goodness

damn.

when I got to seattle, I had no idea how long I would be here, nor did I even think about worrying about it. I came here to live and enjoy myself, and to me, that entails a few basic things, beyond the obvious necessities: spending time with people I enjoy being around; being functionally important in whatever it is I “do” (for money); having no restraints on my ability to be a geek…

actually, hold on a sec, bit of background… my decision to come to seattle was made about two days before I got here. I was in new york at the time, and things were falling apart… I was staying with a friend trying to find a job, and not succeeding. when my last, best hope for a job fell through (these two dudes at this big internet media company really wanted to hire me, but they couldn’t ’cause the boss hired a friend of a friend… (who quickly was let go, which I learned when I received a message at the airport terminal to call the company, as they were trying to reach me, and my buddy called the airport to try to catch me before I blew town… turns out they wanted me to come work for them… alas, my luggage was already checked, plus I was … well, back to the exterior of this double parenthetical sidenote…)), I decided to accept blackmagic‘s offer. We’d known each other online for about a year, and had become pretty close. I was still surprised and extremely happy when he offered to help me get set up in seattle… so, since I totally screwed up my attempt at nyc, and having little other recourse, I was whooshed away to seattle on a jet airplane :) ooo boy :) he totally put me up in his phat-ass condo until I found a job and an apartment… but I mean… much more than just like… a place to crash. he genuinely wanted to help me… to see me succeed. thing is, I was fully underutilized in bradenton, florida… and that’s just a damn shame… we both saw that as really sucking, so it’s just totally kickass that I could put down roots in a town like seattle with his help…

initially the geeking was done at blackmagic’s, since that’s where I was, and he happened to have an extra mac laying around… after having just spent a year with each other building online communities on IRC, it was really cool to be able to sit online in the same physical space … still is cool, as a matter of fact… *glances to his left* :)

… but soon after, I moved into an apartment with a roommate, and I was able to afford a g4… sure, not brand new, but hey… it was the first computer I bought since the ol’ performa 550 back in ’94 or ’95… the g4 is a badass box with nearly a gig of ram and 120 gigs of storage, and two monitors, but I digress… well no, I don’t, since that’s the point. I was finally able to stock up on enough stuff to consider myself a card carrying geek (as opposed to just playing one on tv….)

anyway, my ability to have hardware combined with the nature of seattle in general allowed me to really feel totally fulfilled in the geek department…

finding good people turned out to be pretty easy too… blackmagic introduced me to the city, and also to many of his friends whom I now proudly consider my friends as well… I mean, what can I say… there’s just a lot of super cool people around here… I don’t know if it’s the university influence, or just the “big city” thing in general… I certainly didn’t feel anything like this about nyc… it seems as though the percentage of young people is very high around here, and that is good. Honestly, I am perfectly happy / thrilled about my current social situation, more so than I think I’ve ever been… which is one of the things that will be hard about leaving.

mid september, I’m off to the british virgin islands, to live and work. this is the last piece of the puzzle… the “being functionally important” part… quite possibly the most important part, at least according to ol’ Maslow… of the approximately one year that I’ve been in seattle, about 7 months were spent performing a mind-numbingly stupid job for an even stupider company, and I was (am?) quite bitter about that… just a flat-out waste of time. When that finally turned sour, I really wanted to find something else where I could actually make a difference. I want to think, not just perform repetitive operations. I want to do something that *requires* intelligence, not something that’s simply aided by it… so imagine my delight when just such an opportunity turned up right under my nose… good ol’ rob and his crazy ideas ;) he’d been working on it full time for quite a while… I got in rather late, but at a time when he really needed the help. my involvement started by me expressing interest in helping him with some wireless (802.11b) network testing… since, ya know… I’m a geek and all, and networking is cool, right? I had a ball with it, and it wasn’t long before I was working for Islandless full time… which is what I’m doing now, and loving it. It is *fully* satisfying work, even in these somewhat preliminary stages… I’m required to learn about new stuff in order to do my job… the amount of things I’ve learned in the past month makes me feel like I’m really using my time in a worthwhile fashion, and of course the knowledge is being applied to a real world problem, for our own benefit. but it’s not even just performing some list of varying tasks… it’s helping decide what needs to be done and assisting in the orchestration of the whole thing… it’s really quite a lot of stuff, and I’m constantly amazed at rob’s ability to just bust it out and keep on truckin’. that’s sorta been my approach as well… I feel like I’m really expanding my horizons… I could be happy only applying knowledge I currently have, but I think it’s more fun to persue understanding… “learning”, I guess they call it ;)

all in all, everything has finally come together. I’m a solid geek with great friends in a great town with a great job…. I totally feel like I’m blossoming or something… I know, sounds corny, but I just feel really alive… so why am I so excited about uprooting myself again? heh, I don’t know, but I am :) I’ve got a feeling that I’ll carry all this goodness with me…

in the mean time, I’m going to try to spend more time generally hanging out with people. there’s a lot of super hip folks that I hear a bunch of great stories about, and see once in a while, but certainly not as much as I’d like to…

for now, though, sleep…