This might be the final post on aLBoP.  I don’t want it to be.  I haven’t even finished the basic intro stuff, I haven’t done half the Type Heroes, and I have so many entire new series of posts waiting to be unveiled, which I haven’t even gotten to touch yet!  But since I already know all this stuff, what’s the point in sharing it if no one really wants to hear it, use it, and go forward and benefit from it?  If you’re not willing to take action to use what I give you, then what on earth am I doing?
 
Hundreds of emails, hundreds of comments, thousands of repins and hundreds of thousands of site views… but not $1 in aLBoP donations.  Of the hundreds of people who have left wonderful comments, I have an awfully hard time believing not one of them could spare $1 for a website they claim to love.  It makes me so happy to receive your sweet comments and emails, and I’ve felt so terrible for not yet getting back to most of you, but it’s been hard to prioritize it when not one of you has been willing to put action behind your words.  It makes me feel used, and it certainly makes me feel like very few of you, if any, are really willing to take action to apply anything I share.  If you can’t take the simple action of showing even a measly sprinkling of love for aLBoP, then what clearer message do I need?  And if you can’t or won’t take the simple action of showing genuine gratitude and support by taking advantage of a straightforward, fun, rewards-based, simple-as-paypal donation system, then how can I possibly expect you to take the far more complex and painful action of applying the principles of cognitive psychology in your lives?
 

I really appreciate the people who bought $50 Personalized Typings that included the $25 donation as part of the package, but I don’t recall a single one getting sold before the other price tiers were sold out.  My INFJ and I have been working out a new way of making Personalized Typings much faster and easier for us to produce while further increasing the quality for you, and we were really excited to roll it out, but then we wondered why we should bother.  If no one is willing to take any action, then does it really help to give them a detailed description of their own personal cognition as it applies to their own personal struggles and questions?  I’ve been looking at this really cool website, Patreon, that I was thinking would be perfect for helping aLBoP continue and even grow!  But then I remembered, if you guys won’t even donate one dollar as a little sprinkling of love for aLBoP, then you certainly wouldn’t lift a finger for something as normal as Patreon.
 
If aLBoP isn’t being of any use to you, then I have other people and other endeavors that could use my time and attention.  You guys know I’m not doing this for money.  I would be pretty imbecilic if I were.  And I’m not doing it because it’s “what I love” either.  Yes, I love writing about human potential (it’s my Type Specialization, after all), but I love doing a lot of things.  I could have happily gone into interior, industrial or graphic design, film or teaching (all of which pay *way* more than this does, even at entry levels) or I would have been happy to just become a mom, which you really shouldn’t do when you can’t afford groceries.  I’m a smart, tough cookie; I could have found happiness and success doing pretty much anything.
 
But I believed people could change.  I believed that if you gave willing people the right tools, they could change themselves, unlimit their own potential, change their culture and in turn be able to change the world.  And I had the tools, and I’ve seen them work.  I thought that was worth my sacrifice.  Helping people become heroes seemed like a pretty worthy cause to me.
 
But that was back when I thought people took action, that at least when it came to something that could make them more happy and effective than they’d ever been in their lives, maybe—just maybe—they’d put their money where their mouths were.  aLBoP had its first little birthday in April, and that was when we started to realize just how much it didn’t seem to be working.  No one had shown any inclination to take any action.  Words are cheap, and sweet comments hurt doubly when I feel like you didn’t really mean them, like you were just being nice but didn’t really care enough to do anything.  But my INFJ cheered me up, we reassessed our plans, and worked on ways to find those of you who might be a cut above the norm, because we knew you were there.  And part of me still hopes you are.
 
The INTP Alchemist has been waiting for months to be posted.  My INFJ’s awesome Avengers gif has been sitting on his computer, happily looping over and over, waiting for the post that I planned out ages ago, complete with its awesome vid and music.  The science and documentation of Facial Typing makes me want to just throw it all at you right now, in all its glory and predictive exactness…but then, why?  All of these things that I love and care about so much have had to be less and less of a priority.  I thought I was being able to help you, but I can’t help you if you aren’t willing to take action and apply any of it.
 
Over and over, people ask what books they can read to find more information about Type Specializations, The Four Types of Information, Cognition Steps, Paradoxitype, and so on.  The answer?  None.  I’m giving you things that you can’t find anywhere else.  I’m clearing up the confusion caused by people who mistake behaviorism for cognition, who mistake social inclination for introversion or extraversion, and who snidely imply that some types are smarter, more practical, or more useful than others.  I’ve never charged any sort of premium admission fee for this information, and if I do continue aLBoP, all this information will continue to be free.  It’s not about money or even donations; it’s about your loud and clear message that you are not willing to take action.
 
