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Ruminations
This doesn't seem to go in any other thread, so I'm making a new one.
Just a thread for your little Ruminations and thoughts, not necessarily fitting into any other thread, and not necessarily related to anything else in the other threads. Not just little dreaming of the immortality of the crab moments, but detailed thoughts of something - Thus why I said Ruminations, rather than little thoughts.
So, Doctorow on twit
I think he's ceased to actually be a person to me, and has become simply a bullhorn hooked up to a laptop, with a program running to shout variations of the same goddamn thing over and over. Occasionally, the laptop composes a document around those things, and prints it out, with algorithms that slurp down whatever is cool on the internet at the moment, and updates from time to time what it shouts or prints, Also, it has an algorithm that exaggerates what it's saying, and then shouts that this is why you should listen to what it's saying. Occasionally, it will take something, and shout about why it's a sign that it's right.
I mean, before, he had a point, he was grounded in reality, and had something important to say, but for quite a while now, it's just seemed like he's transitioned to a self-serving, conniving and sleazy doom-prophet.
It's like he's stuck in his little fantasy world, where everyone who makes more than 70 K a year is outright evil and only out for their own gain, and will always be immoral and use whatever dirty tricks and muscle that they can to keep us down and buying their products, and us little guys can always beat the man by doing everything ourselves and not swallowing, like, their corporate B.S. man - y'know, the fantasy world that exists in his books, but it's definitely not the real world.
It's almost like he's a high-tech version of a hippie, Started out regular, and slowly got more and more out there, till he's living permanently on the edge of a purple custard freakout that the man is keeping him down and we can beat the man if you just grow your own food and weed and make your own stuff, and don't follow the man's rules, and, like, rise up together, man, because the Jackboot corporate thugs can't take us all down, man.
But the weird thing is - He wants the toys all the time. He wants the new shiny, all the time, but doesn't want to deal with the fact that "The Man" makes all the shiny toys he wants. Sure, the odd cool homebrew device comes out that he seems to lust after, but that doesn't mean that he won't be taking photos with an expensive camera when he wants to take a photo. He'll build a camera obscura in his backyard(pure hyperbole, who the hell has a backyard in London worth mentioning whose name doesn't end in "Winsor" and has a very nice bit of head-gear?) and crow about it, but when he's taking more than just a hobby, mess about photo, he's whipping out the big new canon, or the Mino flip HD, etc, etc.
I mean, his goals are noble, but he's just strayed from reality. He's stuck in a fantasy world that's a bizzare mashup of Makers, Little brother and For the win. He has some good points, true - but so does the guy down the corner saying that the government can be unjust and foolish, but that doesn't mean that there's lizard people running it.
Just a thread for your little Ruminations and thoughts, not necessarily fitting into any other thread, and not necessarily related to anything else in the other threads. Not just little dreaming of the immortality of the crab moments, but detailed thoughts of something - Thus why I said Ruminations, rather than little thoughts.
So, Doctorow on twit
I think he's ceased to actually be a person to me, and has become simply a bullhorn hooked up to a laptop, with a program running to shout variations of the same goddamn thing over and over. Occasionally, the laptop composes a document around those things, and prints it out, with algorithms that slurp down whatever is cool on the internet at the moment, and updates from time to time what it shouts or prints, Also, it has an algorithm that exaggerates what it's saying, and then shouts that this is why you should listen to what it's saying. Occasionally, it will take something, and shout about why it's a sign that it's right.
I mean, before, he had a point, he was grounded in reality, and had something important to say, but for quite a while now, it's just seemed like he's transitioned to a self-serving, conniving and sleazy doom-prophet.
It's like he's stuck in his little fantasy world, where everyone who makes more than 70 K a year is outright evil and only out for their own gain, and will always be immoral and use whatever dirty tricks and muscle that they can to keep us down and buying their products, and us little guys can always beat the man by doing everything ourselves and not swallowing, like, their corporate B.S. man - y'know, the fantasy world that exists in his books, but it's definitely not the real world.
It's almost like he's a high-tech version of a hippie, Started out regular, and slowly got more and more out there, till he's living permanently on the edge of a purple custard freakout that the man is keeping him down and we can beat the man if you just grow your own food and weed and make your own stuff, and don't follow the man's rules, and, like, rise up together, man, because the Jackboot corporate thugs can't take us all down, man.
