Haven't been around for a while mainly because I was busy with two big projects. Project #1 was a massive writing job associated with a lot of boring marketing content. I mean, how many times can you write how good a refrigerator or AC repair service a business can be? Apparently I can do it 64 times before my brain melts. Such is the life of a writer. Project #2 was finishing up another Linux class. Pretty happy with that one.

The final project was building a combo program between BASH, PERL, SQL and Python and getting it to run right both in CLI (command line interface) as well as webpage output. We produced a nice little program I call scraper, which is like GREP or AWK on steroids, basically the same idea but doing targeted content search over thousands of files at the same time instead of a singular target and then having recode it each search. Instead, now you get a nifty little menu asking you what's next and you go as many times as you like until done. 

So now, with summer two-thirds of the way over, having completed my Network Admin degree (yay me!) and hardcore into heavy writing, I'm aiming sites on what's next. I have some ideas. I've been researching, learning lessons and watching how NFT projects develop. I have tools now to get started in artwork, and I keep delving deeper into blockchain, but there's still so much to learn. I think I'm at the point where I just need to break a leg and create my first project, as lame as it might be, to learn some practical lessons that I'll never get from the sidelines or textbooks. 

Generally, the first two pieces are in place, with Web 3.0 and blockchain. Both provide an environment with a ready market and a currency exchange for the business side of things. So now it gets into the creative side of what the product should be. Art has always been a behind-the-scenes passion of mine, but I'm also interesting in finding a way to blend in archaeology as well, my other hobby. I would prefer whatever I put together has some kind of bigger scheme educational factor to it versus just the pfp shill floating all over NFT land these days. I mean, there is only so many ways you can make a cartoon bee look really goddam ugly before it becomes just another digital barf bag on the market. 

Of course, NFTs aren't the only possibilities. I've been in the digital income game since the early 2000s when I was using eBay for regular income selling vintage motorcycle parts online. The idea of wide-ranging, even global market appealed to me right away as a digital entrepreneur. Now that I have a few things settled career-wise, and will have a lot more time on my hands coming up soon in the next few years, I'm putting things into place for a number of ideas I have that I can engage in fulltime.

Interestingly, this kind of thinking only appeals to a small subset of my generation (Gen X). Many of those my age and older still seem to have a cultural disposition towards anyone doing anything creative as a second career path. In fact, it's regularly looked down on, as if we're doing something shady. People are expected to have one job, one career path, and don't do anything creative off the beaten path. If you do, you're weird and not accepted socially. I don't make this crap up; I even get it from my relatives my age or older. At this point I don't really give a crap, but for many years I dealt with a lot of friction from those older than me disapproving. Of course, none of them had any problem spending the money I made doing so, and were offended I wouldn't share with the family. Freeloaders. 

For those younger, the above might seem completely dipshit. The fact is, many of them know nothing but working 4 to 5 gigs at a time to make things work and break even. Much of what a I refer to seems completely nonsensical mainly because young people have no choice but to scrap multiple ways to succeed. 

I think for my kids going forward, all I can do is give them advice about what I see and hopefully, if I'm successful, give them some opportunity with some of my projects as well to help them along. I'm just amazed that, even in this day and age, making an honest buck creatively is still considered something people snub their nose at.