Dear very nice and thoughtful people:
Instead of trying to show off to the cloud like I normally do, today I have a request for your help and earnest advice.
The two books I’m looking at, “The Purpose-Driven Life” and “Who’s Your City” are really making an impression on me.
The first is reminding me what I got kinda burned out a few years ago and forgot: That there are just a few key things that I can do with my life (of which I’m also especially capable, freak that I am) that are really f@#$king important, and a zillion other things I can fritter away my days on to no significant moral/emotional/spiritual/family effect.
It’s a 40-day program, so I’ll keep you posted, but my best guess as to what my Purpose is right now is the ParaTow, the output of a decade of pondering and thought-exerimental near-anguish, because it scaffolds up to the ParaGen, which is the very best I’ve been able to do to figure out how to neuter the oil business and all the horrible evil induced by the concentrations of wealth and power that it induces.
It took the elections of 2000 and 2004 to drive home, near-humiliatingly, that I can’t just relax into “Well, at least USA is still #1” anymore.
And then the Iraq, and now Gaza (relatively microcosmic in scale as it is but still eye-opening all the same) experiences tell me that yes, there is very real, and growing, suffering out there that, to my perspective, essentially flows out of the fact that there’s still a lot of ever-more-valuable oil left in Saudia Arabia, Iraq and Iran. As long as that oil is worth as much as it’s worth now, “competition” for it will become ever more forceful and urgent, and it’s always the poor who are left in the crossfire.
OK. So there’s that.
And then there’s “Who’s Your City,” about how the world economy is concentrating into just a few geographic “mega-regions,” each of which is developing its own specialty. Thematic maps are printed showing the geographic concentrations of not just bulk economic activity, but more specifically-elucidating to my I-think-Purpose, elite scientists and patents issued.
The science and patent maps each have a single spike that tower over all the others and coincide: The San Francisco Bay Area. Wow.
This phenomenon is helped along by “the 20-mile rule”: that venture funders tend to make risky investments in outfits 20 or fewer miles from their houses, so that they can pop in and see how things are going, which is exactly what I’d want to do too. Duh! Of course!
So yeah, it looks like the Bay Area is in my future if I want to give this mission its best possible chance at success. I think I’ve figured out a way to make a small manually-controlled demo of the ParaTow myself with only a little money right here in Seattle, but “moving forward” if I can get someone to bankroll its further development, that someone will probably be within easy driving distance of San Francisco, and therefore so will I have to be.
And that also kinda sucks, because I’ve made some friends here in Seattle, and that takes a while for me, the awkward ingrate that I can be. Also, my only brother lives here, just three blocks away, and I’m going to miss him. He’s really doing well in life, and to be frank, I really benefit from being close to his success and growth.
So anyway…
Who out there has likewise moved to someplace far away for a “mission-oriented” reason? How did you deal with not knowing anyone? How did you deal with being far from your siblings and family? What other advice can you lend me?
Longshot City 
January 15, 2009 at 5:48 am
Of course you know people in the Bay Area! There are lots of good people here. You should totally move here. We’ll hang out. I’ll introduce you to some folks, and it’ll turn out that you know friends of theirs. It’ll be good. You probably don’t remember who I am, because we only met once, but that’s okay! Relax! Enjoy!
January 15, 2009 at 8:12 pm
(Of course I know who you are, Jacques. We both know one of my favorite women of all time.)
January 16, 2009 at 8:01 pm
Seriously, have you considered working with TSI? I know that Patri is interested in things like wave and wind power.
January 16, 2009 at 9:19 pm
Well shoot, maybe. Maybe an early SeaStead could be some kind of port/depot for what’s coming out of these ParaGens (ammonia, refined aluminum, etc).
March 16, 2009 at 12:58 am
What what? Bay Area? 🙂