But the weird thing is - He wants the toys all the time. He wants the new shiny, all the time, but doesn't want to deal with the fact that "The Man" makes all the shiny toys he wants. Sure, the odd cool homebrew device comes out that he seems to lust after, but that doesn't mean that he won't be taking photos with an expensive camera when he wants to take a photo. He'll build a camera obscura in his backyard(pure hyperbole, who the hell has a backyard in London worth mentioning whose name doesn't end in "Winsor" and has a very nice bit of head-gear?) and crow about it, but when he's taking more than just a hobby, mess about photo, he's whipping out the big new canon, or the Mino flip HD, etc, etc.
I mean, his goals are noble, but he's just strayed from reality. He's stuck in a fantasy world that's a bizzare mashup of Makers, Little brother and For the win. He has some good points, true - but so does the guy down the corner saying that the government can be unjust and foolish, but that doesn't mean that there's lizard people running it.
Comments
Also, the things he has to say about privacy completely contradict the things he says about DRM, he just doesn't realize it. He expects Facebook to use DRM to protect his personal information, but he doesn't want DRM on music and movies. Can't have it both ways, dude.
In a recent podcast, I'm pretty sure it was the Twitter and a Tangent one, Scrym talked about a complaint from a business guy in NY who couldn't seem to find a programmer who was willing to take his idea and run with it. I don't know NY, I've never been there, but if that really is the case, then it doesn't really surprise me that the vast majority of technology is made on the west coast. That is beside the point though. When I was listening to this episode, as they talked about it and essentially came to the conclusion that a programmer would be stupid to work for no money and only stock, I could only sigh and say, "You guys don't get it." And you don't get it because you're not entrepreneurs. Now, there is no shame in not being an entrepreneur. Less than 1% of the population qualifies to be such. Yet I would say that much greater than 1% are happy with what they do.
This is a topic I talk about a lot with other people who are entrepreneurial like myself. Basically just talking about what actually makes one an entrepreneur. What is it that we have that others don't? My best friend, who is just finishing up school this summer, has taken a bunch of entrepreneurial and other business classes like I have. One of the things he came back to me with was that after going through all that, was that he was able to sense who actually had the ability, and who was just posing. I look back at my own program, and when I graduated, I knew in my gut who was going to go places. What made me sad about it though was that of the 30 of us in that program, there was only one other besides myself that had the ability. And not too long after graduation, I was affirmed in my assessment when the other guy went off to Reno on a whim and has since become a major nightclub promoter there, while everyone else in that program went on to get regular jobs at this or that place.
When this topic is discussed, it is easy to think of a few keys traits that entrepreneurs have to have in order to accomplish their goals. Having will or determination is always at the top of the list. And it is certainly important. If you are the kind of person who is unable to set goals and actually do them, you don't have a chance (this doesn't mean you have to complete them 100% of the time, you just have to do better than 0%). Other things include being able to communicate well, have extensive and broad knowledge, be able to lead people, and the big sticking point of being willing to risk financial stability.
But is that really all? I've always felt like there has to be something deeper, some one key thing that is absolutely most vital. Something that can't be taught or learned. Things like communication and knowledge and leadership can be taught. Having the will to do something, which includes risking well being, is something that can't be taught, though it is something that can be sharpened and exercised.
So I did manage to think of one thing, that I think can be the root of all the rest. I could be wrong in thinking that it is something that can't be learned, but I do know that it is something, and usually the one key thing, that holds people back from being entrepreneurs. This is the ability to detach oneself from everything.
Again, this has to be qualified. This does not mean that in order to be successful, you have to detach yourself from everything. You simply have to have the ability to do so. You have to be able to sit down and think to yourself, "How important is all this to me?" It is actually very reminiscent of the speeches given in Up in the Air, the whole deal with the bag. His whole schtick though, was that it is a good thing to detach yourself, I disagree there. But you really do have to think about the worst case scenarios and whether you would be able to handle them or not. Questions like: What would I do if my house burned down tomorrow? Would I be able to move away from here and not speak to most of the people I know again? Can I do something, even if it is unpopular? You have to be able to detach yourself from money and things. You have to be able to detach yourself from people and expectations. In some ways, you even have to be able to detach yourself from yourself.
