Reading Po Bronson's The Nudist on the Late Shift. The title reveals an awareness of marketing, but the book is actually about people in the computer industry, and what drives them. Bronson's good at conveying what Silicon Valley feels like, and why people are excited to be there. His skills in this area are so good that, for a moment, I considered moving to Silicon Valley and trying to find some venture capitalists.

Apparently that's what people do: they hatch a great new software idea, and move to Silicon Valley to find wealthy, adventurous people to bankroll them. So, for a brief moment, that's what I wanted to do, except my idea was to get rid of the middle man (the great new software idea) and just get the funding.

The book starts with this:

By car, by plane, they come. They just show up. They've given up their lives elsewhere to come here. They come for the tremendous opportunity, believing that in no other place in the world right now can one person accomplish so much with talent, initiative, and a good idea.

Reading this so soon after being in Sydney makes me wonder where I should be living. What I really want to do is write: songs, stories, jokes. What I've already done a lot of is travelling, and wandering, and moving house. I've done a lot of all that stuff. Always looking for greener mirages, for somewhere better, for something else.

For the first time in my life, I'm starting to think that the best place to get some writing done is where I am right now: at home, in Fitzroy, surrounded by a pile of books, with a guitar just nearby, and with a Melbourne sky outside threatening a long winter.

I've never felt this before. It's a profoundly weird feeling.