The Fatman Must Go http://tinyurl.com/TheFatmanmustgo

Yesterday I uploaded my very first ebook, a collection of posts from my blog with a few poems.  I sent off my legal deposit  of  to the National Library of New Zealand and uploaded my ebook on Amazon.

Not that C**t

Not your everyday greeting I will grant you, and by far not the worse thing I have ever been called in my time as a teacher.  It is however problematic.  I am relief teaching at the moment.

My Son Josh

I am a blessed man, I have a number of young people in my life, some of them are my sons and daughters by birth, others related by blood, others are people that have come into my life,

Howling At The Moon

I am so glad I don’t live like blanket man did, that is the extreme end of homelessness, I am part of the vision of the national Governments property owning democracy,

Homeless Part Two

Te Kuiti is a small town in the North Island, it lies in a valley, its Maori name means the valley or the squeezing in, the narrowing and in winter it is bitterly cold, the temperature is lower than a snakes belly

Homeless part 1

In the distance, a red blaze bobbing along on the side of the road.  It’s a cold, miserable day. The miserly warmth that the sun struggles to provide is eaten by the west wind that lashes at the back of anyone unfortunate enough to venture outside of the cocoon of their house or car. 

Follow your passion

Passion, such an evocative word, hard to capture the essence it means different things to different people. Passion: noun, strong and barely controllable emotion, An intense desire or enthusiasm for something:,  A thing arousing great enthusiasm, and of course , Intense physical love, well I have experienced all of these in the past but unusual as it is this post is not about me.

I once read a quote that said, the road to mediocrity is lined with unpublished manuscripts, well I guess that is me, I have two unpublished manuscripts, although my blog posts are well and truly published.  It would be nice to make some money out of them, I have my first ebook ready to go but I would really like to print my  poetry book  in the hard as it were, a paper equivalent of a cd, something to hold in my hand, tangible and real.

I was introduced to a website called Artist Signal, https://artistsignal.com/ it is a place where emerging musical artists are featured and people vote for them.  The artist who has the most votes at the end of the month wins $10,000 dollars in order to assist them to produce an album to release.  I voted for a New Zealand Band Into the East https://www.facebook.com/IntoTheEastFace?fref=ts, they finally got their funding it took a while but they persevered.  I had a crack at something similar called pledgeme. https://www.pledgeme.co.nz/ essentially a crowdfunding opportunity, if people like what you are doing they donate to your project, you give them a reward. Well in my case no one caught my dream, but I haven’t given up yet and I won’t, if I want it enough it will happen.  More lately I have been following a musician by the name of TerryLynn Melody.  I have been following her journey, it has some ups and downs, TerryLynn however has shown an awesome commitment, done a great job on marketing.  I decided to share a poem with TerryLynn the other day to encourage her, it turns out that we have a similar philosophy and value some things like integrity.

The tall poppy syndrome often results in people trying to attack the integrity of people who are passionate about what they are doing, usually it is about people who have feelings of inadequacy, perhaps past hurts or disappointment, they sit and criticise everything that over people do. Personal attacks are the hardest thing to weather, especially when you put your heart and soul into what you are doing, you expose your thoughts and feelings in your words, your music, your lyrics.  I have learnt that if you have enough passion, enough purpose, enough perseverance then you will overcome those people.  They will be forever dull shades of grey sitting on the side lines doing nothing much more than being an oxygen thief.

Now why would I support TeryLynn over the others?  I am not really sure, I listened to her music and liked it a lot, but over all I sensed her passion, she is attractive, talented and articulate and I and want to support her.  I try to remember to vote for her as often as I can and this blog is part of it, if you could pop over to her site, https://artistsignal.com/terrylynnmelody have a listen to her music and press the green button by her name you will be showing your support for a talented artist with passion and purpose.

TerryLynn is a fantastic artist who is lighting a match, giving legs to her passion, writing a new  narrative for no other reason than that can I ask you to support her.

Live well, laugh lots, sing, dance and love,

Paul

Remember

Be careful with matches

I learnt early in life about the power of a match.  I saw the result of my brother setting some curtains on fire, I remember the excitement as our coal range exploded into flames from the result of a pan left in the oven as I heated it up for mum to cook dinner on.