My best friend, he is an extremely polarizing kind of person. He is very opinionated, and does what he wants to do. He doesn't care what other people think of him. He is starting a company right now, and has had no less than five other people come to him with ideas, who want to work with him in starting their own deals. The other guy from my entrepreneurship program, he lost most of his friends. And not because he moved from Washington to Nevada, but because he was doing what he wanted to do, was successful at it, and the people he knew turned on him, saying that he was being pretentious and arrogant (neither of which were true). My parents grew up in very poor homes, and they worked their asses off to get college degrees (first in their families, no family help, no financial aid). They didn't make many friends, they lived in poverty for the eight years it took for them to both get through school, they really put everything on the table. My mom lacks the other necessary skills to be a business owner, but my dad certainly went on to run a company for 14 years before the effects of 9/11 left him without any work. And then there's me, who quit my job back in March and have been working for no pay since then for a startup. I was smart and saved a lot of money, so I can at least afford to still live where I do, but I don't have the luxuries of eating out or going out drinking with my friends anymore. I can't buy books, movies, games, or anything that isn't food or utilities (includes internet, student loans, insurances, other necessities). All different people and situations, but all realize that fulfilling dreams is about sacrifice.
Anyway, it is now past 5am, and I am tired. /rant
This is the problem. The vision is the entrepreneur's. He has the passion to try it. But the techs out there, who aren't beholden to his idea, will not have similar drive and willingness to sacrifice for someone else's vision: they have their own visions.
If you want someone else to work 80 hour weeks to achieve your vision, rather than his own, you have to pay him. Working like that and being paid only in stock for a vision that isn't your own is not something most educated technology professionals are going to do. If they were willing, they'd do it for their own visions. The choices are:
1. Work a salaried job - make tons of money
2. Work exhausting hours to achieve my vision - make zero money, but possibly more later
3. Work exhausting hours to achieve some other guy's vision - make zero money, but possibly more later
Option three is for suckers and fools. The risk/reward is largely the same, but you're killing yourself for someone else whose idea is probably not special in the first place.
This guy's complaint was basically "I have a cheap idea that requires expensive implementation which is beyond my abilities: I need someone else to do 90% of the work to make it happen, and no one is willing to do that for free!"
I'm working on a project now, and I'm at the point where I know I just need to start paying people to do the parts I can't manage myself. It's really annoying, because I'd do some of this for free, if it was for other people, but I need to be able to rely on whoever does the job. Free means you'll get good enough, in their time. Paying someone means you'll get good enough, but in your time.
As for entrepreneurship in general, yes it is valuable and important. However, I think that as of late there is something very distasteful and shady going on in the area of technology entrepreneurship. There are a bunch of very vocal VCs who are trying to sell technologists on starting their own business, and there are a bunch of kool-aid drinking people who have done it, are doing it, or want to do it, who are regurgitating their sales pitches.
The VCs want nothing more than for every tech person to go for it. The more people try, the more hits there will be, and a greater pool of companies to invest in. The best part for them is that they can convince you to try to start your business without having to invest in you. Of course, you should blog and tell them everything so that they know you exist, and can figure out your odds of success before giving you a dime. Oh, and when they do give you a dime, they're going to want seats on the board and some pretty firm control. They also know that you need to fail quite a few times before you succeed. They convince you to fail a bunch of times on your own dime, while they keep an eye on you. When they think you've figured it out, then they'll come around and give you some cash, and still make bank off your hard work while they lay by the pool.
The thing is that the sales pitch works because most people, especially tech geeks, really don't want to have a boss. I'm sure everyone would much rather be working on what they are passionate about, with nobody to tell them what to do, no hours, no corporate bureaucracy, etc. It's just that as much as people want that, self included, guaranteed food and rent is a higher priority.
What bothers me is not that people are going for it. More power to them. It's really that this culture of VC has really mixed itself in with the culture of tech. Go to anyplace where there is a technology community, especially a programming community, and you will find a 50/50 mix of VC kool aid right next to the articles about fast fourier transforms. It already makes me uneasy and skeptical when someone tries to sell someone else on starting their own business. To make it worse, the sales pitches all have a very strong self-help book vibe to them. Some of them even have a get rich quick scheme feel to them. Obviously not all entrepreneurship is bad, far from it. But this, I think is safe to say, is not good.
If someone is going to start a business the only suggestion I stand behind is to not listen to the Jason Calicanises, Gary Vaynerchucks, and Fred Wilsons of the world. They are not to be trusted. Even if I'm wrong, and they are serious and forthright, there's no way to know that for sure. These guys are already rich. Anything they do is obviously to make more money. For example, they try to sell you a book on how to start a business. Guess what. They don't care about your business, they care about selling you a book. Unless you're the next Facebook, they don't want to invest in you, either. They can wait until you are a proven success, and then still make bank off of you, if you let them.
