Jen Sincero

I don’t normally write reviews as short as I think this one will be; normally they’re either pretty long or else, occasionally, not written. But I think I have to speak up for Jen and say that although the literal info content of the book was largely familiar to me, if not 100%, of course, from my personal history of reading: the style was excellent, and sometimes style and content are pretty intimately married, you know. She does give you permission not be pretend with your own life, more heartily than even similarly themed books sometimes do. And I actually started to enjoy the repetition of the chapter closings about loving yourself. It’s an excellent popular psychology book. People who quarrel with it seem unlikely to me not to quarrel with that whole genre or sub-genre, you know. And of course it’s your life, and if you are happy with the results that you’re getting, I guess you have no reason to change, really.

…. Re: depression advice, criticism; ironically quite neurotypical

I’d be the last one to tell you that reaching the post-bigotry future involves Nothing But telling people you love them, right; however, sometimes the price of “making the conservatives wrong” is making them right, almost. (And all for the city hall view on mental illness, right.) Not that they won’t make themselves wrong, anyway; they don’t believe all that jazz; they just believe in punishment, basically. Just like the working class radical of whatever decade or century makes himself wrong, you know—mercy for this one, and mercy for that, mercy for lots and lots—and judgment and death for the rest. “You are indeed a Christian; the sight of blood repels you; yet it fills you, with joy.”

Although, yeah, it’s not surprising. “When you’re a neurotypical in this culture, you breeze through 100-150 pages of empowerment or whatever it was, and forget it all, and when you reach the paragraph that says, ‘Empowerment means not having to rely on people who don’t really like you anyway’, you call your lawyer. It’s what you do.” Living the dream isn’t always about telling people you love them, right. Although it is mostly about that, and the normies don’t like that either. (shrugs)

Again: look at the world, and this is indeed the attitude of the majority, so it’s not surprising it’s also the attitude of some people who read this book, you know….

For me, a takeaway (that I derived myself) was like, “Being afraid means I don’t have to be ambitious. As long as I survive, in a literal way, it’s a win.” Right?

…. And Jen does tell the people she loves them, because that refrain, Remember: you love you, is like a mom of the future’s reminder to her kids that carrots have vitamin A, or something, you know, and it’s also the equivalent of that line in bad pop songs that they refer to obliquely as “three little words”, right. Her thing, though, is that her type is everybody: warm blooded vertebrates, right…. It’s funny, some scientist of today might be like, Insects matter too, but like…. People who failed chemistry, don’t, lol. He/they would be all, Remember, children: very masc-y, to very androgynous: the correct gender spectrum. (But super masc-y will always be the best.)…. But my favorite thing was when that pop psych guy who reminds me of Jennifer titled his book, like, you know Pop Psych yourself, like a motherfucker, or whatever it was, and the reviews are all like, “This is like the 50s!!!!” and it’s like yeah, totes: you go to the BBC in the 50s, you’re dropping the f-bomb, right: no question. What was your favorite part of Wagner’s Ring cycle, motherfucker? Have you read the Orestes trilogy in the original Greek, shrimp dick? I translated into 17th century French, waaat?

Right?

SO! Far from me to be a populist, but screw city hall; it’s like the neurotypical club, you know. “Fucking with people for a living took me down the, Swanee! River!, and reminds me of the old folks at home….”

…. I do like the idea of having money and I don’t resent people who have it, but sometimes I have to remind myself not to act poor, basically. There’s a way to act poor that isn’t husbandry, (although that’s often not the most important aspect of building wealth, anyway), and is certainly not fucking thrills—it just makes you miserable for no reason!—and it’s not anything, other than just that, acting poor…. You have to remind yourself, even if you’re not actively fucking Franciscan or Marxist or whatever, that being or acting poor is NOT who you are: it’s a limitation put on you, it’s you slicing away some portion of who you are and what your life is, right, and when you let yourself slide into that muck and lie down…. You know, you can deceive yourself. People talk about prosperous purchasing, and I do try to do that sometimes I still have pretty much what I would have had anyway left over, had I spent it on feeling sorry for myself, right—but yeah, sometimes even getting the car ~fixed~, right: I don’t blame myself for a last time, because it needed a LOT of work done, and I got done the majority of it, counting by dollars, and in the end, everything was fine…. But then, this time, just because one extra thing went wrong the week before I took my car in for its maintenance, I almost acted poor and tried to dicker around with the guy and my car would have looked bogus you know, apart from the aspect of its being…. Yeah, but that was my knee-jerk thing, and then the internal fairy said, you know, Don’t do that: basically, pay the money, right…. Yeah that often happens with my intuition at this stage in my life. Like once on a witchtok video, the girl’s like, guess what color crystal I’m going to show you, and I guessed, like, Boom, but then I thought, you know, maybe that’s not right…. What if it were this other color…. And then she showed us, and it was that other color, right. That often happens to me with my intuition. Like my surface level mind is cut off and incorrect, and it’s the voice I hear first and loudest, but then with a delay there’s the uncertain correction, right…. Yeah, it could be worse….

