While Stumbling, I found this website. Apparently, to be truly successful you must leave behind people who can’t help you achieve success.

‘“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” – Jim Rohn

Blimey, I’m the average of myself, then. That’s who I spend most time with. Here on the computer. In my writing room. (following the advice of Virginia Woolf who said ‘a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction’) Well, I’ve got the room.

I’m still waiting for the money. Selling short stories to women’s magazines is very nice, but isn’t going to keep me in Merlot, let alone make me rich. If I had the wherewithal, I’d upgrade my machine and have one that doesn’t keep switching itself off. That’s why the computer desk is pulled away from the wall. I have to keep unplugging the power supply to get my old Mac to fire up. Not ideal. My writing room doubles as guest bedroom. There’s a single bed behind the chair. Again, not ideal, especially when you’re up early in the morning and want to get an hour in before the rest of the house is looking for breakfast. Virginia Woolf had it easy. The only thing we would have had in common was a birthday in January.

I have theories about January girls, but there’s enough for a whole story so I won’t go into that here.

Now, I enjoy StumbleUpon. It can broaden your interests, show you things you never knew existed. We rarely search for websites by name; there would be too many to remember, so StumbleUpon remembers them for you and suggests new things you might like.

I enjoyed reading the post about successful people, but I don’t care for its recommendations. I’m all for curtailing time spent with people who drag you down, though. I call them emotional vampires, those people who suck the living daylights out of you with their whinging and complaining, or their constant carping and criticism. It makes much more sense to spend your time with people who make you feel good about yourself. I spend a lot of time by myself. Writers do. So, when I socialize, I want to be with people with whom I have something in common. It won’t necessarily be writing. I sing with a choir and enjoy spending time with others who love music as much as I do.

But, unlike this article on success suggests, I don’t choose people because they can be useful to me. How manipulative is that? What sort of a selfish bastard treats people like that? A SUCCESSFUL one apparently.

Perhaps this is why himself and I find ourselves well below the salt at certain dining tables. We have ceased to be useful. Hello? Up pops another idea for a short story. Good grief, how can I ever manage to follow through on a train of thought? Excuse me while I jot down some notes. . . .

. . . .  that’s better.

There’s an old saying about how you treat people when you’re on the way up, because you might meet them again on the way back down. Mixing with the right company does not appeal to me.

Mixing with compatible company suits me better. Perhaps it’s an age thing. I’m not hungry for the kind of success that means you give your time only to useful contacts. Bollocks to that, pardon my French. I have achieved an amount of success. The circulation of the magazine that publishes my short stories is over 200,000. That’s a lot of people who’ve read something I wrote sitting at that old machine in a back bedroom. Isn’t that fantastic? If I achieve success with my novels, it won’t be because I’ve chosen to ignore people who don’t fit the right categories.