 
He never considers that his pain might be worth the cost so he can give something to her, be there for her, and support her in developing her own life.
 
He never considers that he might be the thing she most needs in the world.
 
I can hear the howls of protest now. Some of you are probably already telling yourselves that I’m being insensitive to people who suffer from suicidal depression.
 
You’re probably telling yourselves that this is the disease of depression—that it stops us from thinking outside ourselves and seeing the larger picture that might give us the hope to go on.
 
Remember what I said earlier. I have been suicidally depressed. I spent years battling the urge to drive into town, buy a shotgun, and blow my brains out.
 
This attitude is not a disease. The only disease is the disease of cowardice, selfishness, and an addiction to blaming everyone else for your problems.
 
It’s a disease of weakness and refusal to take accountability for your life and solving your own problems.
 
It’s a disease of kicking everyone else in the face to soothe your own pathetic ego. It’s a disease of always putting yourself first at the expense of everyone else, including your own children.
 
If you have children, consider the message you would be sending to them if you committed suicide.
 
Believe me, I speak from experience on this.
 
You’re sending your children a message that they are worthless, that their own parents don’t give a shit about them, and that suicide is the example they should follow.
 
I have two generations of people setting this example for me. When I spoke to my grandmother about my father’s suicide, she said, “It’s genetic.”
 
My first thought was, “Well, where does that leave me?”
 
Suicidal depression is not genetic. It isn’t a medical condition. It’s a choice—a selfish, cowardly choice that only weak, selfish, cowardly people make.
 
Take this is a message from one of the loved ones you plan to leave behind—the loved ones you will leave holding the bag of all your problems along with all the additional problems they will have to face as a result of your despicable choice.
 
Be the bigger person. Change your life if it’s so bad. No one can do it for you. Grow up and stop being such a whining, complaining quitter.
 
That’s what you are if you commit suicide. You’re a quitter.
 
Trust me when I tell you that many, many people have faced what you are facing now or circumstances far, far worse.
 
These people rose up. They seized their problems by the horns. These people dug in and wrestled that problem into submission.
 
These people are true heroes. They overcome. They become something a thousand times greater than they were.
 
They don’t stop until they claim the happiness that is rightfully theirs. They build lives of promise, success, and fulfilment that bring joy and prosperity to everyone around them.
 
That could be you.
 
You could be the person everyone admires. You could be the person inspiring a generation with your story, your courage, and your service.
 
You wouldn’t feel any desire to commit suicide if you did all that. Your life would be too rewarding, too meaningful, and too overflowing with love and happiness.
 
There is only one thing standing between you and that life.
 
You are the only person standing between you and that life. You can make that choice right now. You can start living that life right now.
 
You can make the decision to get off this path and start following another path—a path that will give you all the happiness and interconnectedness you could ask for.
 
You can start that right now. Nothing is stopping you. You can do it without even taking your eyes off this page.
 
You just have to make a choice.
 
You have no one to blame but yourself if you don’t.
 
The people left behind will hate you for abandoning them and leaving them to solve your problems for you.
 
Those people you claim to love so much will have every right to hate you. You will be proving them right, and once you’re gone, you won’t ever be able to take it back.
 
Think about that before you consider committing suicide. Your life could actually mean something if you only wanted it to.
 
You can decide that it does or you can decide that it doesn’t. No one does that for you.
 
It’s your own fault if it doesn’t. The choice is always yours, so let’s not fool ourselves about this being a disease or any other ridiculous excuse.
 
Do something about it.
 
You don’t deserve of pity or support if you don’t do something about it. You deserve contempt.
 
Your surviving loved ones are the people who deserve pity and support. That starts with you. Take care of them. That’s your job, so stop feeling sorry for yourself and go do it.
____________
All content on the Crimes Against Fiction Blog is © Theo Mann. You are free to distribute and repost this work on condition that you credit the original author.

We constantly hear that religious belief is a matter of faith. In some circles, the word “faith” is used as another word for religious belief.
 
Ask anyone who believes in God why they follow a certain religion. You’ll inevitably hear the same answer.
 
You just have to have faith.
 
This is another way of saying we should suspend our rationality and accept the existence of something for which we have no empirical evidence.
 