…. I mean, sometimes I DO act poor, and it ends up being a very expensive mistake, you know…. Not that it really was “too late”, or at least a really serious life setback, but it was, I don’t know: I didn’t beat myself up or flow into world-cosmic negativity, (like not thinking Hitler is happening again: “hey mom, that series is getting a reboot”, right)—I mean, I guess if I were more developed, I’d be just real embarrassed, right: just the lack of experience, the lack of a knack for knowing when to take a little time out to spend the money at the ~best~ time, right…. But really I was scared. I mean, here I am in my head, and Hermes is a little rattled but he’s ok, he’s not back to thinking that when it’s the early afternoon it’s time to go home from school and that our alcoholic mom will scare us—that used to really take me over; I used to not be able to imagine a goal other than not having that, you know: but yeah, Hermes is saying prayers and meditating and reviewing the reasons why things could be ok; but he’s a little rattled because in his gut, the gut brain is Mercury sniveling under the table and hiding like, Brudder, I’m scared; I don’t like it to happen, the bad things…. I don’t like it to happen, the bad things…. And I just have to remember that up in the sky there’s Tahuti, and he’s an older god than I am, you know…. And he sees me and he tells me things, and he reminds me that I’m his son, right….

(shrugs) I mean, to kinda Gypsy up the neighborhood, you know. “Ah, there goes the neighborhood: now it’s freaky…. Man, this is a weird neighborhood, now…. You know, Jen Sincero was on TV, I thought things were gonna be ok…. But one time somebody read her book, and then he related it to his experience with the fucking Egyptian Hermes or some such shit…. Man, I ain’t got time for that shit: I say (long jingoistic anti-immigrant rant).”

lol.

…. But yeah, I don’t really want to talk about it, but money is definitely a journey…. I am kinda angry about this misunderstanding, since I misheard something and they definitely did not communicate well, offer good customer service, or basically treat me like they would want an expert to treat them in another area of their own lives, right—they acted legally certainly, but it wasn’t a good idea to trust them…. They didn’t say “Does this transaction make sense for you: do you really understand the words that are coming out of my mouth”—just, verbally approve this huge amount, ok, got ya—and I tried to explain how this felt to the guy, and how I didn’t blame him personally, but I’m trying to explain to him that I don’t like the customer service or his company’s policies and he’s trying to man-splain like, I think this is good customer service, and practically, You figure it out then, and I didn’t say but it’s like, Nobody else has had a misunderstanding because of this policy of verbal agreement? You know, and I almost don’t trust them to be honest about that…. And it’s like his whole thing is like: one, you are wrong, and two, we can get the money out of you; and it’s like, I so do not want to be your customer if your business model is to prove me wrong about things!…. And that didn’t seem to register; he wasn’t trained by his people to try to keep the customer, right—and it’s like, if my business over the years and my loyalty as a customer doesn’t mean anything to you, I guess you don’t need to get it then!…. And I am kinda angry, in like a sense of being rattled, you know—like I didn’t curse at the guy then and I wouldn’t curse anybody now; I’m not even sure I’ll name the company, because the internet is already the internet, and this is so not something I’m complaining about because the internet is full of commies, right…. But it’s like, I feel like I’d be equally upset if this person and their training and their stance were representing my brand, you know…. No long game at all, not even a pretense: I even told him, You haven’t used the words, but I feel like your attitude is, “we can get the money out of you”—right, and that’s didn’t register, either…. Like, it’s certainly an experience for me, learning about cars and car-related companies and car upkeep, you know, and it is ultimately a sorrowful but good part of the journey, because, not that it was a BAD car, (I’m thinking of just give-selling it back to Carl, you know), but I didn’t have the faintest notion of what car would be the best fit for me, then…. Anymore than the mechanic representative asked me that question, my degree of attachment, right, before doing “The Great Work Which Cannot Be Undone”, (medieval alchemy apparatus shots), it’s like—if these people were selling cars to robots, they’d have a great model, you know: as it is they practically say, “Our industry sucks: deal”, and it’s like…. I really wanted to do business with someone that would make me feel a little bit better than that, about the nature of business in this time and place, you know…. I almost feel embarrassed for their brand, and now I want to not to business with it anymore, you know…. Fucking pathetic. What did you think money was? It’s like they think it’s fucking robot grease, or something, you know—philosopher-brain-metal….

