If only the world worked the way I thought it did

It's been a while since this has happened but earlier today someone asked after my "two brothers" by which she meant my sons. I only have one brother and context indicates she couldn't have meant him at all.

She guessed my age as thirty. This is probably a fairly honest opinion. It's not like she knows me socially and has reason to try to butter me up.

There was also a random encounter in recent weeks where someone far too young for me randomly told me I'm beautiful. I have no idea why.

So my firsthand experience gives me reason to believe I'm doing something right and something far better than average on a shoestring budget. 

I have no idea how to translate that to being taken seriously online where I don't post selfies for a variety of reasons including the fact that I no longer can take selfies I like.

Prince was a legendary performer and died at the age of 57. I've read that he suffered chronic pain and his Wikipedia page describes multiple weeks of medical drama preceding his death and the description fits with someone suffering chronic pain and trying desperately to manage it and failing.

Kim Kardashian and others in the public eye use social media to make people feel like they have a personal relationship to these big names and like they can look to them as role models but you really can't.

Living right doesn't pay the bills. Knowing how to convincingly look successful by some bizarre metric of success is worth scads of money.

I adored Prince and his music. I wish he could have had something better for himself while being a legendary musician.

I loathe Kim Kardashian and wish she would do something -- anything -- other than pretend she's a role model while lining her pockets from sweat shops hiring child labor and probably making stolen designs from what I have read.

The world has lost its mind and nothing I understood about how things are supposed to work actually works like that.

We know the world has lost its mind because around a year ago, Trump said on film the election was rigged and he's still POTUS.

If this were Law and Order, he would have been removed the next day at the latest. But it's not a fictional setting where the system actually works.

It's reality and it jumped the shark a long time ago. And there seems to be no means to fix it.

So I have absolutely no idea how to earn a living. Being the real deal seems to be entirely irrelevant to making money in the world today.