An Awkward Conversation With Mum

 My brother is an interesting character he's far more "emotional" than I am and added to that he reacts differently.  It was Mother's Day yesterday and I spoke to my mum on this video link I set up with here - years ago and so we see each other like that most of the time.  She was a little bit down and as she said, she's getting close to 89 now and I think she is doing great for her age but she is having ore mobility issues and so the flat has been upgraded with aids to help her get about.  The main problem is her joints are extremely painful and so every now and again she gets down and I think I would too as it takes ages to get dressed and to go anywhere.

So after I'd spoken to her my brother called me and was pretty upset that she was behaving differently and was so down - I can only guess that a few of her phrases were shocking to him but he should know her.  She's just in pain a lot.  He didn't take my Dad's death too well either and that's just the way he is.  Anyway I spoke to her again today and she was feeling a lot better and it was just a low blip as anyone might have as your mobility goes away from you and you become more conscious of it.  

It's not difficult for me just to ask my mum how its going and how is she and all that.  I'm going to arrange to go up and see her a bit more often as the cr@p of the business disappears away from my day to day.

I'm just waiting for the Accountant now so I can sort out the death throes of the business.  Once done I am free of all the rubbish and can walk away from it.  It's been a week and I am happily not involved in its administration apart from the paperwork to close it down.  Hurrah!  

A Little Outing Yesterday

 We meet 6 times a year and it was nice to go out for lunch and just enjoy the company of some friendly people.  Fascinating to be with people who are around 20 years older than us and listen to their trials and tribulations and realise that, I suppose, I'll be there soon!  They are around my mother's age I'd guess, late 80s.  

It was nice to get out and have a meal and a few zero alcohol Guinness which is possible one of the best low alcohol beers.  I though this would be nice to do it a bit more regularly and I've already set up a meeting with an old colleague of mine in April that I am looking forward to immensely.

 Here, in stupid land, we watch the government of the day continue to lie and weasel their way around things and all the time, we watch the utter levels of denial expressed by these people and the complete lack of disaster or risk planning available.  The Chancellor was faced with GDP growth figures of 0.1% for January and with all the turmoil in the Middle East  said something along the lines of "Our economic strategy is beginning to bear fruit" or some such other bollocks.  Our heating oil has more than doubled in 2 weeks.  That's doubled to way over £1.25 or more per litre, plus VAT at 5% and I paid close to 50p just a month or so ago!  Petrol and Diesel too have risen and so there's going to be an impact to the economy, even I can tell you that LOL.  We closed down most of our capabilities to be self sufficient in energy and as usual, the need to be seen to be cutting carbon (FFS) outweighs the safety and security of the very people who you are meant to keep safe and secure. 

I suppose they don't see it coming and just keep bring in ideas that piss off the electorate, make it difficult for us to live or earn a living, our bills have doubled and if I fill up my heating tank today that will be half, YES half of my pension this month just for 500 litres of fuel.  Actually it will be 2/3 rds of my pension just for heating in my house! 

In other news, the gale force winds and the rain were horrendous yesertday and the phone went off at about 00:30 this morning.  When I answered they were giving us advance notice that a power cut was imminent.  It did come eventually some 30 minutes later.  Luckily I have UPS sets for the computers and servers but the PC draws so much it switched off before I could, wake up, find a torch and struggle downstairs.  The Servers though were fine so at least I didn't have the surge problems we had a year and a bit ago!

Coming to terms with being a pensioner and being retired is funny - come on it's only day 4 LOL.  I have at least done something useful today with some finance spreadsheets and there's some Grand Prix action on TV later.  No doubt I'll be gawking at our useless PM and wondering whether he is lying every odd or every even word?  

Dismantling The Business

There isn't much to do in reality because it isn't a mega business, it has me in it, some shareholders, granted, but their input is minuscule, sub atomic in reality.  So there isn't much to close down.  A Bank Account, The websites, the emails, finalise the accounts, file those, do the Tax returns and switch off the lights on the way out.

There's a twinge of failure but I've documented everything I've done and dotted the "i"s and crossed the "t"s as the saying goes.  The contractual elements are few and sorted.  If you haven't got anyone buying your stuff, you haven't got a business and that's the bottom line, you cannot magic up stuff, you cannot argue with the situation because it is exactly what it is.  It's more profound than that even when the figures are reviewed.  In 5 months we didn't sell a thing despite over 180K views, circa 700+ Taps and 160+ downloads and no one wanted to buy it so it's a product not meeting the price-to-value expectation. 

