Shaena

Shaena has become an NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) practitioner. She studied hard for about a year to become certified. No offense, but if Shaena is capable of becoming certified in NLP, that is proof that NLP is not science. She is also a student of necromancy and scrying.

Shaena is the only friend I have in the country of my exile. She is kind to me, she has unexpected leadership qualities, she is not destitute, and I walk her dog sometimes.

Shaena is extremely entrepreneurial in NLP on social media, publishes and distributes training materials, and sells classes that require a minimum of 7 and cap at 10 participants. Participants pay $ 3,750 for a 15-day course. Accommodation and victuals are not included. Results either, but that isn’t mentioned in the promotional material. Shaena is a great networker. Her very first class sold out. I can’t say I wasn’t impressed.

Shaena has also booked a stage in one of the main theaters in the country of my exile’s capital (where we both live, and outside of which I don’t move about a lot). She will do a one-woman show in the summer. I’m invited.

Shaena is well aware of the favorable cash position I’m in. She has been accepting thousands of dollars worth of home-delivered shoes on my behalf that I ordered online (at net-a-porter.com, mostly) but whose delivery I was unable to stay at home for, since just the beginning of this year. Thus, in order of ordering, Victoria Beckham, Michael Kors, Tod’s, Phillip Lim, Jimmy Choo, Gianvito Rossi, Gucci, Burberry, Roger Vivier (4 pairs, after I found the first pair to be so damn comfortable), Manolo Blahnik. I took her to a silly millionaire’s fair late last year (which I only visited to get to talk to a live person at the Tesla booth about my Plaid order), where, at a high-end jeweler’s pop-up, she witnessed me buying off the shelf a Jaeger-Lecoultre Reverso Classic Duetto. If we go out, all expenses are on me. And, of course, I book high-end gigolos that I’m having sex with in the best rooms of expensive hotels following rushed and strictly non-alcoholic dinners in Michelin-star restaurants. These are just the fleeting examples of my affluence Shaena has become privy to.

So it’s only logical, if not inevitable, that Shaena has been trying to sign me up for one of her NLP classes. So far, I’ve been able to resist this assault on (and insult of) my common sense. But she managed to sneak a tiny booklet in my purse recently: NLP for Entrepreneurs. Its cover was so ugly I just had to open it to protect my aesthetic feelings, if not my very eyes. Inside was a questionnaire. In four steps, the questionnaire will determine your “preferred representational system” (a.k.a. “primary rep sys”): Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic, or Auditory-Digital. I love questionnaires and tests as long as they don’t measure performance. The NLP primary rep sys test meets that requirement one hundred percent. I will not go into every step of the questionnaire but just mention the outcome: 25 points in Auditory-Digital, 19 points in Kinesthetic (which I wasn’t aware is a thing in the first place), 18 points in Visual and a mere 8 points in Auditory. Auditory being a lower outlier would seem to be consistent with impaired hearing in my right ear following a stupid heroine-experiment induced accident in my twenties, or my deafness to arguments running counter to what I have predetermined to be the conclusion regardless of reasoning.

I sent Shaena a text with the results. I asked her what she made of them. She texted back, saying, I think you need to see a psychiatrist as a matter of priority. Listing her qualities above, I forgot to mention that Shaena has always been perfectly straightforward with me.

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