If you’ve read the Proof for the Existence of God, you already know what I think of this idea.
 
I don’t take the existence of God on faith and no one else should, either.
 
We see the same problem when certain religions want to use their own texts as evidence that God exists or that it behaves in a certain way to manifest itself in people’s lives.
 
This simply does not work. If you want to convince someone that aliens exist, you’ll need to use something other than alien texts as proof.
 
We need to see some concrete evidence or at least some logical reason that doesn’t completely conflict with our the evidence of our senses.
 
Your religious texts have an inherent confirmation bias that rules them out as a credible source of evidence. Any sane person can understand this.
 
The same is true of faith.
 
You cannot tell someone who doesn’t believe in God that they have to have faith in order to believe in God. This is a circular argument.
 
The person already doesn’t believe in God. The person already doesn’t believe because they don’t see the evidence.
 
The person might be open-minded enough to question if God exists after all. The person might be willing to take that leap if you only offered some evidence that was compelling enough.
 
Faith is not that evidence. Faith is the opposite of evidence.
 
Faith is the wool unscrupulous people pull over our eyes to manipulate us into feeling guilty for demanding evidence.
 
The worst part of this is that the evidence is there. People just need to be shown where it is and how to see it.
 
But I digress.
 
Most of you know I’m a giant Ed Mylett fan. He tells the story of an experience that changed his life when he was a young man.
 
He got his start as a salesman selling insurance policies. He met with a young couple, husband and wife, and tried to sell them an insurance policy.
 
The couple had two little daughters and this family was just starting out in life. The couple didn’t have much money.
 
Ed made his pitch and the couple decided they needed to think about it before they made a decision on whether they were ready to invest that amount of money.
 
They left the meeting, and that night, they got into a terrible car accident that killed both parents.
 
The two little girls wound up living with a distant relative who was not the most ideal person to take care of them.
 
Ed blamed himself for what happened to them. He believes that, if he had only been a better salesman and closed that deal, the girls would have gotten a better outcome in life.
 
He believes he didn’t understand how to use the right language to overcome the parents’ objections.
 
He didn’t know enough as a salesman to address their concerns and articulate why this insurance policy was so important.
 
He didn’t connect the money these people would spend to the one thing that was most important to them—their children’s future.
 
Now follow the same logic when our friendly neighborhood religious evangelist is trying to convince our hardened skeptic that God exists.
 
No doubt you truly believe that following your religion is the best thing that could happen to anyone.
 
You naturally believe that anyone adhering to your religion will incur incredible benefits to their life and their spiritual connection with God.
 
If you really believed that, you would be morally obligated to convince the person to join your religion. You wouldn’t let yourself walk away and leave the person to burn in Hell.
 
You only do let yourself walk away because you don’t really believe that’s what will happen.
 
Compassionate people don’t do that. They don’t knowingly leave someone to suffer, especially not to suffer for all eternity in the fires of Hell.
 
It simply doesn’t work for you to bombard the person with the need to have faith and then walk away blaming them for not listening to you.
 
If you truly believed your own dogma, you would tailor your language to their needs. You would address THEIR concerns instead of using your own language—a language they already don’t speak.
 
If the person spoke Swahili, you wouldn’t blame them for not understanding you when you are speaking English.
 
You would go out of your way to use language they could clearly understand.
 
Bill Rice is a pastor whose offers workshops, retreats, and meetings for the deaf population so they can hear the Christian message in their own language.
 
He saw a need that the deaf community wasn’t being served by the mainstream Christian world.
 
The same goes for someone who doesn’t believe in God. You can’t use the language of faith to convince these people. They already don’t believe.
 
You have to use language they can understand. You have to address the core needs and concerns that your dogma is already failing to answer.
 
The concept of faith has no place in any discussion of religion or philosophy. None of us should believe in something we can’t see or otherwise directly experience. That’s just ridiculous.
 
The reality is that we DO experience a spiritual connection. We DO experience incredible benefits from adhering to our chosen belief system.
 
We see the evidence playing out all around us in the beauty of nature, in the lives of others, in good deeds, and in the love of close relationships.
 
