Credit goes to @gillianpearce for the title suggestion today. She suggested I expand on this subject from yesterdays blog post and to be honest, thats just the sort of inspiration I need to keep churning out this #hiveblopomo challenge.

So without further ado....

The Financial Challenges of Being a magical snowflake unicorn who wants to do next to nothing and yet still feel special

Now obviously this is going to be very specific to my personal circumstances , so first of all let me introduce you to this particular instance of a magical snowflake unicorn: ME

a bit of a Donkey Oaty

Its appropriate that I found a gif of Don Quixote because I am definitely a delusional creative dreamer who has often been guilty of roping people in to
ridiculous quests that have very little grounding in reality (and usually reveal my severe lack of competence!). Creative idealism and visions of grandeur have always been cornerstones in the poorly constructed castle of my character.

Upbringing

I was raised by beatniks and hippies with a distinct scruffy optimism and a disregard for the perceived drudgery of establishment ways. Although we've never had much liquid cash, we've always had property thanks to my grandfather who escaped a working class background in wales to become an eccentric renegade property flipper back when normies could still afford housing. Hence, I have never had the threat of destitution to contend with so I can fairly comfortably be placed in the category: SPOILT
Especially as my parents were so nice and never pushed me to do anything except follow my dreams....

Health

Its difficult for me to say how much my lifestyle and my health is a case of chicken or the egg, or whether its just a peculiar set of variables coming together in harmonic juxtaposition to create an impotent space cake like me. Either way, health has been an issue for me for most of my adult life. I have some kind of undiagnosed possible nervous condition that is probably a good-deal psychosomatic but is undoubtedly debilitating (my self diagnosis is TMS or mind-body syndrome. See the work of Dr. Sarno for more on that). There are many factors involved with this that I could write about for days but its kind of a giant open-ended investigation and this is not the post for that. All you need to know is that my physical ability to DO things is very unpredictable from one week to the next, although if I expend significant energy, I will almost always pay for it with some sort of nervous shut down a few days later. In some cases my recovery periods have lasted for months and even years.

Magical Snowflake Unicorn

All this equates to magical snow-flakery of the horned horse variety. My creativity and charisma are my key attributes (I am a Leo sun sign with Mercury, Venus AND Mars all in Leo as well. Go figure) and Ive always had wild aspirations of fame and fortune through my various artistic talents. BUT the nervous incapacity renders me mostly unable to deal with any conventional forms of sustained stress (even if its fun stress!). Combine this with my beatnik disregard for established systems and you wind up with a quite awkward case. Here is where we reach the Financial Challenges section on this particular strain of Mythical Crispy-White Pony-Pathetique.

Financial Challenges and Creative Solutions

challenge: Having a Career

Unless you are Exceptionally good at what you do, having a career as an artist of any sort usually requires a lot of hard work and some degree of consistency. I don't fulfil any of these criteria so my meagre attempts to build up a head of steam in any of my various interests have generally resulted in a lack of potency, direction and financial viability, or if successful, inevitably halted by illness.

solution 1: Get a normal job and enjoy your hobbies

Unfortunately a 'normal' job was never going to work for me. The longest I managed in full time work was 3 months when I was 19 and although I have had a few nice-ish part time jobs, I was always going to be idealistic when it came to my creative dreams. After it became painfully apparent that having 'a career' as an ambitious artiste of any sort was going to be nigh on impossible for me, the next solution was to turn my creativity in to gentle self-employment.

solution 2: Gentle self employment

So yeah, the last thing the Magical Snowflake Unicorn wants to have to do is actually sell itself. It wants everyone to know how magical and special it is just by fluttering its eyelashes, and after that it should never have to think about money again, somehow the world will just draw the talent out of you and raise you higher and higher with each swish of your glorious rainbow tail. Sadly not. So its time to sit down, consider what minimal service you could provide the world which would bring in a faintly regular flow of cash without destroying your precious ego or crippling your delicate snowflake nervous system. Hmmm.... well thats kind of what i did, sort of a mixed economy of vague creative offerings that I promoted to the bare minimum and essentially got away with being almost nothing while intermittently supported by state benefits and family handouts. Im proud to say, thats where Im still at today. I actually used some inheritance to purchase a small but functional street theatre business that I was offered and it has served me quite well over this bizarre pandemic time. BUT only because of one key factor:

