One of my future students Facebook has apparently decided I need another job. I don’t know why. I’m perfectly content with my current job, as it is part-time most of the year, largely unsupervised and pays me enough for food and beer.
I’m reasonably sure I know how Facebook works. When I evince an interest in anything, the Zuck fills up my feed with opportunities to buy it. When I shop for fishing gear, all kinds of great deals for shiny reels and expensive lures interrupt the meme-flow. When I price cruise vacations, my feed fills up with pictures of attractive older people smiling and holding glasses of champagne with a calm tropical ocean in the background, instead of pics of cruise reality, which is regular old people disoriented by days of heavy drinking, staggering from rail to rail in twelve-foot seas.
But I enjoy that kind of vacation. Meta knows that. Where they got the idea that I wanted to be a spiritual coach, though, I haven’t a clue. There it was, though, yesterday, right between some guy I don’t really know giving me an update on his blood sugar and Smudge the Cat--BECOME A SPIRITUAL COACH!
I guess I could send in my money and learn to be spiritual enough to coach spirituality, but they would have to start training me at rock bottom, for I am the least spiritual person I know. Alphabetically, from the A of angels through the g of ghosts and God, the k of karma, the m of metaphysics, all the way to the z of Zen, I don’t give credence to much of the spiritual realm. I worry about dandelions way more than I worry about demons, and I don’t worry about dandelions at all. When the sun rises over the mountains, I don’t feel united with the universe. I see a ball of exploding gases billions of years old rising over a geological formation caused by continental drift.
Maybe I just need a shot of ayahuasca in my coffee, but before I start charging people to help them tune the tines of their inner vibrations, I could just start my own religion or mega-church, and loot from the gullible in the name of Jesus. That’s tried and true, and has a 2,000-year head start on Internet bullshit.
Maybe Facebook sensed that, because my feed soon dropped the “spiritual” and offered me the opportunity to become a simple “life coach.” I imagine most of this involves coaching people to make more money. I could tell people to work harder and save more, I guess, but I don’t do that myself. I don’t set much of an example for living a lucratively rewarding life. I drive a 2009 Ford Escape because it’s a nice, anonymous vehicle in which to travel in Baja when I want to fish, eat, and drink there. It’s no Ferrari. It’s not even a Tesla.
Or maybe life-coaching means coaching people on their relationships. I could see myself saying to one of my life students, “Objectively, you’re a fairly boring person, and your wife-girlfriend-object of your lust is not very interesting either. Both of you need to jump out of an airplane in an active war zone. If you survive, I could probably listen to you without having to pinch myself to stay awake.”
I could see myself giving advice like that. I couldn’t see anybody paying me to listen to it, though.
One guy is offering me a twenty-seven-step program to becoming a certified life coach. I’ve been told I could quit drinking in just twelve steps. Why would I buy anything off him?
Finally, FB decided they couldn’t lure me into life-coaching. The next ad I saw was BECOME A LICENSED HYPNOTHERAPIST.
I could do that. I don’t know if I need to be certified, though. If you read this far, you’re probably getting very sleepy, anyway. Send me your money.
I’m reasonably sure I know how Facebook works. When I evince an interest in anything, the Zuck fills up my feed with opportunities to buy it. When I shop for fishing gear, all kinds of great deals for shiny reels and expensive lures interrupt the meme-flow. When I price cruise vacations, my feed fills up with pictures of attractive older people smiling and holding glasses of champagne with a calm tropical ocean in the background, instead of pics of cruise reality, which is regular old people disoriented by days of heavy drinking, staggering from rail to rail in twelve-foot seas.
But I enjoy that kind of vacation. Meta knows that. Where they got the idea that I wanted to be a spiritual coach, though, I haven’t a clue. There it was, though, yesterday, right between some guy I don’t really know giving me an update on his blood sugar and Smudge the Cat--BECOME A SPIRITUAL COACH!
I guess I could send in my money and learn to be spiritual enough to coach spirituality, but they would have to start training me at rock bottom, for I am the least spiritual person I know. Alphabetically, from the A of angels through the g of ghosts and God, the k of karma, the m of metaphysics, all the way to the z of Zen, I don’t give credence to much of the spiritual realm. I worry about dandelions way more than I worry about demons, and I don’t worry about dandelions at all. When the sun rises over the mountains, I don’t feel united with the universe. I see a ball of exploding gases billions of years old rising over a geological formation caused by continental drift.
Maybe I just need a shot of ayahuasca in my coffee, but before I start charging people to help them tune the tines of their inner vibrations, I could just start my own religion or mega-church, and loot from the gullible in the name of Jesus. That’s tried and true, and has a 2,000-year head start on Internet bullshit.
Maybe Facebook sensed that, because my feed soon dropped the “spiritual” and offered me the opportunity to become a simple “life coach.” I imagine most of this involves coaching people to make more money. I could tell people to work harder and save more, I guess, but I don’t do that myself. I don’t set much of an example for living a lucratively rewarding life. I drive a 2009 Ford Escape because it’s a nice, anonymous vehicle in which to travel in Baja when I want to fish, eat, and drink there. It’s no Ferrari. It’s not even a Tesla.
Or maybe life-coaching means coaching people on their relationships. I could see myself saying to one of my life students, “Objectively, you’re a fairly boring person, and your wife-girlfriend-object of your lust is not very interesting either. Both of you need to jump out of an airplane in an active war zone. If you survive, I could probably listen to you without having to pinch myself to stay awake.”
I could see myself giving advice like that. I couldn’t see anybody paying me to listen to it, though.
One guy is offering me a twenty-seven-step program to becoming a certified life coach. I’ve been told I could quit drinking in just twelve steps. Why would I buy anything off him?
Finally, FB decided they couldn’t lure me into life-coaching. The next ad I saw was BECOME A LICENSED HYPNOTHERAPIST.
I could do that. I don’t know if I need to be certified, though. If you read this far, you’re probably getting very sleepy, anyway. Send me your money.
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