This is the evidence. We don’t have to rely on faith at all—and if we’re honest, the truth is that we don’t rely on it. None of us does. We just fail to articulate exactly what the evidence is.
 
The concept of faith is nothing but smoke and mirrors. It’s the collection of world religions telling us in so many words, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”
 
Faith is the opposite of belief. Faith is a word people use when they don’t believe in something, but they want desperately for everyone else in the world to believe that they do believe.
 
If you truly believed in God, you would be able to point to something specific that convinced you it was real.
 
Faith is the opposite of this. If God is so real, why can’t you point to this evidence? It should be right in front of you.
 
You should be able to at least be able to point to the positive effect your belief has had on your life.
 
You should at least be able to demonstrate that you were once lost and depressed and now you are energized, connected, and motivated by life.
 
This is not faith. Highlighting and pointing out this evidence is the equivalent of a business putting positive customer testimonials on its website.
 
In the business world, this is called social proof.
 
It might not be as good as concrete empirical evidence of God’s existence, but it’s better than nothing—which is what faith is.
 
Fortunately for all of us, this concrete empirical evidence actually does exist. It’s all around us every minute of the day.
 
If you can’t see this evidence for yourself right now, head on over to the Proof for the Existence of God page where I explain it to you.
 
Your life will improve a thousandfold as soon as you see this evidence. You never have to rely on faith ever again.
________________
All content on the Crimes Against Fiction Blog is © Theo Mann. You are free to distribute and repost this work on condition that you credit the original author.

I recently participated in a forum flame war about what men and women really want.
 
It brought up some interesting questions. I will attempt to answer those questions in this post.
 
The original poster asked the question: What are the differences between what men want and what women want?
 
I responded that I didn’t think men and women want anything really that different. I stated that both men and women want the same things.
 
They want trust, loyalty, security, understanding, validation, affection, attention, and intimacy.
 
It would be impossible to come up with a list of things men want that women DON’T want and vice versa.
 
Every single thing you could say men want, women also want. Every single thing you could say women want, men also want.
 
We're all human and we all have the same human needs and feelings. We wouldn't get into relationships with each other if we didn't want the same things.
 
We may not all be the same or think the same way, but we can empathize with each other and realize that we're all on the same page here.
 
We may not have the same perspectives, tendencies, and capabilities, but underneath it all, we are human.
 
The original poster felt that I was devaluing the conversation, his question, and him by not addressing his premise that men and women really are different.
 
He launched into a lengthy explanation about the problems of men who feel they are being exploited as nothing but wallets by women who only value them for their money.
 
This is mirrored on the other side by women who feel they are being exploited as nothing but pieces of meat by men who only value them for their bodies.
 
The original poster stated that the entire dating scene is arranged to use men as pay pigs.
 
Men are expected to have nice cars, pay for dinners, and to have their own houses and apartments to host their female counterparts.
 
Men pay to get into bars and clubs. They buy drinks for women they are interested in. Dating sites charge men and not women.
 
This is a complicated subject, so let’s focus just on this argument because it’s so prevalent in today’s dating environment.
 
There’s a wider flame war raging between men and women where neither side feels that the other is providing what each one truly needs.
 
First of all, let’s get one thing clear right from the outset. There are literally millions or even billions of men in the world who actually want women to value them for their financial resources and material success.
 
These men themselves are the ones who see their financial resources and material success as the benchmark of their value in the dating market and the wider world.
 
These are the same men who are complaining the loudest about women valuing them for their financial resources and material success.
 
The men who complain the loudest about women treating them as wallets are the same men who are treating themselves as wallets.
 
As with men, so with women. Women cater the most strongly to today’s standards of beauty and attractiveness. Women are the ones who hold themselves and each other to this standard.
 
These women pay thousands of dollars on their hair, makeup, clothing, plastic surgery, and dozens of other cosmetic enhancements.
 
These are the same women who feel the most wronged when men objectify them, use them, and throw them away.
 
Countless men have publicly stated that they don’t even like these standards. Men prefer natural women with natural health and beauty.
 
The women persist in these practices for themselves and each other, not because it makes them more appealing to men.
 
When a woman treats a man as a wallet or a walking ATM machine, she doesn’t respect him any more than a man respects a woman he can use and dump the next morning.
 