I ooze vulnerability and people feel compelled to help me

Welcome to the ultimate trick in the Magical Snowflake Unicorn handbook. Technically its not really a trick because I genuinely am quite vulnerable, incompetent, hapless and needy, but the tricky bit is to make sure that EVERYONE likes you. Which again, is a funny thing to call a trick, because essentially if you want everyone to like you, you actually have to be a nice person, which is what a lot of us probably aspire to be anyway, to some extent....dont we? So yeah, I play the role of the nice version of myself as much as possible. Im fairly adept at putting a bit of brightness in to someones day and I'm also not shy about revealing my weaknesses, probably to my detriment sometimes, but I reckon its allowed a wretch like me to subsist on the charity of others when otherwise I......god forbid.... might have had to grow some nuts and get over myself. I hear that argument and I appreciate it. Maybe I could be cured by a vigorous regime.... but my suspicion is that without the love and support of my family and community I would probably have wound up in pretty dire circumstances. Anyway, that's not the case, so there's really no point speculating about how things would be if they were different, because they never are. Things are always exactly as they are.

ok thats a weird gif.
Im just genna leave it...

Solution 4: Live like a pauper

This isn't an ideal solution, but damn it helps if your work shy like me to be unfussy about your living conditions. I shop cheap and second hand, i wear scruffy clothes, i dont go out much, I cook at home, I walk places and get lifts, my furniture is falling apart, and as mentioned before I gratefully receive charity from anyone willing to give it! Of course I would love to improve my quality of life in some of these areas, but in general, I LOVE my freedom and spare time and I continue to sacrifice many things in order to keep it that way. I suppose I was getting used to the idea of my entire life being like this but something has begun to grow on the magical internet tree and its threatening to make things very tasty indeed!

My Favourite solution: Crypto and Defi

When I first got to steemit in 2017 I was pretty damn excited. Here was a place where I could shine my Unicorny shine as and when I wanted and get some payment for it (without having to build up a massive following first).
I think I was doing pretty well to begin with, releasing silly videos of myself and performing songs but unfortunately in 2018 I bought my business and a lot of attention went in to that. I made myself very ill. So ill that when I had to step back from the bulk of the work, I was too ill to continue crypto blogging in the way that I did before. However, I did begin to invest a bit of FIAT money and I always continued playing splinterlands in the background. Both of which have turned out to be quite cool investment decisions! Im not a great trader but I love being in #cubfinance and #polycub and seeing my little stacks get bigger. I don't earn a viable living for the UK (yet!) but I sometimes muse to myself that I could probably go and live in a much cheaper country using the passive earnings from my various crypto investments. I don't know to what extent that's really true, as I'll never be a committed accountant, but it certainly feels like something I wouldn't have dared dream of a few years ago that has presented my life with a whole new source of financial support. I mean just imagine! One day I might be able to live as a free and wild Magical Snowflake Unicorn, unleashed from the burdens of career anxiety and liberated in to a whole new dimension of carefree expression! Joy! (im really crossing all of my little sparkly hoof-fingers that crypto continues to thrive and that Hive has a decent part to play in that future!)

So Hey!

For better or worse, the world of crypto currency may be offering a safe space for a whole new generation of Delicate Spike-stallions and Fragile Horn-Mares to gallop and prance joyfully in a way that they probably havn't for centuries. Or maybe they have and I just havn't had the guts to go and find out how? Either way, its certainly given me a sense of impending financial empowerment in a world that I wasnt sure I could thrive in. And I am very grateful for that.

Now to work:

Splinterlands

Thats right, I get to earn money playing a game that Im not even very good at!
Today was water quest time.... uh oh....not my strong suit

So close. There was only 1 health left in it! I went for the super sneak and my opponent chose to hit my tank hard with magic...
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_c4de1652779b4b64b845bb48aa6ed22a&ref=basilmarples

I saw this opponents tactic coming a mile off so I negated his ranged buff with my windmaster and threw in river hellondale for the revive. Barely needed it in the end, I finished with all my monsters still standing. Crushing victory!
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_7e4eafa8968eedb62386db8722226f60&ref=basilmarples

Oshannus enraged!
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_c219931af6361f7dd8f45475dad5a977&ref=basilmarples

And I decided to play one more battle after the quest today and Im glad I did! It was an epic high mana dragon battle where I took Selenia Sky to the cleaners! Mwahahah!
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_dd9e95ded3a5ade9a23370e8fa2cfe83&ref=basilmarples

End thoughts

As much as I enjoyed that process of writing, it has actually taken me bloody ages! Hours I think.... it certainly doesn't constitute a freewrite. If I did this too regularly it would almost certainly end up being a major creative block and probably causing me anxiety and some kind of physical ailment. Especially if people actually liked it and I began to feel pressure to do more! Its no good, Im going to have to stick to the flippant trash media that Ive been producing for the last few days.

Muchos Love and glory balls to you all
Keep peacing out
Basil
x x