You just know there's going to be someone who will try and argue about those figures - there always is.  But of course, they can argue but facts is facts.  

Anyway, all under way and it's quicker to tear it down than the 9 years its taken to build it.

How Utterly Bizarre

 Gosh, what a strange feeling.  I spoke to the Accountant this morning and worked out my timetable and suddenly, there's next to nothing left to do but wait.  My day after that has been empty - albeit I made some bread and wrote a few things down.  I suppose I'll get over this emptiness and not knowing quite what to do with myself.

It's a bit strange thinking what to do next because this has come as a bit of a shock.  There's some waiting to be done for sure and then a short burst of activity and that should be that, the business will close and everything can be archived and that's it.  It's not the first time I've shut a business down but it will be the last time I expect and this one is a little more complex but not overly so and I suddenly feel at a loss.  It's quite peculiar really.  I guess that happens in real life when you retire and stop working.

No doubt I will get used to it but for the moment it is a little disturbing to say the least.  I have things to do but I'm just not used to having the time and space to actually do them.  I hadn't really planned for this sudden loss of business activity.  

Who Did You Work With?

I came across a few names that reminded me of work colleagues of the past and it reminded me of how much I'd erased from my mind.  By that I mean when I was reminded I knew the names but not always where from.

I spent sometime, perhaps 14 or 15 years ago now destroying the past as I was finding it a real burden and my thoughts were all caught up with what I had and had not done.  One night I had had enough and somehow erased everything.  I imagine it is somewhere in this blog, I'd been reading either 'The Power of Now' or 'A New Earth' by Eckhart Tolle and I'd got to a point that I no longer wanted all that baggage and bang that was it.  

If I get reminded of something I can remember parts of it but it no longer invades my mind like it used to.  An entry in a diary or the odd thought (I am writing an autobiography which triggers some things) and as I write this I recall someone I worked with in 1980! I need a name or picture to do this whereas I used to be able to tell you who I worked with but now it is only anecdotal based on specific memories good or bad.  The downside is that I look at people in old photos and struggle to recall who they were, why I took them and I should have labelled them really LOL. 

I think it is a good thing that my head is clear from all those years ago, you wouldn't have liked the utter turmoil and the constant regrets and what ifs that I went through before getting rid of it all.  It was bad and I occasionally get the flash backs and what ifs but recognize them for what they are and stop the thoughts short if I can.  Not always easy when something triggers it but at least it is very occasional now not all the time like it was.   

I Didn't Expect To Feel This Empty

 Now this is strange. I feel empty and of course, the thing that has occupied me is at an end.  I no longer need to be doing the daily advertising stuff I've done for about 3 or 4 months now nor all the other build up stuff, sales and marketing, competition analysis and so on.

Most of the things that need to be done are in process or I've done them.  A chat with the Accountant tomorrow and resolve what needs to happen to shut it all down, follow the process and hit the deadlines and there we are.  

But it is the looking around and not doing anything that is totally strange - after 9 years on this and other projects and there it is - space, emptiness and not being sure what to do with my mind and my hands :-)

I suppose I will get used to it.  It gives me time to do the things I wanted to do but procrastinated about LOL.  

Also strange that this bloke's crazy reactions to situations is a potential threat but I need to remember that he's the one with the problem, not me and I have the paperwork to throw back if he gets shirty again.  If that's all I have to worry about then it's no problems I suppose. 

New Day, New Dawn

 Maybe.  The deed is done and I've withdrawn to App from sale and closed down the website and so on. Contacted the Accountant which will take it to the next step and then we can shut it down and I can hopefully live happily ever after.

You just know that the other guy is going to be snidely about it but that's his problem.  It won't be mine - I've gone above and beyond to deliver his idea dodging his accusations and other libels too.

Anyway, that can all disappear and with it this last weird thing in my body and mind that tells me I owe people something.  It has been with me these past years that I somehow have them all on first call and "owe" them some sort of allegiance even though they never appear to owe me any?  As a Director, of course, I owe all the shareholders a duty of care and shortly that will be gone, thank God!

Then I owe allegiance only to myself.

As Nina Simone sang:

"Birds flying high, you know how I feel
Sun in the sky, you know how I feel
Breeze driftin' on by, you know how I feel 

It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life for me, yeah
It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life for me, ooh

And I'm feeling good!"