Women want strength, maturity, boundaries, mental stability, and fortitude of spirit in men. Women will happily give their hearts to men who are penniless and hideously ugly if the men are strong in character, authoritative, and determined.

Women who do seek wealth from men or form relationships based on financial resources do not give their hearts. They don't love these men and they don't respect them. The women come to hate these men, look down on them, and cheat on them.
 
Women might say they want money and go after rich men, but if they get lucky enough to get these men, the women don't respect them or treat them well—so that isn't what they want at all.
 
The same goes for men who say they want beauty and go after women based solely on their looks. Many prostitutes and adult dancers state that their customers are more interested in talking to someone about their problems than in the actual sex or seductive dancing.
 
Men who choose based on looks aren’t choosing a woman for stability, compassion, or her nurturing personality. They’re looking for a sex object and they treat the woman as one.

So we need to make a distinction between the superficial noises both sides are making with their mouths versus what they are actually looking for in the opposite sex. These are usually vastly different.
 
The truest desires of both men and women are to feel connected, to feel loved, and to have long-lasting relationships that feed our souls. Men are just as interested in security and long-term family connection-building as women.
 
Seeking something superficial and temporary is as likely to leave a man feeling hollow and used as it is to make the woman feel that way.
 
The truth is that both men and women get treated the way they will tolerate. No one is making men put up with women who treat them as wallets the same way no one is making women put up with men who treat them as bodies.
 
If someone is getting treated that way, it's because they lack the perspective, boundaries, and self-respect to demand that they be treated any better.
 
These people are desperate for something they will never get, so they put up with bad behavior from the opposite sex.


Men are participating in this status game and then complaining that  the game exists. Women go to great lengths to make themselves sexually appealing and then complain when they get treated as sex objects.
 
This only proves that neither men nor women want this arrangement at all.

It would be so easy for men to ignore gold-digging women and for women to ignore men who are obviously only interested in sex.
 
Those who don't ignore the warning signs are the ones who suffer. Hopefully, they will learn something and correct their dating standards to reflect what they really want.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world doesn't have this problem. They value marriage, family, raising the next generation, and building a society that works instead of fixating on instant gratification.
 
Putting up with this behavior is exactly the reason why this behavior exists. If people exercised some standards, the problem wouldn't exist at all.
 
It would quickly die away when the people exercising this behavior no longer had any options. The people they are pursuing wouldn't be interested anymore.

Let's say a billionaire man surrounds himself with women who are only after his money and only care about what kind of car he drives.
 
He could just as easily completely ignore these women and no longer surround himself with them.
 
He could instead look more carefully for a woman who is less interested in that and more interested in building a lasting, meaningful relationship with him.
 
The gold-diggers in his life would disappear. They would seek another billionaire elsewhere.
 
If all the billionaires did the same thing, these women would quickly realize that the billionaires weren't looking for them. The gold diggers would have no choice but to change their ways.

These behaviors only exist because so many people are entertaining them and rewarding the behavior with results.
 
The problem only exists for people who are living in the bubble where this behavior is the reality. There is a whole world of other people outside the bubble who don't buy into this and aren't interested in it at all.
 
We all need to take a certain degree of personal accountability in our lives. Wanting different things doesn’t make someone a bad person.
 
Blaming someone else for your problems is the height of cowardice and immaturity. Set standards for what you will tolerate from other people’s behavior.
 
If someone violates these standards, you have no one to blame but yourself for letting the person get away with it.
-------------
All content on the Crimes Against Fiction Blog is © Theo Mann. You are free to distribute and repost this work on condition that you credit the original author.

​Allow me to set the stage by telling you a story.
 
A man and a woman were in a relationship. Both ran their own businesses. The woman was also a single mother.
 
As time went on, she began to lose confidence in her ability to handle her own affairs.
 
It started out when she asked her partner to help her respond to certain business emails she didn’t feel completely confident about handling correctly.
 
She asked for her male partner’s input about whether she was wording these emails in the best way.
 
Over time, this evolved to the point where the man was answering all her emails for her and conducting her business correspondence on her behalf.
 
The cycle progressed until she lost confidence in dealing with her clients in person, too.
 
