If At First You Don't

Sometimes I Mistake This For A Universe That Cares.

The Universe Is Probably Littered With The One-planet Graves Of Cultures Which Made The Sensible Economic Decision That There's No Good Reason To Go Into Space-each Discovered, Studied, And Remembered By The Ones Who Made The Irrational Decision.

I Used To Work At Nasa In Virginia. It Was Nothing Glamorous; I Was Just Tasked With Making Code Compile For Obscure Projects, And I Wasn't Very Good At It. Now I Spend Most Of My Time Drawing Pictures And Looking At Funny Things On The Internet, Which In Retrospect Is Largely What I Did At My Old Job, Too.

Take Wrong Turns. Talk To Strangers. Open Unmarked Doors. And If You See A Group Of People In A Field, Go Find Out What They Are Doing. Do Things Without Always Knowing How They'll Turn Out.

It's Tempting To Just Write A Comic Called 'everyone Mail Randall Munroe Twenty Bucks' - Maybe It Would Work, And I Could Just Close Down The 'xkcd' Store And Sit On A Beach And Draw Pictures And Make Snarky Reddit Posts For The Rest Of My Life.