Yeah - roll on freedom from all this sh1t!      

Stroke Of A Pen

Well, an email actually and we are no longer trading and in the midst of shutting down the business.  A few clicks on the website portals and 9 year's work has been archived and that, as they say, is that.

My Accountant needs to call me back but other than that, the key elements have been disappeared - websites, shop fronts and so on.  That's the way it is and I'm hopeful that it shouldn't now be too difficult to move things on a bit and get to the end of this journey.

I feel that I have now done my bit and taken it to a logical conclusion.  There's no where to go with this anymore here but I am handing back all of the IP to it's rightful owner although through gritted teeth as he gave me (and might still do) a hard time after walking away from the project!  Oh well, it takes all sorts of course.

So there we have it, I did feel a slight wobble about it but then again.  It cannot continue making no money and that's a fact.  I have had to do what I have, end of.  He may not see it like that but he never understood some of the business side so maybe he won't understand this.  Unicorn farts and magic money trees do not occur in business.

The Day Before Tomorrow

 The inevitable decision approaches and it will be 5 months tomorrow and that neatness allows me to stop trading with 5 months data before me.  It probably isn't that important in all reality but it works in terms of my mind and how that operates.  It maybe OCD or ADHD or something but it's logical and neat in my mind.

I'll have the data to make this important decision and the whole thing looks scientific.  I'll produce a report and analytics (Get AI to help you with this bit) and it will prove positive that the market is not there.  There's been so much work that has gone into this that it should have a fitting postmortem / autopsy and a headstone.  It is there in case the other party should ever ask for it.  Hopefully he won't but it is there nonetheless.

Would it have ever reached the market had it been on time?  We will never know.  When I tell people not to fix things if they aren't broken it is for a very good reason.  When I said get it to market, if it sells then you can add new bits to it because customers are funding it but OH NO! they didn't listen and 8 years late is what you get and then only half a job too.  I actually have the original App on an old device and it is a tiny bit different to what we have now.  All that extra money and time got us.... nowhere but you can't reason with some people and you cannot change the past.  Here we are, another business that failed to get off the ground and that's the way of it.

My own business was killed by COVID and the bailing out of other businesses but not mine as it didn't qualify.  Having just invested 6 month advertising and marketing I was greeted with lock-down, no money and no customers as they were locked down too. It's just the way it is and there's nothing you can do about it.  It was going OK but not great but it was so heavily impacted that it never recovered as all of my seed money was spent with no business from that investment!  Hey ho.

So tomorrow morning and I imagine for a few days I will be taking the necessary steps to shut it down.  Basically you cease trading and that means exactly that. I need to back the business out of its arrangements and inform various people and secure the money we do have in the Bank and a series of actions.  It shouldn't take long as there isn't much there.

I feel OK about it, I've guessed this would be the outcome and I've invested some of my own money to prove it. In so far as it matters, the testing of the marketing system was necessary as I have now exhausted all avenues to make a go of it short of knocking on doors.  People are happy to download the App but not to pay for it.  A shame but the market decides not me.

And It Came To Pass

 There is a certain amount of worry that making a decision comes with and as I get older I get less courageous in my decisions and actions - not that I was particularly courageous when I was younger I guess.   

I have to make a decision about the business.  I know exactly what that decision is and yet there's a niggle at the back of my mind about it but there shouldn't be at all.  It is in fact the logical, rational and proper decision to make, to close the business.  It's not the pride of that either, there's no pride in losing money or trying to defy the forces of financial inevitability.  I just know that someone is going to kick off about it.  I suppose he can do that but in reality neither he nor I can stop the certainty that if the business carries on it will go insolvent and no one wants that.

So my fiduciary duty of care is to shut it down and to do that now (well on Monday).  It's done then and that's a fact.  I suppose people can argue about it but the facts from the data show that it will never make money and so that in itself could be tabled but why the hell should it be?  There's been no input from these people only the hurling of brickbats - I don't think they can really do anything as it stands.

At least this period of the journey will come to and end and then I can just tidy up the outstanding items and move on.  

Decision Time Beckons

 I am going to spend the weekend immersed in Rugby and F1 and in that time, I will see if the App's fortunes improve.  I kind of doubt it having given it every possible chance to thrive and paying for the privilege.  I have to say that I have found AI most helpful in doing some of the heavy lifting for me and it's been like having a small back office working for me.  Some of the computational stuff would have taken me hours but it's been done in seconds.