She would go to work, and in the middle of the day, she would have to call up her male partner for help, either because she wasn’t sure how to handle certain situations or she just didn’t feel competent to manage her business on her own.
 
She eventually progressed to the point where she couldn’t function in social situations.
 
She would go to business meetings, lunches, and conferences. In the middle of trying to network and socialize with people, she would panic and freeze.
 
Her male partner would have to go with her so that he could step in at the right time, make their excuses, and take her away.
 
He would then spend hours calming her down, rebuilding her confidence in herself, and going through a lengthy and agonizing process of coaching her back to a state where she could face all her obligations and challenges.
 
The situation continued to deteriorate until the woman became so depressed and even suicidal that she ended the relationship.
 
She no longer felt like an asset to her male partner’s life and she no longer wanted to drag him down with her.
 
Here we see the first example of the vicious circle of one bad habit leading to another.
 
The following diagram illustrates this cycle in action.

​In this example, the woman became stressed at work, which happens to all of us.
 
She failed to handle this stress on her own, which caused her to lose confidence in her ability to handle this stress.
 
She began to doubt her own competence because, in fact, she wasn’t competent to deal with these situations on her own.
 
The idea that she was no longer competent to handle her own affairs caused her to lose respect for herself, which further eroded her confidence in herself.
 
Losing confidence in herself and questioning her own competence made her even more stressed about dealing with situations she once had no problem dealing with.
 
This loss of confidence further undermined her ability to cope, which caused her to fail to meet further challenges, which further degraded her sense of competence, self-respect, and self-worth.
 
This became a vicious cycle of ever-increasing descent into helplessness, self-loathing, and over-reliance on others to accomplish tasks she should have been able to accomplish herself.
 
The only way to get out of this is to break the cycle.
 
In this case, the male partner could have flatly refused to answer her emails for her.
 
Instead of helping her avoid these tasks, he could have bolstered her confidence and encouraged her to push through her self-doubt to meet the challenges on her own.
 
Meeting these challenges and overcoming her own fears is the only way to counteract the corrosive effect of always running away from them.

​Once we start doing this, the cycle leads us to ever-increasing levels of confidence, self-respect, and a certainty in our own competence.
 
We see ourselves handling these situations. We feel more competent to handle these situations, which leads us to take bolder steps to meet future challenges and overcome them.
 
This cycle plays out in dozens of areas of our lives.
 
For our second example, let’s look at the cycle of overeating and weight gain.
 
Here we see the same process at work.

​We gain weight from over-eating and inactivity. We see ourselves in the mirror as we would rather not see ourselves, which causes us to think badly about ourselves.
 
We might over-eat to ease our feelings or we might just think, “I already look terrible. It doesn’t matter if I eat this.”
 
This causes us to over-eat again. We know in our hearts that we’re letting ourselves down, which saps our self-confidence and self-respect.
 
We see ourselves in the mirror as still being overweight and unable to improve, which causes us to feel hopeless and unable to change, so we continue to think it doesn’t matter if I just eat this one thing right now just for today.
 
This is why people continue to gain weight year after year. This is why people fail to lose the weight and get healthy.
 
They get trapped in this cycle of losing respect for themselves. They see themselves as already overweight and don’t feel competent to change it, so they fall back on the one thing that comforts them—eating more than they should.
 
Here again, the only way to get out of this is to break the cycle and reverse it.

Once we start eating healthy and exercising consistently, we start to see results. This boosts our confidence and gives us the motivation to keep going.
 
We stick to our nutrition plan and our exercise routine, so we see further results, which makes us feel better about ourselves.
 
This gives us the willpower to resist the urge to cheat and slack off. We want to continue to see better results and we don’t want to lose the results we already have, so we don’t fall off the wagon in ways we might otherwise.
 
This pattern repeats in every aspect of our lives.
 
Every aspect of our lives is either cycling upward or it’s cycling downward. The only way to reverse the trend is to start cycling in the opposite direction.
 
As long as we stay in the same cycle, we’ll continue to go in the same direction, either up or down. The choice is always ours and we can change it at any time.
 
I’m not saying it’s easy. It isn’t. The only option is to bite the bullet and shatter the cycle.
 