If you're willing to risk your own livelihood, absolutely try to turn your passion into your job. Just don't drink the kool aid from the guys poisoning the tech sites. Don't risk your livelihood for someone else's passion. And if you absolutely can not do without food and shelter, don't be fooled into risking your livelihood and making a mistake because someone convinced you with some blog posts. Be very aware of what you are doing. If you do not have a guaranteed income, then you absolutely are risking everything when you try to make it on your own.
The key there is to treat your hobby with the same degree of professionalism with which you would approach your job. When I started brewing beer, I developed a brewing philosophy that serves as a mission statement, a brewery name, planned beers which reflect the brewing philosophy, and started talking it up to everyone I know.
If you approach your hobby as though it were a professional venture, you'll be in a good position to actually turn it into a commercial venture once you've secured funding.
Really, it seems to me that the difference between an entrepreneur and some dude with a dream is that the entrepreneur treats things with the level of professionalism you would expect from an extant commercial entity. The aforementioned guy who wanted someone to work for free barely qualifies as an entrepreneur; if he were really interested in getting his vision going, he'd be willing to put forth time or money to really make it happen. He's looking for a free ride.
A few weeks later I found out she'd been talking to another juggler about the same job. And then, a bit later, another juggler again. And then more jugglers. It turns out she had asked for loads of input and ideas, offered "stock" (meaning promises of money in the future) , etc, etc. I'm proud that no juggler took her any more seriously as I do, and everyone one us said the something similar: "You want to work with me, so now let's see your credentials. Why should I work with you?" or "Pay me now, up front, or go elsewhere."
That's the problem with jugglers, you see. All of us do whatever we want, have 100% artistic freedom, direct our own shows, etc. We're the opposite of what this producer was used to, namely singers and dancers and actors who fall over themselves to work for nothing, just for the chance of staring in a Broadway show.
This is not so with most activities. For me to actually make commercially viable software, maintain it, update it, etc. I'd have to work on it a lot. I'd also have to be available to work on it at a moment's notice if it goes down or there is a critical bug. It might be possible to do this in addition to my job if I neglect sleep, GeekNights, socializing, all entertainment activities, etc. To be realistic, it pretty much has to be my job if it's going to happen.
Think about Penny Arcade, our example to follow whenever in doubt. They were working retail jobs while starting off. When did they really take off? Two things had to happen. First, Jerry worked full time to support Mike only doing PA. Second, Robert Khoo, also known as incredible luck.
Yes, I'm saying you'd have to work on something a lot. Treat it like you would a part-time job. Work on one small project at a time, and dedicate yourself to it. You might have to sideline other things, but if you're talking about turning your passion into a job, you won't mind sidelining some of those things. It's what you need to do. No, it doesn't work for everything, but then again, there are programmers who have done it. But you can't just start off like that. They worked on it part-time to establish their foundation, and then at the appropriate moment, they went for it. You can keep your day job and still create the foundation you need to become successful. Hard work can mitigate much of the risk of doing it all yourself.
If you don't want to do hard work, well, maybe self-employment isn't the route for you.
Having a side business while you are working a full time job is intense. Pete's level of brewing doesn't take that much of his spare time, but that is because he doesn't output at a viable commercial capacity right now. If he were to step up his production to a level where the beer he brews is a significant secondary source of income, he would be putting much more of his spare time into brewing.
When I was doing CC Studios, it took up pretty much all of my spare time, and while the supplemental income was nice, I still only brought in a couple of hundred dollars a month gross. After taxes and materials costs, that's not really that much extra money. I would have needed help with production to get it to a level where the income was enough that I could cut back from full time work.
Unless you are some sort of genius who can create some masterpiece in your spare time, or someone with no life, it's next to impossible to do a software business alone while also having another job. Even if you successfully develop the product in your spare time, if anyone actually uses it, you will find yourself buried in extra work you must do. To do all that extra work, you will have to quit your job well before the point at which you are guaranteed not to starve. Look at Twitter for example. They had more users than they could handle. Their shit broke constantly. And they still aren't profitable AFAIK.
