If you’ve read my first post, you know that my family lives in Belgium and my girlfriend in Connecticut. I love them very much and it’s tough to be away from them. The silver lining is that with the absence of proximity, I’ve gotten more time to get to know myself. As I wind through the pinhole-alleyways of my mind and soul, I’m discovering and dusting off vestiges of boyhood curiosity, and repurposing the vintage into new goals and aspirations. As a result, I’ve quit my job and started a career (can you call it a career if it’s unpaid?) as a software developer. Why? I enjoy it, and it will allow me to live a more entrepreneurial life. It’s unabashed egoism and hubris that I can have my cake and eat it too. Yet, many people I admire are doing just that. They aren’t evil assholes or narcissistic pricks, just people (smart people) who figured out what they wanted and had the wherewithal and fortitude to seek it with conviction.

That’s what’s been most exciting about these past couple of weeks. In learning about myself, I’m articulating and affirming my convictions and stoking a fire that’s only been a pile of smoldering coals until recently.

“The old rules are crumbling and nobody knows what the new rules are. So make up your own rules. And now go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make good art.”

  • Neil Gaiman (Make Good Art)

There’s sizable gulf between knowing the veracity of that incredibly empowering statement, and doing anything about it. Much of what we consider immutable law is, in fact, only social norm. The rules are a question of culture, and culture changes; we make it change. more so than ever before does the power to generate cultural changes reside with the individual.  We’re entering the 4th Economy – the end of jobs; the age of the entrepreneur.

I’m also seeing a change in the make-up of my relationships. Less granfalloon and more karass.  My conversations are getting deeper and more interesting and I find myself wanting to find ways to bring people I know together to talk and potentially collaborate. Those conversations are invigorating and provide a really helpful contrast and backdrop to the tunnel-vision focus that’s requisite for scaling the programming learning curve. Part of me feels that I’m short-changing myself if I’m not working on coding the entire time, reading books in my downtime etc. The stronger part of me thinks that perspective is crucial and without these conversations or books I’d be out of touch and drowning in minutiae.

That’s all folks.