…. Like, he did tell me once that he was giving me good customer service, but he didn’t even patronize me, and tell me he would relay to his boss that somebody thought it was a bad policy. He didn’t even pretend, and then laugh after he hung up. He literally just either ignored what I said, or frontal-assault told me I was wrong. Am I a college student, that I should fucking pay to get bullied by these so-called experts who love to tell people that they’re wrong about their precious little speciality?

…. But yeah: it’s a journey, and the whole course of things goes to teach us the lessons: maybe I don’t want a 2007 Civic with a radio that doesn’t work instead of saving up and getter a newer hybrid with a radio that does work, right…. And hopefully this is the end of a very long road of neglecting the value of property, which probably did not begin in this life….

And yeah, I’m almost afraid for people: because obviously as, uninteresting for good or bad, almost a life as this guy might expect, eventually he’s gonna be talking to a doctor or a real estate agent, and he’s not going to understand their legal judo, and he’s going to want to trust them to make real and not merely legal attempts to communicate, and then say “you’re wrong and we can get the money from you”, right—I mean, granted he’s been misled, you know: that’s obviously a given. “It didn’t start with you.” But I don’t know, it’s sad. I wish that people wouldn’t do these things to themselves: but they do it to themselves, right…. And yeah: I would like to have a doctor and a car mechanic who looks at me as a whole person, and not as a case load or legal requirement, you know…. But it’s a journey. People are generally misled, by other people who have been misled. Even when companies hire people to cover the PSYCHOLOGICAL field, for fuck’s sake, their job is basically compliance with legal requirements…. It’s like, Who told you what psychology is? “The Law Robot…. Who else?” It’s like, Ah, well: as long as it’s good at chess, right…. I have no further questions—lol.

…. I mean, it’s just sad, you know: a lot of people, something happens to them, they curse you out; they become a victim; they post online about communism or something—I just literally try to talk to this guy, who like, calls me back three times in a couple of hours, you know, to tell me new reasons why I’m wrong: the first time it was like, “Ok, I’ll go tell the guys to stop working on your car, since you don’t want to pay for it; my first priority was just to prove you wrong, right”—and it’s just like, you listen to a recording with all the technical data and you expect it to be one thing and that’s what you hear; I listen with no technical data, right—and it’s like, Am I the only person with little driving experience? Some people don’t even understand English well!—you know; it would have been like, Well they can take the bus! (phone slam), you know—but yeah, I just try to get him to understand that I trusted his company and I don’t think it communicates well, and he’s like, you know—The machine doesn’t have feelings. Neither should you….

You know, but I don’t think that I’m a victim and I’m not going to expect Andy Trudeau from Charmed, the police guy, to see what a supposedly non-gun-carrying worker couldn’t get right…. I mean, I assume car mechanics don’t carry weapons, right…. The other mechanic didn’t even tell me about half the things that were wrong with my car; he must have been REALLY chill about money, the guy running that other garage, right…. But yeah, I’m not a victim, and I’ll learn the lessons of this experience, even though that certainly does not mean that I was “wrong” like Commander Helpful over at, I mean, I hate to demonize another community, even a profession, right, albeit one that can be like a way of life, too—but it’s like the Marine Corps Auto Service, you know: (gunnery sergeant) Is there something wrong with your vehicle, (Marine slang put-down)…. (Marine slang put-down), that is not the agreement that we made over the phone….

But yeah, I just find it odd how the people in charge of “the real world” are not in touch with reality, right…. I guess I get, to some extent, that some guys would rather be heroes and get shot at, than lead an ordinary life, right…. I just don’t get that you fix cars and think that your job is to intimidate and bully the customer, you know…. It’s like, Will the person who’s in charge of the real world who has a grip on reality please stand up? ~You know, it’s like, bizarre, so bizarre…. Yeah, but don’t neglect property, don’t neglect professional relationships, right…. And don’t expect people to have their head glued in, and screwed in, tight, you know…. Because even if you were an avatar of Vishnu or something, your task on a plane like this, might be to deal with people who are a little…. A little….

