So in LA I showed up with the usual “I’m gonna be important, put the world at my feet!” attitude, but I went undiscovered, unrecognized and alienated and ended up brooding and scheming over what I would have to do to take everything over and remake it

Then I came to Portland and was like “okay, time to put childish fantasies away and grow up as an embedded, functional part of a broader social mechanism”. And the mechanism presented by Portland in the early 2010s was appealing, I could picture myself living a good life as a cog in that mechanism!

This tumblr was as much as anything an effort to transmute the drive I’d been directing to that, and all my maturing-on-the-early-internet “consume everything, know everything” recreational surfing habits into inconsequential playacting, like “ooh, I’m a sooper sekrit discourse ninja”, and I was basically doing this shit like you would swing a cardboard tube around and take badass swordsman poses in a mirror

But it’s really dawning on me as all the personality change stuff settles that no, by doing that stuff online, in real-life multiplayer, I actually did all that, networked together a scene of rare worthies and built a reputation through it by pointing out to them what was happening, would happen, and how to understand and deal with it

And that now as my country the USA – the most powerful empire in the history of the world, into which I was born and acculturated during a golden age – enters a period of instability and crisis I’m not only the scion of one of the American Century’s low-profile upstart dynasties but apparently one of the smartest humans in the world who took up American history and culture as his primary interest.

That I have fans scattered through every corner and institution of the globe – remember years ago when I used an offsite image hosted with an IP tracker and noticed how many hits I was getting from the Pentagon and Rayburn Building? Lots of finance guys and would-be revolutionary social idea entrepreneurs too, which is how a few years ago I was being approached for advice on the practicalities of founding subcultural retreat enclaves in the first place.

And so far when I express interest in their specialties my readers have been eager and honored to show me around, explain internal dynamics, and generally be my contact on the inside.

And then there’s the thing where all the shortcomings and interpersonal weakness of my personality were just made whole, only apparently this whole time I was compensating for them by developing alternate skills and applying my understanding to multiply value and maximize return on what talents I had, and I still have that

And it’s been like

“Oh! … oh”