I could keep going on an on, but by the time I'm done, I'm looking at an extra 15 - 20 hours of work per week. The maximum possible income I could see in a year at 20 bbl annual production is (generously) $10k. Operating a brewery involves at least $2k a year in overhead (licensing fees and rent - you cannot sell beer that you brew in your house), and some unknown quantity of materials. After all is said and done, I'll be lucky to make around $6 an hour. Let's not even talk start-up capital; I need to raise about $10k dollars in capital just to even buy the equipment needed to start to make 1 bbl batches of beer.
The whole point of this is that it is not easy to maintain a side business, but it is possible. You won't maintain it as your primary source of income, but you'll be able to establish yourself. And this is where things can get tricky. Yes, maintaining a side business in the manner I have described necessarily means that your social life will suffer. You will not go out as much as you used to. You will have less time to spend on other hobbies. Other things get sidelined.
Think about having geeky hobbies. If you're a geek, you probably spend 20 hours a week or so directed at your various geeky hobbies. You may even spend more time than that. Now, turn all of that time over to running a single business on the side. That's what you have to do to make money on the side. That's not having "no life;" that's re-ordering your priorities to get what you want. It's what you might have to do to make your passion a job.
The other option is massive risk and almost-certain failure. If you don't want to be inconvenienced by your dream, you take a huge risk. If you don't mind putting in time, you can mitigate that risk.
The NS team started off making a Half-Life mod in their spare time. It led directly to the formation of their business. It's possible. Hard? Sure. Possible? Yes. At some point, you'll have to quit your day job if you want it to become a primary source of income - unless you're keen on maintaining two full-time jobs at the same time - but starting small gives you a foundation.
People in every industry think that it's impossible to start small in your spare time and grow into something big, but every industry is replete with examples of that very thing.
The only reason people think it's impossible is that they're unwilling to make the sacrifices needed to make their vision happen.
For example, I talked to the guy who started Rocketboom about risking it all from the get go. He gave me a roundabout answer saying I should get a partner with money or something. What he didn't tell me is that his dad was fucking loaded.
Steve Jobs, Bill Gates? College dropouts with nothing to lose. They were entrepreneurial, but the stuff that made them rich was what they "stole" from Xerox PARC. Wozniak was the only one who did real work on the Apple, but the Apple is dead and the Mac lives.
Facebook, Dell? They did it while they had tons of free time in college (our mistake for not doing that). They weren't risking food or shelter.
Google? Graduate research project. NO risk of food or shelter.
Twitter? Accident while doing Odeo. Flickr? Accident while making Game Neverending (which I played). These are somewhat entrepreneurial, but neither is profitable. Twitter is living based solely on popularity. Flickr got bought by Yahoo!, so the founders are sitting pretty, but their business itself is still fail.
Digg is the only one I can think of that followed the model that the VC guys are pushing, pretty sure it's not profitable, and it's having issues lately.
Also, In relation to Digg, do you mean there are more problems other than the obvious ones?
Any self-employment carries with it the "I had to do blah blah blah just to keep food in my belly" story. It's true; the free market is a bitch, and sometimes your product falls out of favor. This is true of any industry. It's inherent in the risk of being your own thing. The relative risk of software entrepreneurship is no higher than the relative risk of being an entrepreneur for any other industry; if any industry had a significantly lower level of overall risk, everyone would be there. It's all of matter of whether or not you as an entrepreneur can handle the particular risks of your industry, and which risks you can mitigate. No risk? Grad school projects are risky. What if it didn't work? Grad school fail! That's several wasted years that could've been spent elsewhere. They had time and money to lose. If it failed, they wasted their time and they remained unemployed.
You're making an assumption that being an entrepreneur requires some kind of massive, undue risk. Yes, self-employment is risky, but if you're smart enough and dedicated enough, you can make it work. That's how any industry lives. Popularity = sales = income. They made a neat thing and then made it popular. That's how you make your business survive in the modern world. You have to get the idea to survive first, long before it can actually become profitable. How old is Twitter? 2 years? If an industry is turning a roaring profit in two years, the guys who made it are fucking geniuses. Nothing gets to "making a living" territory that fast. You're risking grades, if your curriculum is hard enough. If not that, then your social life will suffer. How the fuck do you figure that? Is a band a failure when they stop being independent and get picked up by a record label? They may not be doing exactly what they wanted, but their business is still a success.
The "sacrifices" I'm talking about all relate back to other things you like to do. You can keep food and shelter while having a full-time job and part-time self-employment, but you won't be doing much else. It all comes back to how you prioritize things.
