Chapter 4Walking in Shadows Anyone who has read Roger Zelazny's novels in the Amber series may recall the title of this Chapter. Zelazny had his lead character able to move into parallel universes through the mechanism he called "walking in shadows". He would simply start walking. He would envision in his mind small changes in the universe, changes that were in the direction of the one he wanted to get to. Little by little, as he would walk along, the universe would change around him until he was in a very different universe. It has been a along time since I read these books, but there is one aspect of this that has always stuck with me. I have always been questing for more in my life, always looking for something different, never satisfied with the status quo. I would write down different notions of how I would prefer my life to be. If the changes were too dramatic or sudden they would no happen. Some time ago, I began to view it like walking through shadows: I would envision the type of life I wanted to lead, where I wanted to live, what I wanted to do for a living. Then I would look over my current situation and envision something that was not too far off, but in the right direction. Then I would start to make changes in my life to go that way. The basic operating policy is simply keep your mind on the goal, moving little by little in that direction. Did not really program this out step by step, just keep the goal in mind and move a little closer a little at a time. I am not out of the woods yet, but there have been some interesting stories from this. I was wanting to live and work in the country, but not at the much lower wage scales usually present there. I was working for a corporation in the Los Angeles area. Smoggy, industrial, noisy, not anything like what I had in mind. I bought a house 80 mi north up in the mountains, which was in the right environment. Did not like the commute. Walked into my boss Gordon Clune's office, loaned him a copy of the book "The Sovereign Individual" (by James Dale Davidson and Lord Rees Mogg) Figured he might be interested, this is an excellent book that alternates between an excellent dissertation on western history and projections of they believe will occur in the relatively near future. One of the salient points was that a Sovereign Individual could could live in one jurisdiction and work in another, through the use of the internet. From this book, Gordon go the idea I could do a pretty good portion of my job using the phone ant the web, so we worked it out to telecommute 3 days, only come in 2 days a week. This was fine for a while, but then Gordon left to go on a 6 month Sabbatical (He was one of the families selected to participate in Frontier House PBS reality program; Gordon is also person who can but does not neccesarily live life by the established patterns). I suddenly found myself trying to run a small entrepreneurial company which was owned by the parent compant. I was being managed by people that were to a greater or lesser extent competant to manage their sections of tha larger aerospace company, who were however at great odds with my philosphies of running such a small entreprneurial operation catering to a market of four wheel drive enthusiasts. Very different customer that Boing or Lockheed!. However, they were higher than me in the company and I was told to do it their way. I decided right or wrong, I prefferred to make my own mistakes; Ended up leaving that job and starting another business. I talked to a bunch of my friends who were in the same industry, supplying parts for and building vehicles for four wheel drive enthusiasts. Sent out an email to a bunch of people who had inquired about the Klune four wheel drive products. Collected a bunch of ideas. One of these ideas was to design websites for companies in four wheel drive and other motorsports. Another idea that came up was to re-open may old home-high-end-hifi electronics manufacturing business, Lazarus Electronics. Another guy I knew had gotten in with a large wheel manufacturer and was introducing a line of wheels for four wheel drive enthusiasts. I baited hooks and put lines into the water on all of these ideas and several others. Got pretty hungry for a while there waiting for a meal sized fish to bite, had a few snacks on some odds and ends work. Eventually got a good bite on marketing the wheels. Started out by designing a brochure and connecting up with a bunch of magazine editors to get some press on this new line of wheels. Developed a website on them. Placed some adds. This one was internet based in that the main brochure was on the web, we could advertise and get links in and such to market the business, we contracted with a few companies to actually supply the product. We marketed, sold, engineered the systems. Our subcontractors/vendors actually built the systems and delivered them. We would then support the customers technically and otherwise. It all could be done from anywhere there was a phone line and wideband internet connection. Limited to the USA at this point, as telephone bills from abroad would stack up too much. I imagine that in the relatively near future communications will be such that we could live in New Zealand and run this business. The next problem I have begun to run into is I am just kind of getting bored with the business, I just want to travel, play guitar, study things, and continue with further pursuits in Scientology. I am enjoying this writing, maybe if enough people want to read this stuff...
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