The alternative is staying trapped in the same pattern of self-destructive negativity for the rest of our lives—and none of us wants that.
 
I hope this helped someone today. God bless you all.
______________________
All content on the Crimes Against Fiction Blog is © Theo Mann. You are free to distribute and repost this work on condition that you credit the original author.

I’m a mother. I have three kids.
 
They aren’t as young as they used to be, but I remember how it was when they were babies and small toddlers.
 
Raising babies and young children is hard work. It’s one of the most challenging, stressful things a person can do.
 
These challenges can lead to mental health struggles for parents who aren’t prepared for the work, stress, and pressure involved.
 
The biggest problem is that babies and young children are totally unpredictable.
 
They wake up in the middle of the night, either because they’re hungry, need to go to the bathroom, because they’re scared or confused, or for no reason at all.
 
They don’t know how to communicate, so they can’t tell their caregivers what the problem is. Most of the time, babies and young children don’t know what the problem is.
 
Imagine you really, really needed to go to the bathroom, but you didn’t recognize that sensation.
 
You would be uncomfortable. Then you would be in pain.
 
Then you would become terrified because you didn’t know what was wrong with you. You might think you were dying and couldn’t do anything to stop it.
 
Babies and young children go through this every time they have to go to the bathroom, every time they get hungry, when they are tired, and every time they have a slight cramp in their stomachs or they’re uncomfortable because their diaper is wet.
 
Being an adult is so much easier. We recognize all these sensations. We can take steps to relieve them before they become uncomfortable.
 
This is why raising children is so nerve-wracking. We have to constantly guess at what the problem is.
 
Sometimes we can’t solve the problem at all and we just have to live with it and listen to the child cry.
 
I went through this in the first year with my oldest daughter. She had colic. She would get excruciating stomach cramps at the same time every afternoon.
 
She would cry nonstop for hours. It was absolute hell for me as I’m sure it was for her, too.
 
I couldn’t do anything to ease her pain. We just had to get through it so we could do it all again the next day. This went on for over a year.
 
Eventually, I got to the point where I went into it thinking I just wanted to be there for her.
 
I held her, bounced her up and down, and walked her around so she would know she wasn’t going through it alone. That was all I could do.
 
Even if we know what the problem is, it can be a nightmare trying to get the kid to take the steps to solve it.
 
Babies can start crying because they’re tired. They keep crying and crying, which keeps them awake, so they get more tired and more distressed.
 
The same goes for going to the bathroom. You can watch a little kid squirming and dancing around, crossing their legs, jumping up and down, and maybe even crying.
 
You can tell the kid, “Go to the bathroom. You’ll feel better.” The kid will sooner have a temper tantrum than listen to you.
 
The most important lesson I learned from raising kids is that, in order for both the children and the parents to stay sane, you must have routines.
 
Kids thrive on routines. The more routine their lives are, the more secure they feel. They can relax in the security of knowing what’s happening and when it’s going to happen.
 
For babies and young children, everything other than neutral is a disaster. The best we can hope for is to keep them at a neutral point as much of the time as possible.
 
To do this, we need to keep them fed, comfortable, and as rested as possible.
 
Routine is also critical for parents. Kids are already unpredictable enough as it is.
 
As parents, we need to remove as much stress and uncertainty from our lives as possible.
 
We need to know when we are going to make dinner. We need to know when we are going to put the child to bed so we can have some much-needed downtime every evening.
 
I learned from raising kids that we don’t stop needing routines as we get older.
 
Older children also thrive on routine. It gives them security and relieves them from making too many decisions.
 
All of us can get decision fatigue. Making decisions is one of the hardest parts of being an adult.
 
The more we can relieve ourselves of this responsibility, the easier it gets to navigate all the other unpredictabilities of life.
 
Routines give us the security to risk and push ourselves the way we need to.
 
If you’re feeling overwhelmed and stressed out by life, try introducing more routines for yourself. Schedule every minute of your day so you know when, where, and how everything is going to happen.
 
Plan out when you will wake up in the morning, when you will eat, when you’ll work, when you’ll exercise, and when you’ll do everything else.
 
This is how you’ll be able to meet all your obligations in the time allotted to you.
 
You will remove as much uncertainty, doubt, and insecurity from your life as possible.
 