Despite that and the massive improvement in people looking and downloading the bottom line is that no one is actually purchasing it.  The amount of downloads is now significant and so I can but give it one more chance to flourish over the weekend when more people are active and come Monday, I am pretty certain that I will need to shut it down.

Lots of people think that is sad and I suppose it is in a way but not everything makes it to market no matter how good your idea or product might be.  That's just the way of it.  

It will mark an end to my active involvement with business leaving just one dormant business that sits there ready for the right opportunity.  That means, in a month or two I get my life back and this can all be archived and put behind me.  It does feel like a weight being lifted especially all the sh1t they put me through.  

So Monday morning it is going to be simple mathematics - how many downloads and how many sales, what's the ROI and can we afford to keep going.  I can then commence with the necessary paperwork to close it all down and who knows? Live happily ever after LOL!  

I've known for some weeks in reality where this was heading and I just needed to execute my exit strategy.  

Logic Versus Security

The first duty of Government surely must be the safety and welfare of the people who voted for you and who pay for you.

Safety and security go hand in hand and so why have they undermined our energy supplies?  Surely they must have thought about this, it's happened before when there were supply issues 2022 and in the 1970s I remember it being bad wondering whether my petrol would last long enough to get home after a long trip - luckily a kind garage forecourt man let me have a few gallons extra.

But what I mean is to show our virtue off we have cut off our very own get out of jail free card.  We didn't mothball out power stations, we blew them up, we virtually stopped our own gas and oil production and we have great quality coal under our feet to this day.  So right now we are seeing huge spikes in our fuel prices - our heating oil (kerosene) has gone from around 55p/litre to almost double that and some are paying more like £1.28 I saw yesterday.

If we are reliant on other people for our fuels yet we have out own supply that we've shut down you'd have thought heads would roll?  No, of course not its all done for CO2!  Politicians still cannot work out that the whole world is fuelled by oil and gas they think it's all Unicorn farts and Fairy dust obviously.  When are we going to get anyone in charge who understands their portfolio and doesn't put us all at risk.  A huge chunk of the population, like us, are reliant on reasonably priced heating kerosene and they've doubled our costs overnight because they don't do risk management.

Braveheart Freedom

 Well kind of I suppose.  Freedom beckons and come April I think I will be pretty much feed up from the shackles of this business that has sucked around 9 years of my life without giving me anything much back in return!  It's a shame really that it wasn't more rewarding but when you deal with incoherent, ignorant ungrateful fools, this is what happens.  I have legal responsibilities and they don't they can go on their merry way tripping you up and making life difficult all the while basking in their self righteousness and Philistine Pig ignorance!

But soon, that will be gone and there will be none of this left.  It can disappear back into the ether from whence it came and the chains can come off and I can recapture that time somehow.

Looking forward to not having to dread the post arriving or anything else like that.  

It Comes Back To Bite You

The level of incompetence in the ruling class is breathtaking in the extreme.  With the Iranian war going on, fuel prices (heating oil) have jumped over 50% in a few days.  I understand that Petrol and Diesel are jumping and luckily when I was out at the weekend I filled my tank at about the lowest rate I've seen form months.

So our Business Secretary says we must "double down" on our Carbon Neutral Targets!  What planet is this man on?  The punishment is already a huge element of tax for now scientific reason or benefit other than filling the coffers of the fat bureaucrats.  We stopped our own Oil and Gas industry and now we are facing the very thing we have all been saying that if supply from abroad that we now fully rely on starts to dry up where are you going to get your supplies from?  The stuff is right underneath our feet but is ignored in place of importing it from abroad! 

The folly of it all and these imbeciles in government just don't appear to have thought it all through.  You security relies on many things and keeping the lights on is one of them and the more they tamper with its supply the more vulnerable the country becomes.  So concerned are they with pronouns and minutiae control of our everyday lives that they forget the very basics of keeping us safe.  And worse still the uneducated metropolitan elite want more of it.  They just cannot see how dangerous this all becomes as they eat away at our liberties, choose progressiveness of the woke kind and avert their eyes from the utter hell that they are building up for us.

We have turned the heating off and will use the log fire until this blows over (let's hope it does) and will just have to see what contingency plans these idiots in charge actually have.  I suppose the good news is that at times like this it brings the fifth columnists to the surface and more people get to see them for what they are.  

