Things I Learned By Being a Writer

I have to write a lot of articles for blogs and such, as well as reviews.  I write for an audience.  And sometimes that audience is a second-person audience (meaning, I'm talking to YOU), and in writing to you I realize that I make all sorts of assumptions about who you are based on what the client wants or needs.  This is regardless of whether I feel that said assumptions are either true, fair, or real.  For instance, you are:

• An emotional buyer.  I'm not kidding when I say that I had to write about key emotions that businesses can use to make people want to buy something that they do not need.  In this case, you are the business owner and want to use photography to exploit people's emotions so that they buy your product.  But let me tell you this: The one real emotion that makes people buy is fear.  So go ahead and exploit people's fears of loneliness, abandonment, and isolation.  After all,  the fears are driven by society so that you do keep buying, and as long as you have that fear you can be sold anything.
• A homeowner or aspiring homeowner.  If you don't already own a home, there are steps you can take to do well with the Man so that he will give you credit to buy a home that you clearly cannot afford outside of 30 years of payments.  If you own a home, of course, you are trying to renovate it so that in many years when you pay off the home it will no longer be underwater.  If you are like me and wish for a yurt or a cabin in the forest, clearly you're to be written off.
• In a monogamous relationship or wishing you were.  If you don't have the loving spouse who would never 'stray', you are by definition unhappy.  Get on a dating website or try out the dating 'feelers' with anyone you meet who you think might be a possibility, otherwise you are destined to die alone.  Never mind if you are enjoying the single life or focusing on your career right now– you are unhappy too, and you must at least secretly wish you had a monogamous partner.  If you're like me and polyamorous and/or want a loving community with children running around that may or may not have been made by your own body, you're just a freak and no one cares about you in so-called 'real life'.  These are just communities of perverts and sexual deviants.  Chances are, you only do this because monogamy didn't work out for you, you can't keep a partner, and/or you can't get your act together to just commit to someone, which means you are too flaky for the real world anyway and no one of consequence actually likes you.
• Wishing you were more beautiful.  You wish you were taller, thinner, more fit, and with a face like George Clooney or Angelina Jolie.  If you're like me and not a size 0, you probably think you're ugly as hell.  Never mind you if, like me, you dance, do yoga, write for a living from home or a coffee shop, wander the city, play board games, have sex several times a day, cook wonderful vegan food with and look absolutely radiant at size 4: Those 10-15 pounds could come off and you know it.  Join a gym, quit eating anything besides popcorn and salad, chain smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol to get rid of your hunger, chew gum, drink coffee, and abuse prescription drugs– and get really, really sad.  That helped me lose the weight!  Being miserable definitely kicks your ass into gear, so find a reason to be unhappy and STAT.  A nice car, condo by the lake, fancy higher-ed degree, fame, designer clothes, stock options, and a coveted job you got via nepotism are also acceptable ways to beautify.  Some other things I haven't tried that are also costly but at least might help you be less ugly are plastic surgery, meth, coke binges, Botox, heavy makeup, hair dye and extensions, and regular experimental spa treatments.   Hey, over-compensating is expensive, people!  If you don't have the money to look beautiful, you're S.O.L., so I suggest you get your nasty ass back to work selling vacuum cleaners.
• Staunchly heterosexual.  If you're heterosexual, it's best to plant yourself firmly in this through rampant homophobia.  If you happen to be homosexual, luckily that's OK these days in many circles.  But definitely spew some hetero hate too!  Y'all know how you can't stand them 'breeders'.  And if you're one of the people like me who lies nearer to the middle of the Kinsey scale, aka a true bi-sexual, be prepared to be misunderstood at best and hated on all sides at worst.  Much easier for you to just pick a side, preferably hetero, and stick to it like glue.
• On a life quest for more money.  It's pretty clear, in case you aren't paying any fucking attention you ADD case, that money will buy you happiness and is the absolute answer to everything you ever wanted.  And believe me, you need a lot of help, so buying shit is really the only answer.
• Inherently unhappy.  You're poor and ugly, your house isn't as nice as it could be, you don't have a good enough job, you haven't been in love with your spouse for years and he or she is  probably cheating on you anyway.  But worse, you're not the smartest in your field, you're not a great musician or poet, you're not an all-star athlete, your neighbors have a better car, your brother has a better body, your friends have better jobs, better looking spouses and cuter kids, and blah blah and so forth.  As long as you remain unhappy, you are an emotional buyer and can be sold anything.  You will never be good enough, but don't let that stop you from throwing your hard-earned money at pretending you can be.
• Supposed to feel sorry for those less fortunate than you.  This might as well be the PC way to say 'racist' or 'bigot', since it seems like Third-World countries get all of the attention for being 'less fortunate' when there are more than plenty of people here in the good ol' US of A that are having an astonishingly rough go of things.  Some of them really do need your help, since having family to pull strings was never an option for these ppl and you know you probably got a cushy existence handed to you and have been made to feel absolute liberal guilt about this.  Apparently, anyone not on the rat race or not as far along as you are anyway is to be pitied, and maybe even helped to find the 'way' back to the misery that you yourself do not enjoy but nevertheless want to spread around to others.
• Constantly watching TV and listening to pop radio.  The oligarchy of mass media definitely knows how to exploit you for all the reasons I mentioned before.  But for some reason, it can really be soothing.