JULY 2025
I’ve recently started taking swimming lessons. I’m going to have a total of eight one-on-one sessions. It’s expensive (a very generous gift from my wife!) but only about the same price as taking four people out to dinner in a decent restaurant, or slightly less than a meal for one in the kind of place where they present the food in the form of fizzing and smoking magic tricks in order to justify their Michelin stars.
In other words, it’s all relative, and making comparisons seems to be an inescapable part of daily life. I’d like to claim that I don’t need to see people overtaking me in the pool swimming breaststroke when I’m thrashing around doing crawl to know that I swim badly, but perhaps I do. If it wasn’t for them, maybe I’d think that swimming was an entirely unnatural activity for a human being and that I’m doing well to get to the other end without drowning.
Anyway, there I was for lesson two, trying to learn to use a snorkel so that I could focus on one thing at a time, and getting so much water up my nose I had to put a peg on it. All I need for my ego to finally pack up its bags and move out for good is to be told I have to smile like a synchronised swimmer at the same time as I’m trying to swim on my side with one outstretched hand holding the float and the other arm flat against my body, my flippered feet wiggling desperately to get me to the far end of the pool as soon as possible in case I completely forget how to breathe.
I’ve no doubt at all that I’ll be a better swimmer by the end of the course. But how much better? How will I decide if it’s been a “success”? I had that same problem with my last “day job”. I set financial targets and hit most of the early ones, but never factored in the question of whether I’d be cheerful and relaxed or stressed-out and grumpy at the end of the daily grind. It therefore never really felt like it had been a success. And even if we’re only talking about money, how much is ever “enough”?
All of that roughly sums up where I am with the new book. I went to some lengths last month to organise the launch, paying Freebooksy and others to send it out on their mailing lists. And over two thousand people downloaded it! 🙂 But could it have been more (as others claim)? 🤔 And what if, after all that, people don’t leave reviews? 😕 What if nobody (after the first couple of reviewers!) likes it? ☹️
This is where I normally start tearing my hair out and complaining that art is even harder than swimming or other sports, because to succeed, you need people to like what you do! But that would be to miss the point, which is that the book went out to all those people (perhaps you were one of them!). Everyone, free from any kind of obligation, can now decide whether to open it up or leave it in its digital cupboard. And then they can enjoy it or not, like any new song on the radio – or Spotify – or the oil painting hanging over your neighbour’s fireplace (I’m not Picasso, so no one should hate it!). The launch, therefore, was a success! 😀
Time to crack on with the last book in the series – and have a quick look at Death En Route to Neptune before its Kindle debut next month!
PS – I was just about to schedule this to be sent later today when I made the terrible mistake of having a last quick look at the state of play with reviews, only to find that someone has added a ONE STAR review (with no comments) for the new book!!! In other words, someone did hate it! If this was a piece of paper, I think I would probably have crumpled it up and thrown it in the bin/trash. But I said what I said.
PPS – Looking back, I can’t help wondering (call me paranoid if you like!) if the one star review was a kind of sabotage. It hardly seems fair in a world where everything depends on online reviews to give one star and not say why. The problem for me, of course, is one of statistics! 🤨