In Support of Selfishness

I've been spending time that I should be spending helping others and raising money for charity thinking about selfishness instead. Why is it such a maligned trait?

There's an assumption that selfishness negatively effects others, that the opposite of selfishness is doing good for others. But isn't that just the 'others' being selfish and thinking of what's best for them? Stupid others. I digress...

The point of this post is that I've finally realised a long-held ambition – to go part time and be a proper, honest-to-goodness freelancer for two whole days of the working week. This was an act of pure selfishness. I wanted to have my cake and eat it. I wanted to keep my secure, regular wage and also have the freedom to pursue other projects on an ad-hoc basis. I wanted to work from home two days a week and not walk to the office in dreary weather and stay indoors with tea, radio and laptop. And what's so bad about that?

As a freelancer, whether you're a writer, designer, builder or self-employed dog yoga teacher (genuine job), selfishness is your life blood. You have to decide how much you want to earn, how much you want to work, you have to create a website and/or blog focused entirely on your own work and ideas. You must have the desire to win work over your competition and basically be a one-woman promotion machine. And if you don't do any of these things, it will only be yourself who will ultimately suffer.

It's brilliant.

So don't be a naysayer about narcissism, it can be a valuable attribute. But please, don't think my support of self-centeredness extends to 'selfies'; a baffling phenomenon equalled in tediousness only by the endless news stories debating the relative merits of Miley Cyrus. Yawn.

PS - to prove I have a benevolent side, here's a photo of me doing something impressive for charity and that: