I was re-reading posts I wrote from the past few weeks, and I had a follow-up thought to the Pit of Bezos. Specifically these bits:

Everyone’s here for one last score, a monument to their own greatness, a story that’s the capstone of their careers about how they turned this place around.

Nobody can actually articulate what this monument is or what the path to success is on it.

I want my own monument. Except I don’t know what that is either.

I suppose I have built monuments. I suppose Starbase Zebra is a monument to the next chapter, which is undefined. Or that it’s a weigh-station on the way to the next chapter, from the previous chapter in my non-working life.

I had a vision of the Future from where I came from before. I could still make it, but do I really want to? It could be something. Or it could be nothing. But in order for it to be something, I think it would have to be big and commercial, in a way that I think would end up being a mess. It’s a path that I’m not sure that I want to go down.

I built a monument back there. You could have called it the capstone of a career. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough because I fixed the software, but the institution rotted underneath. Eternal September, but with personality disorders. You only need one to slip through.