…. It’s like after a certain point, he was harassing me, you know. He was trying to prove that he was a real man. He did that basically by holding me to a higher standard than he held himself, even though supposedly I was the one offering to compensate him for a service, you know…. But you know, real men don’t do things for other people. They just don’t. They fight. They bully. They call you a little girl, basically. You know?…. And I’m not someone who gets offended when I hear the “bad bad Leroy Brown” song, you know. But I don’t expect some “real man” to make his day by ~proving~ that (customer #….) is a bad customer, you know. I hate to say this, but men are just bullshit sometimes. They certainly don’t really understand money, at the end of the day. (caveman has an idea) A-ha! But we’ll bully and threaten all the women, and then everybody will think that WE are the money-people! (the other cavemen make grunts of approval and clap him on the back)

And it’s literally more common for an industry to be like, than not. And you know how normies are. “Succeed MORE, than the average failures? (gives look) Maybe I’ll find you someone who speaks spi—I mean, Spanish; you’re not making, any sense, mister….”

…. But yeah: I’m not a philosopher in the sense of liking how say Ludwig Wittgenstein emotes, you know: (grits teeth) I came to this universe to discover…. Pain! (opens sci-fi portal) Joy, depart from me, for I am a good man!….

Right?

But we definitely came here to experience a process, a journey, and joy is not the whole thing. I accept that.

…. And yeah: I know that pitying can be a little passive-aggressive, but there certainly are men—like, most men, for example—who think on some level that they’re going to get raped and dishonored if they try to serve people instead of…. It must be a little scary, right.

And yeah: there are things I’m letting go of, the neglect of the practical—although certainly it takes time to get the knack of it, just like with some spiritual practice—and letting go of relationships of disrespect, whether that’s people making assumptions based on your past, or just assuming that you’re like whoever the average schmuck thinks the average schmuck is, right. (“This whole industry is garbage, mister!”)

Just releasing the ‘you dish it out; I accept it’ theory of acceptance, you know: because really, you can release almost anything, really….

…. And, yeah.

(three months ago) “Unlike some smaller garages, we make everyone here pass an ethics test.”

The unspoken rebuttal: I hope that the Great Robot Father is happy, right….

…. “We can dance if we want to
We can leave your friends behind
Cause your friends don’t dance
And if they don’t dance, they’re
No friends of mine….”

…. It’s certainly hard to vet people for Scrooge Test vision of ethics vs the Safety Dance vision of ethics, right…. I suppose if you were as intuitive as Alice Cullen, who had a lot of money, or a Celtic bard or druid or something, it would work better….

…. But yeah.

“You have to keep the faith, always, even when your ass is on the line.”

Sometimes I do love these times. There’s a lot of work to be done—I wouldn’t have minded being a few centuries in the future with a little less of it, but then, I suppose the lords of the Otherworld had their reasons…. And I’m glad as fuck I’m not living many centuries or even many decades in the past, you know.

I really am.

…. Because, again: at the risk of being a little negative, we Never have to go back to the Grapes of (Fucking) Wrath, you know: no matter what the fuck happens to my car.

You can release it if you want to. Most people don’t have that experience of dying while staying alive—even people who evolve, I mean—and just waking up one day and not having their old list of bullshit, right: but I can look back a decade or fifteen years ago, and basically see that as “like a previous lifetime, or somebody else’s life”—because of things like serenity and intellect, you know: and it can also be like that in fifteen years because of things like money and relationships.

…. And, yeah: you might find yourself in “The Man Called Ove” (Young American version) type story, but…. I mean, can you imagine being around in the 30s and thinking some government bureaucrat or egghead calculator inventor who liked white men better than anybody else and thought that fucking grey was the only fucking color in the world, right…. Can you remember when that guy was the fucking FUTURE, right?

Again, pity is passive-aggressive, I get that.

(sways) We can dance if we want to
We can leave your friends behind
Cause your friends don’t dance
And if they don’t dance—They’re,
No friends of mine….… (lisätietoja)

This book was recommended to me by a co-worker who swore it changed his life and that it would change mine. I wouldn't go that far, but this was an entertaining book that had some good points. Sincero's voice is casual, fun, and often on the mark. I also found she rambled quite a bit, and it distracted from her more poignant points. Overall, this was a mixed bag for me.
The biggest issue for me was that Sincero mixed up the psychological Id with Ego. The fact her editors didn't catch this concerns me. This is a pretty big and basic psychological tenet to get wrong, and it comes up in the second chapter. Admittedly, this probably biased me against her for the rest of the book. How can I take an author seriously who messes THAT up?
Also, self-help books just aren't my thing. I like nonfiction, but this just isn't my preferred genre. I'm sure someone else will love her personal approach and repeat her mantras like gospel the way my co-worker does. But, if you're not a self-help book kind of person like me, this won't convert you, and that's okay. :)… (lisätietoja)