It will also allow you to accomplish the maximum amount in any given day and achieve the goals you set for yourself.
 
I hope this helps. God bless everyone reading this.
_____________
All content on the Crimes Against Fiction Blog is © Theo Mann. You are free to distribute and repost this work on condition that you credit the original author.

Writing is a form of communication between one human being and another.
 
This should be obvious to anyone and it usually is when we are talking about non-fiction.
 
I have a point I want to communicate to my reader.
 
I make my point through my writing.
 
You read my opinion. My opinion has been transferred from my brain into yours through the medium of writing.
 
It isn’t so obvious when we talk about fiction, but it’s equally true. Fiction is a form of communication between the author and the reader.
 
Anything that interferes with this is subverting the purpose of writing.
 
The medium of fiction is story. The medium of fiction isn’t how wonderfully elaborate a writer came make their descriptions. The medium of fiction isn’t how big the writer’s vocabular is.
 
The medium of fiction isn’t even whether you get all the grammar and punctuation right.
 
The whole point of writing fiction is to immerse your reader in the story.
 
Readers read fiction to get immersed in the story. Anything that interferes with that is counter to the whole purpose of writing fiction.
 
If your goal in writing a piece of fiction is to influence the reader with your philosophical or political message, then this message needs to be embedded in the story in such a way that the reader doesn’t even see it.
 
Take Charles Dickens, for example. He told intense, engaging, often funny, heart-wrenching, poignant stories with a powerful political message.
 
Charles Dickens’ work was instrumental in getting the child labor laws of England changed. He brought public awareness to the problem, but he never clubbed his reader over the head with the need to change anything.
 
He simply portrayed what was already happening in the country. Everyone in England at the time already knew the situation. Everyone knew children were working in factories, in street jobs, as chimney sweeps, and in practically every other walk of life.
 
His stories didn’t tell anyone anything they didn’t already know. His work showed the human side of the situation and made people realize just how awful these children’s lives were.
 
If the author wants to convey a message and make the reader think, the message has to be woven into the story itself.
 
If the writer comes right out and tells the reader what to think, the writer has failed.
 
Bad art asks no questions.
 
Mediocre art asks the questions and tells the audience the answers.
 
Great art asks the questions and leaves them unanswered.
 
All great art does this. It makes the audience think without ever blatantly giving us the answer the author thinks we should come up with. The author lets us come to that conclusion on our own.
 
This is also hands down the most effective way to get people to change their opinion on something.
 
Most people already have an opinion on everything. Telling them or demanding them to change it will only make them hostile.
 
Showing them a different side of the same argument—the human side of the argument—is the best way to make them see the same problem from a different perspective.
 
We’re all human. Certain truths apply to all of us. Leveraging these truths is the best way to get inside someone’s head and leave your message there for them to think about it in their own way.
 
Anything that interferes with this communication process is the enemy of the fiction writer.
 
Our job as writers is to eliminate everything that doesn’t directly relate to our story.
 
This includes all our carefully constructed descriptions. Descriptions should be short, simple, and only convey the information the reader absolutely needs so they can understand the unfolding plot.
 
We can look at this process from the macro level, the micro level, and the mid level.
 
The micro level is the sentence and individual word level. A word, phase, or sentence that isn’t necessary to the plot has no place in any work of writing.
 
Here’s an example from my latest book. This is the original sentence.
 
It was the same sequence that always played out at the end of every bout.
 
In the edited version, I changed it to:
 
The same sequence always played out at the end of every bout.
 
I removed the words, It was, and that. The second sentence communicates exactly the same information with fewer words, so these words aren’t necessary.
 
Removing one, two, or three words isn’t a pedantic or inconsequential detail that is beneath our notice as writers.
 
These words are actually throwing roadblocks in front of us and our readers.
 
The unnecessary words create barriers between the writer and the reader that stops the reader from receiving the writer’s message.
 
The reader doesn’t care about anything except receiving the information as quickly, as simply, and as effortlessly as possible.
 
They might not register consciously that the author is using unnecessary words, but the reader will pick it up subconsciously.
 
The reader will intuitively understand that the author is wasting the reader’s time.
 
