Warning: Don't try to find out what fuzzy logic is when your logic is fuzzy.

 The word 'fuzzy' to me conjures up THIS:

Fuzzy, like fuzzy felt. Oh, endless fun was not had with this excuse for a creative pastime when I was a child.

Today, my brain possesses the cognitive capacity of a piece of fuzzy felt. Probably due to lack of sleep. Which was probably due to working too hard on a Sunday evening. I'm a fool to myself.

Through the fuzz, I remember that there is something called fuzzy logic. Ah, perhaps that could be the solution? Some logical process that would break through the fuzz.

 So, here is a definition of fuzzy logic.

"FL is a problem-solving control system methodology that lends itself to implementation in systems ranging from simple, small, embedded micro-controllers to large, networked, multi-channel PC or workstation-based data acquisition and control systems. It can be implemented in hardware, software, or a combination of both. FL provides a simple way to arrive at a definite conclusion based upon vague, ambiguous, imprecise, noisy, or missing input information. FL's approach to control problems mimics how a person would make decisions, only much faster."

You lost me at control system methodology...brain too fuzzy.

 To cheer me up - a quote from Brigid Lowry.

“Some ideas are not born of logic and good sense. They are made of clouds and cobwebs. They sprout from nowhere and feed on excitement, sprinkled with adventure juice and the sweet flavour of the forbidden."

THAT'S more like it!

There was a little girl...

Who had a little curl

Right in the middle of her forehead

And when she was good

She was very good indeed

And when she was bad

SHE WAS HORRID!

Interesting information of the day: That was written by Longfellow. I never knew. But I do now.

Anyway, I WAS that little girl. I was reminded of it this morning while listening to classic comedy on Radio 4Extra 'The Men From The Ministry' broadcast 1962-1977 - so a feature of my childhood. In this particular episode, mention was made of cigarette coupons, and it took me right back...

Urrrrgh - even the sight of this knots my stomach.

My mum and dad smoked. A LOT. Loads of people did those days and that despite the fact that my dad was a doctor and my mum was a nurse.

I HATED it. It wasn't that I was concerned about their health, or mine through passive smoking - that didn't seem to figure in people's minds much in those days. I just hated the smell, the choking smoke, the fact that our white-painted walls had turned yellow - EVERYTHING.

My mum smoked the most and was an avid collector of coupons. It seemed somehow a justification for smoking - smoke a million Embassy cigarettes...

irreparably damage your health (She died from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) and you too can buy a crap electric kettle...

I was a highly principled little girl (even then!) Or highly obnoxious. Whichever way you like to look at it. I flatly refused to accept ANYTHING purchased from the Embassy catalogue. It was like a kick in the stomach to my sensitive mum and I knew it. I was very good at making her wrong.

The good bit that came out of this determination to make my mother wrong at every turn was that I have never, ever had a cigarette to my lips. Not once. Not even for a second just to try. The bad bit, the far more important bit, was the loss of love in the relationship.

How ironic it is to me that all three of my boys have smoked - maybe still do, for all I know.

Oh how we love to do anything rather than be our parents!

The currency of real networking is generosity not greed

...says Keith Ferrazzi.

Now that makes me feel a little better, because networking is something I'm going to do. Something I have to do if I'm ever going to generate more business. Networking with Actual People, that is, not by e-mail or LinkedIn.

I have only one experience of 'networking' and it wasn't something I'd ever like to repeat. (The term networking is in quotation marks advisedly because for me it was more a case of unravelling than knitting together.)

It was for film makers, in Tunbridge Wells, if you must know, the Hollywood of...nowhere.

In a room full of film wannabes (rather like myself...but not very much) I set out to engage people in conversation, just to get to know them on some personal level, to form collaborative, creative relationships - that was my plan.

Not theirs, plainly.