If you prefer to show your support for aLBoP by sending in a video of you doing a happy dance rather than sending in a donation, then at least that shows me that you’re willing to take initiative and actually take action!  I just want you guys to care, because if not, then don’t you agree that I should pack up and move along?  Caring isn’t easy.  Anyone can claim to care, and it costs them no effort at all.  But when it comes to taking action, to showing how much you care by doing something about it, that’s when I see how much you really care.  Not even a single sprinkling of love for aLBoP?  Message received.
 
I’m aware that trying to get people to improve their lives from the inside is a fairly thankless job (it certainly has been for the last 7 years –> understatement) and I’m okay with that.  But if aLBoP is not being of use to any of you, then it’s simply poor prioritizing for me to keep it up.  I still believe there are people out there who want this stuff.  Who are willing and excited to become something more than our crap-bag culture would imply they could be; who want the truth even when it hurts; who will actually do something.  I’ve met some of them, though they’re few and far-between, so I know they exist.
 
And speaking of culture, I really don’t blame you guys for not taking action.  Well, I don’t blame you much.  This culture trains us to be passive and listen and do what we’re told, and never take initiative on our own.  That’s a big part of what my INFJ talked about in the Scientific Method videos that almost no one even clicked on.  (Do you need any more proof that the Scientific Method is dead?)  Most modern cultures train people to sit still and wait for the mysterious “someone else” to take action.  But no one is going to apply this information to your life for you.  The fact that not one of you has taken action to donate at all, the fact that you either don’t care at all, or don’t care enough to not depend on Mr. Someone Else to do it instead of you, shows that you’re not prepared to take action to apply this information to yourselves either.
 
I have my fingers crossed that there are enough of you who will go, “Oops!”  Who had no idea you were falling into the culture’s trap of waiting for Someone Else to show love for aLBoP, and who really didn’t mean any harm.  If even a few of you are like that, then I’ll adapt everything else to those few.  There’s just sooooo much more I wanted to say!  I hadn’t even finished the basic beginning stuff.  I really loved connecting with so many of you.  I just want that to have been real.
 
I know all of you can be so great, so awesome and heroic and amazing!  I know you have so frickin’ much potential in you!  And I know that not everyone is going to be willing to act on that, but I just didn’t think it was going to be nobody at all.  At the moment, it’s really hard to believe that any of you are ever going to do anything, so why should I keep going?  I get so excited when you guys get excited!  Every sincere comment means so much to me!  But now I wonder if any of it was more than just comments, just easy words that didn’t cost you anything at all.  I wish I could share everything with you guys.  I wish I had an audience who was ready.  Part of me still hopes I do.
 

 

If it turns out that some of you come forward and prove me wrong, then I kinda feel guilty for making you feel sorry.  But then, you really should be sorry.  This has really sucked, these past few months.  I used to love it when you guys would tell me you’re waiting for more, but recently it’s just made me sad because not one of you has shown any willingness whatsoever to do a single thing to make more posts possible.  It was all gonna be so much fun.  We were gonna be friends.  You guys ask such great questions, I get so excited to answer them, but will it even make any difference in your lives if I do?  I was excited to explain more, to clarify more, and I’ll deal with mean people all day long if it means I have friends I can help.  I know you can do it, I know you can apply all of aLBoP and everything I’m still waiting to write, there’s so much I know you can be!  And that’s the greatest tragedy of all.
 
~Calise

Update 12:00 pm: A good friend pointed out to me that some people may never have seen the aLBoP donation page or even known that the help was needed.  If this is the case for you, I’m sorry if I didn’t make the link accessible or obvious enough.  Honestly I thought it would bother people if it was even there, because there were derogatory comments before about the idea of our even having a donation system.  In my attempt to make it as unobtrusive as possible, I may have made it harder to help.

Here is the “Support aLBoP” page, usually nestled under the “Get More aLBoP!” tab.

Update 12:15 pm: And as always, it’s the sweetest people who fear the most that I’m displeased with them.  Thank you to everyone who has responded already, you don’t even know how much you’ve lifted me up with all the wonderful things you’ve said.  I hoped you guys were out there, and I know that good people are almost always the quietest online, but I seriously was not expecting that you guys could make me feel this much better this quickly :’)  That’s not to say that the sense of entitlement has not been a real problem, but if you’re sad wondering if I was talking about you, then probably I wasn’t 😉  Thank you thank you thank you, you guys rock so much!

Oh, and you guys don’t have to donate in order to show that you care!  If you’re not in a financial place where you can do that, I don’t want you to hurt yourself in order to show you care about us and aLBoP!  Action doesn’t have to be money.  Just seeing that you want to act on how much you care makes all the difference!

Update 9/5/14:  Here’s a follow-up post 🙂