All those other sacrifices you are mentioning, like grades, etc. are all bullshit. I'd be willing to risk all that and more. The only thing I'm not going to risk is food and rent. If I went for it, for reals, that is what I would have to risk. None of those other people I mentioned where in a position where they had to risk that. Except the NS guys.
And Twitter, Digg, Flickr, etc. There are people there who got money, but did they really? Let's say you start your brewing business. Then Budweiser offers to buy it for millions. You sell it to them, even though it's not profitable. You are rich. Your employees are now working for Bud. You quit. The division is never profitable. It's eventually shut down. Millions of people are drinking and loving the beer, but it's losing money. That's what Twitter is like. The guys who started it have bank because they took investment money off the table. The business is super popular, and still huge in the red.
Twitter is in the red because they don't actually have a product or service that can make them money yet. The only possibility is a subscription service, and that would kill them right quick. Flickr is profitable because they outright charge for better services, and the services they provide are worthwhile. Digg was most likely not a profitable long-term business investment. It's been made redundant by other, more specialized news aggregators.
The only thing you have to risk by doing a side job in your spare time are your other hobbies. Xbox games will go unplayed, Netflixes will go unwatched, wheels will be doused. If you didn't have Geeknights to do, how much time would you have available for coding? You could probably write Project D.O.R.F by yourself. Hell, that one guy did it, and you're a better coder than he is.
EDIT: What Nuri said. It's all a matter of what you feel is important. People who complain about not being able to start a small business on the side clearly have other things they're not willing to sacrifice in order to make it happen. Everyone needs food and shelter. Nobody sacrifices that to get a business going - at least, nobody who's terribly successful does.
For me, and I'm sure many others, if I were to quit and start a business, I would be risking the roof over my head. If the business did not succeed, I would be homeless. Maybe I could live with my parents again. Maybe I could quit and get a normal job again before I actually fail to pay the rent. Either of those is pretty terrible.
You have guys who are not risking food and shelter telling others to do just that. That is why it disturbs me so.
What I'm saying is that, for any industry, you can do something small on the side while maintaining your current job. That will enable you to become established without risking everything. Then, once you're in, you can cut off ties and go for it. Your risk is greatly diminished in that case. That's the smart way to do it. The only thing you sacrifice in that case are other hobbies, but once again, if you're passionate, you shouldn't mind. Yes, and that's predatory. The issue is that many people think that there's no way to start their own business without taking on massive, undue risk. That's what you seem to be arguing as well. You have to quit your current job to do software development and all that jazz. It's simply not the case.
Every industry deals with customers, has to troubleshoot problems, and has to be on call all the time. The customer who calls and says "OMG IT'S BROKEN FIX IT RIGHT NOW BECAUSE I'M MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVERYONE ELSE" exists in every field. It's not unique to the tech fields. You're very sensitive to the ignorance and helplessness of customers because you are very well versed in your field, and they are not. I mean, do you think people really understand beer to my level? How about food safety? The average consumer doesn't know a goddamn thing about food safety beyond what food companies tell them, and I have to deal with a populace who doesn't understand how to wash their hands properly.
The reason we have predatory VC's, and that people fall victim to them, is that we have a culture that is used to instant gratification and doesn't want to be inconvenienced. The "I need a pile of money in order to get my business going" is the cry of the lazy. Yes, you need funds, but you don't need an investor to give you shit tons of money and make you take a crazy risk. Once you figure that out, predatory VC's become a thing of the past.
I knew a girl, a woman, hell, I don't know. She was just on seventeen at the time. We were close. Emotionally, that's all. I looked at her one day, and told her how beautiful she was. She looked at me, like she was searching for something. I told her, a length, how and why she was beautiful to me. And she looked away, and looked back at me, she just fuckin' looked at me, with those big, beautiful blue eyes, and she said to me "I look in the mirror, and I don't see the same beautiful angel that everyone else does."
That's it. Just that. She didn't say anything more. Didn't speak of it again. just that. It broke my heart, I wanted to hug her, or say some words, or just fucking do something, but I didn't, and I couldn't, because the way she looked at me, and the way she said it, it broke my heart.
I've not told anyone that before. Doubt I will again. That's all.
I don't think I've ever told anybody that, now I think about it. Every time I get in that mood I'm too sheepish to speak to anybody directly. ._.