As soon as they calculated that I wasn't A Useful Contact who would further their ambitious plans for world domination, starting with Tunbridge Wells, I became Ms. Invisible. Their eyes glazed over, they'd not be interested in a word I was saying about me, me having listened patiently to an endless spiel about them, and they were constantly looking over my shoulder, round the room, for Someone Better.

I wandered lonely in a crowd. (By the way, I'm not socially inept or anything. I can string words together and hold intelligent conversations on most subjects.)

I left that event feeling not so much networked as excluded, isolated and mangled.

That must have been about ten years ago. I vowed NEVER AGAIN.

So next week, I'm off to the Uckfield Chamber of Commerce AGM and dinner!

Let's form Strategic Alliance Partnerships, shall we? (See, I have all the jargon)

Let's NOT be driven by What's In It For Me?

Okay?

We should strive to welcome change and challenges, because they are what help us grow.

H. G. Wells, from The Time Machine

I'm striving, I'm striving...

Very interesting. I listen to Classic FM quite a lot. Each Easter weekend they have a countdown of their Hall of Fame, favourite music, voted for by loyal listeners - and again, Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto in C Minor came out on top. I love that piece.

But lookee here...what have we at Number 3? The soundtrack to the Final Fantasy Series video games by Nobuo Uematsu?  
 UH?
And at Number 5, The soundtrack to The Elder Scrolls - another video game - by Jeremy Soule.

I'm turning in my grave!

Not really - I expect people were once horrified when the theme from Schindler's List did so well in 1993, and has done ever since. FILM MUSIC, DAMN IT?

I'd vote for that EVERY TIME.

Now to explore a new world of music...and grow.

One more step along the world I go

Here is your ear-worm of the day.  Listen to it once and I defy you not to have the tune running round your head all day. (You'll hate me forever.)

It came to me a little way into the second day of my '5 little steps a day to get me out of the shadows' resolution...

I had a POSITIVE RESPONSE from an animation production company that I e-mailed out of the blue.

It made my five little steps of yesterday so much easier to achieve. Five little steps became six before I'd even realised it, and eight by the end of the day.

Now, I'm kicking myself for not doing it sooner...or more often...

That's human nature for you!

By Mel Kadel

Good resolutions are like babies crying in church.

They should be carried out immediately.

Thanks to Charles M Sheldon, minister, for this (dubious) quote. (Babies should be welcomed in church.)

I'm not at all bad about carrying out good resolutions immediately. Less good at sustaining them - but the way I look at it is, even if one only does something for a few days or weeks, at least that effort has been put in and will never be wasted. Better than doing nothing, ever.

So yesterday, after my non-existent To Do List for furthering my writing, caused by panic masking as brain fog...

I made a resolution to take five small steps each day to move out of the shadows.

1. E-mailed a healthfood company promoting my copywriting.
2. Sent off a script to a director
3. Set about re-designing my business card.
4. Pitched scripts and writing services to an animation company.
5. Pitched scripts and writing services to another animation company

It wasn't such a great mountain to climb, and...

Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.

Guilty as charged, Zig Zigler (but I haven't got a ridiculous name)

Your statement makes me a little world weary though.

by Gale Franey

Yesterday, feeling a little virtuous, I thought I'd Plan Ahead, write one of my famous To Do Lists, so that today I could hit the ground running.

The trouble was, I couldn't actually think of anything to put on the list. I know what my personal creative writing goal is - to get more of my work published or produced - but I couldn't think of a single step to take in order to achieve that. There are countless, I'm sure, but to me it seemed like wading through an ultra sticky morass. Stuck.

So here's a  more comforting, optimistic view of my lack of direction, by C. Joybell. C (another ridiculous name but hey...)

“I have come to accept the feeling of not knowing where I am going. And I have trained myself to love it. Because it is only when we are suspended in mid-air with no landing in sight, that we force our wings to unravel and begin our flight. And as we fly, we still may not know where we are going to. But the miracle is in the unfolding of the wings. You may not know where you're going, but you know that so long as you spread your wings, the winds will carry you.”

By Violet Sands