If the Bay Area is the high altar of enterprise, then San Francisco must be the tabernacle. Other people's brilliance, however, is a bit overwhelming. If you're not carrying a cute idea to a mid-afternoon angel investor confab over drizzled sashimi at The Ritz Carlton this town can make you feel a little menopausal in the new idea department.
My top lip sweats and my heart pulses unevenly when someone randomly shares their polished elevator pitch to solve a problem I didn't know I otherwise had. One man's ingenuity is clearly another man's panic attack. The precise sensation is not, "I wish I'd thought of that" but rather that I start scanning the room wildly for my billion dollar idea. Corduroy ties, waterproof books, something, anything.
I admire rather than resent the multi-layered success of these Red Bull'd explorers shunting humanity forward. Original thought is very uncommon and must be wed like an arranged marriage to effort's relentless monotony, while also be willing to bare all on a night out with Lady Luck. This operation is not for the purest of souls. Because for every entrepreneur living the dream, there's a thousand middle-aged dreamers living in their parents' spare room with a collection of half built prototypes rocking themselves to sleep with a mantra of righteousness.
There's an argument that our communal willingness to embrace new ways of doing things is fighting a losing battle against the rising tide of entrenched beliefs that affects every society's aging identity. However, oxymoronically California's New World, Wild West mentality is itself ingrained as the way things here should be done. Thus proving that San Francisco's greatest invention is that the reinvention of our very selves is championed as the advantage and not the failure it is seen as to the arm folding nay-sayers living in the Old World of our distant past.
With a Perspective, I'm Lewis Heathcote.