NHS Bucking Fonkers

 Send us your BP readings.  Done - they are slightly above the "recommended" 120 over 80 but apparently higher than the number of 120 over 80 that everybody in the world needs!!!

If you know - you know right.

So they've asked for the next 4 day's readings.  NP I can do that so I click the link and it's not 4 days worth it's 7 days twice a day.  The NHS clearly hasn't sorted this out at all has it.

So I will give 4 readings as they asked and they can whistle for the 14 readings that the link asks for.

I kind of wonder whether all 7 billion of us can all reach the 120 over 80 target?  

Lifting The Mood

 It's all doom and gloom out there at the moment - wars and conflicts, Labour government, and so on but here, the Sun is out for the second day in a row.  It has been grey, raining and gloomy for months but now a change in the Jet Stream (I guess) and weather patterns and the move towards lighter days as we turn to face the sun means that we have blossom everywhere in our Hedgerows particularly and the birds are getting pretty excited as I see nests appearing once again.  Lighter mornings and evening and my mood becomes lifted.

I struggle every year in Autumn and Winter and this year wasn't much different and I've had a couple of pretty depressing years.  I think that will all change soon.  I am almost certain that I will close the business and that will lift a huge weight off of me.  After a few months that should all just be a memory and I can get on with being retired.  Something ties me, like it always does, to try my best and keep working as if I am actually employed by some strange force.  Conditioning from the past perhaps.  

I need to "Get it our of my head!" that I am not an employee slave and whilst I have committed to trying to do my best, surely by now, I have done that?  It all needs to go away and I need to dedicate the remaining years to enjoying myself and my family - my grandchildren too I feel have been neglected and I need to work on that - not to put things right but to actually spend some time with them (if they want to) and doing some things for my family and for me.  I have done a lot for other people and generally had that thrown back in my face so now, let's go and do things for me!

It doesn't need to be anything huge either of course.  Just enjoy the independence and look after myself would be a good start.  

Shaking My Head In Disbelief

 I am probably not alone in wondering what has gotten into people's heads?  I am willing to accept people's opinions and free speech is a given albeit not for our government who dislike it intensely. No, I'm talking about people who's only apparent reaction to almost anything is to take offence, get upset and then double down on their own belief or shoulder chip. 

There's a heavy weight people carry around these days (the Pain Body as Eckhart Tolle would describe it) who's only form of interaction is to be offended or who have ideas that make no scientific or any other sort of sense.

Where were these people for example decrying regimes that existed on the back of piles of their populations killed for ideological reasons?  They weren't there then but now that something is happening that may redress the situation they scream out how unfair it is.  Why not tell that to all the dead, maimed and injured?  Then they become defence and foreign affairs spokesmen and proudly proclaim stuff from Facebook, X and Instagram what world leaders should do and how they should do it among other grievances and the naivety of it all does make me shake my head and wonder whether these people really mean it.  I suppose they do.

There used to be a rule when I was at work which was something along the lines of "Engage your brain before selecting gear"  I wish more people would just take a deep breath, work out what their point is and then say it having worked out what the consequences of their actions and more so, wishes are. 

Dawning Realisation

 I suppose it should come as no surprise to me least of all that the business just doesn't look like it will make it.  This Tuesday a big change will take place in the way things operate and in that change will be the very last chance to see if the App will make it.

So far, some of the signs have been encouraging but having now invested 4 times more than my original budget I am empty handed despite increasing numbers of people interested but, of course, interested doesn't mean buyers.

So I sat down last night and went through the plan for shutting it all down.  I could have done that over a year ago in reality but I wanted to make sure that this long-term project actually saw the light of day and if it had (or didn't have) potential.  The reality is that we don't have the capital like our competitors to flood the market and in many ways, whilst I could put my shoulder to the problem I no longer feel inclined to do so after the way I have been treated.

So with this big change I will give it a couple of weeks and if the fortunes do not change then shut it all down.  It's an easy process but a little complicated by other factors, easy enough to get over though I'd say. 

Perhaps I will strike it lucky and it will all come good but I don't think so.  The good news about shutting it all down would be that I can walk away and get my life back.  That would be great as I was surprised how much of my time this has taken up.  

Having worked on this for 9 years or so, I do feel a little pissed off that the chap who wanted all this assistance has turned on me, walking away and leaving me to it!  I just hope that he fades into the past and never darkens my door again.