The writer is belaboring the point instead of just getting it out there as efficiently as possible.
 
This can be as simple as changing, was working, to just worked.
 
I have gone through this process dozens of times even just in the few minutes I spent writing this blog post. This a crucial and indispensable part of the writing process.
 
I also take the flow, rhythm, and readability of the text into account when I make the decision to remove a word or multiple words.
 
The mid level covers paragraphs, descriptions, and sections of chapters that don’t relate to the story or are just extra filler with no connection to the plot.
 
Here’s an example. See if you can tell which book the following description came from:
 
A huge cherry-tree grew outside, so close that its boughs tapped against the house, and it was so thick-set with blossoms that hardly a leaf was to be seen. On both sides of the house was a big orchard, one of apple-trees and one of cherry-trees, also showered over with blossoms; and their grass was all sprinkled with dandelions. In the garden below were lilac-trees purple with flowers, and their dizzily sweet fragrance drifted up to the window on the morning wind.
 
Below the garden a green field lush with clover sloped down to the hollow where the brook ran and where scores of white birches grew, upspringing airily out of an undergrowth suggestive of delightful possibilities in ferns and mosses and woodsy things generally. Beyond it was a hill, green and feathery with spruce and fir; there was a gap in it where the gray gable end of the little house she had seen from the other side of the lake was visible.
 
Off to the left were the big barns and beyond them, away down over green, low-sloping fields, was a sparkling blue glimpse of sea.
 
This description is totally irrelevant to the plot.
 
The reader would never know from this excerpt which book the description came from because this excerpt contains zero plot information.
 
This is three whole paragraphs—long paragraphs—that don’t belong in the book at all.
 
They could have been cut entirely. The rest of the book—the essential part of the story—would have been exactly the same.
 
Now let’s look at the macro level which is the most important level because it relates to elements of the story itself.
 
Think of the macro level as the outline level where we hammer out the skeleton bones that are going to hold up our story and carry our reader to a satisfying conclusion.
 
Unnecessary parts of the story at the macro level could include entire chapters.
 
The most glaring example of this is the Harry Potter books. The author included unnecessary and irrelevant chapters at the beginning of almost every single book. These chapters could easily have been cut without changing the story.
 
Take a look at the opening chapter of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
 
All of the information we received in this chapter could easily have been included in Hagrid’s conversation with Harry on the storm-tossed island when they first met.
 
The book should have started on the morning of Dudley’s birthday. The hair-cutting incident where Harry’s hair magically grew back after a disastrous haircut could have happened that same morning.
 
If I had written this book, I would have made this whole birthday scene, along with the trip to the zoo, happen the same day that Harry received his first Hogwart’s letter.
 
The author made the same mistake in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, only this time, she included two chapters that didn’t belong in the book.
 
The first chapter is a long, unnecessary scene of Cornelius Fudge’s meeting with the muggle Prime Minister.
 
The second chapter details Severus Snape’s meeting with Bellatrix LeStrange and Narcissa Malfoy.
 
All of the information we need from the first chapter about what’s going on in the magical world and the war against the Deatheaters could have been included in the third chapter when Dumbledore takes Harry from the Dursley’s.
 
Dumbledore could have told Harry all of this information in a few sentences. We didn’t need an entire chapter with two completely unknown characters to tell us this information.
 
The second chapter shouldn’t have been included at all.
 
It completely spoils the book that we find out ahead of time that Draco Malfoy joined the Deatheaters and that he was on a mission for them to infiltrate Hogwart’s and carry out their agenda there.
 
All the other information from the second chapter should have been revealed over the course of the whole book.
 
That’s the mystery—putting these puzzle pieces together. It ruins the story to dump them on the reader at the beginning.
 
These are plot points that should have been corrected in the outline phase. Other high-level details related to the story structure happen here. These are what makes the story successful or unsuccessful.
 
This is one of the biggest problems we see in the fiction world.
 
Writers are so full of themselves that they add any extra nonsense they feel like without regard to whether it relates to the story or not. Don’t be that person. Give the readers what they want—which is a good story and nothing else.

_______________

All content on the Crimes Against Fiction Blog is © Theo Mann. You are free to distribute and repost this work on condition that you credit the original author.