Has Blonde gone bat shit crazy? This has nothing to do with FPL.
Let’s get to the impaling point, this week is all about FEAR.
Fear is an emotion, with major side effects. A tilting mechanism which distracts us from making balanced, reasonable decisions. It can also sap our time and energy, leaving little motivation for the actual task in hand.
Count Dracula. Possibly the most charismatic iconic monster yet, an outsider, dark and uncontrollable. Draining the life blood from victims and terrifying the neighbourhood.
Vampyres can force humans into submission sooner than a unchecked bias can an FPL player.
The first mention of the word vampire in the English language is in the 1730s, in newspapers which carry reports from the edge of Europe, of bodies being dug up and looking bloated, and having fresh blood around their mouths. They report that these stories have come from peasants, but they make them sound very plausible.
Roger Luckhurst, who edited Oxford World’s Classic’s reprint of Bram Stoker’s Dracula
“hic incipit pestis”
Diseases were frightening things before the age of medical science. Plagues and epidemics could appear without warning and cause death and misery. Speculation and superstition were rife. People turned to the supernatural, the irrational, in their need to understand and explain.
Having trouble relating ?
Before 2020 none of us knew what it was like to live under the shadow of a highly contagious deadly disease, with no known cure and no means of stopping it. Was it real or fake? Who started it ? Who is to blame?
Who can save us ?
Facebook has the answer, no Twitter does.
Pets are carriers. Buy more toilet roll.
Inject cleaning fluid.
NB Sunlight kills vampires, not Corona Virus
Back in the Middle Ages, trying to kill vampires, or prevent them from feeding, was a way for people to feel as though they had some control over disease.
The fear that the dead, once buried, could still harm the living, by raising from their coffins and sucking the blood from the healthy – even if people didn’t believe it, they were still drawn to the hype.
In 2006, archaeologists unearthed a skull in Venice, Italy, that had been buried among plague victims with a brick in its mouth. The brick was likely a burial tactic to prevent strega—Italian vampires or witches—from leaving the grave to eat people.
Though Bram Stoker did not invent Dracula or vampire lore, he did more to solidify it in the imaginations of English-speaking audiences than any author has since, when, in 1897, he published Dracula. He also drew on historical accounts of the 15th-century Romanian prince Vlad Tepes, or Vlad the Impaler. Born in Transylvania as the second son of the nobleman Vlad II Dracul, he took the name Dracula, meaning “son of Dracul,” when he was initiated into a secret order of Christian knights known as the Order of the Dragon. (In Romanian, Dracul means “dragon.”). It was claimed that Vlad liked to dine among the impaled bodies of his victims, and would even dip his bread into their blood.
Professor Van Helsing emerges as a well-matched adversary in the novel, and he is initially the only character who possesses a mind open enough to contemplate and address Dracula’s particular brand of evil.
He is versed not only in the modern methods of Western medicine, but with an unparalleled knowledge of superstitions and folk remedies.
The nosferatu do not die like the bee when he sting once. He is only stronger; and being stronger, have yet more power to work evil.
Van Helsing
So to FPL and the living nightmare that this season has become.
38 weeks is a long time to maintain balance and positivity. There might be periods of fatigue and weakness, when you may invite fear in.
In the spirit of Foreshadowing is Forearmed, let me introduce the Van Helsing Guide to Fear Management & Resistance in FPL
- Rumours that sound plausible and cause panic and hype – Take a step away. In a calm place, perhaps in the company of trusted others, apply logic and reasoning until fear is dispelled.
- Resisting Group Think – Accept that we are geared to stay connected to others, but learn to trust in your own decision making ability. Build a strong mind set to help resist noise.Trust no one. Seek responsible sources to inform yourself. Sometimes with template & ownership there is safety in numbers, the herd falls with you. When you take a solo path, there is no shame in retracing your steps to rejoin the crowd. Always remember when travelling alone, keep opportunities for escape foremost in your mind, do not get caught in a blind alley.
- Don’t get hijacked by superstition and speculation. eg.1. FOMO (fear of missing out when not owning a particular asset.) eg.2. Bias such as Loss aversion (for individuals, the pain of losing is psychologically twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining) Others may Free Hit on a blank GW, I choose to save it for a DGW to optimise my gains. eg.3. ”The Gambler’s Fallacy‘ is the belief that a “run” or “streak” of a given outcome lowers the probability of observing that outcome on the next trial. Statistics/metrics/xG/xC are a guide not a reliable forecast.
- Failure and the need to control – human beings believe that they can control or at least influence outcomes when, in fact, they cannot. Eliminate this useless urge from your timeline. Instead of focusing on the outcome, focus on evaluating decisions and transfers, these are factors you can control.
- Behaving out of character due to stressors. Develop a strong mind, believe in yourself. Find ways to restore balance and calm.Play to your personality, if you fear risky plays then don’t make them.
- Descent into madness -Accept this is a game of chance, of randomness. SHIT HAPPENS learn to move on to the next week without baggage. If you don’t your vulnerability will eat you up.
CONCLUSION
Van Helsing sets the example, with his open probing mind. Investigation tempered with reasoning, results in accepting what we can’t change, extrapolating what might be of actual value, then making a considered decision free from prejudice.
Fears are good for us, and they are mostly irrational, they motivate, or thrill (upside chasing) and most importantly they are a survival mechanism. It’s the side effects that do the damage.
Feel the fear and do it anyway – don’t miss out on great opportunity.
POSTSCRIPT
I try to make my blogs no longer than a 10 minute read, this week I could have kept you here for hours. Well thank you for trusting in those huge leaps to the ‘next thing’ that are a consequence of an extreme edit.
Vampires, pandemics, irrationality, FPL. Who knew.
I love the fact that Stoker would walk through cemeteries to find character names.
It was in Poland, Hungary, Silesia, Moravia, Austria, and Lorraine, that the dead made this good cheer. We never heard a word of vampires in London, nor even at Paris. I confess that in both these cities there were stock-jobbers, brokers, and men of business, who sucked the blood of the people in broad daylight; but they were not dead, though corrupted. These true suckers lived not in cemeteries, but in very agreeable palaces………
Voltaire 1772
nobody mention patreon
PPS – My team is treading water, acceptable green arrow, 8 weeks in the 200 to 300K zone, yawn. Still hold TC FH & WC2, mwah ha ha haaaa.Back to the bat cave.
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