I feel like I’ve been on fast-forward all day, and I’ve got way too much energy, too many todo items, too exciting of plans to make to go to sleep. Today, running around with a bottomless list of tasks is a blessing.

I need a new gig. I love being independent and working only under my own whip, and I love turing tricks for multiple clients, and I love the clients that I’ve found. But I can’t take pride or joy in contracting except as a means to an end, and that isn’t enough.

It’s been on my mind from a few people’s questions, and from getting hit up for help this weekend on a class I taught at Olin, and hearing about everything that’s been going on there. I gave up full-time teaching, which I loved, for contracting so I would have time for my own projects. And it’s worked, but not enough.

For years, I’ve wanted to start a learning center, or community center, or commune, or youth hostel (the idea keeps morphing) so much it hurts, but I can’t support myself on it and I can’t make significantly more progress unless I can dedicate myself to it. I do have a new money-making stepping stone idea toward it (I think I can make a kind of Neal Stevenson-style Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer), but I’ll say more on that if it pans out.

I am close to having a project– a travelers community site– advanced enough that I’m pretty sure it could support someone full-time just traveling and working on it and promoting it… but I’m back to never wanting to leave our Cambridgian fairyland. Not permanently, that is. Anyone want to be a professional vagabond?