I landed in New Orleans
It was my first time visiting in the last 18 months, since I’d moved up and away to the Front Range of Colorado.
My task was singular, to sell a house that I had bought, lived in, then leased out as a rental property since 2018.
It was odd touching down in the city again.
From 2011 to 2020 it was my home, and in many ways it still is.
It was where I landed immediately after college, where I cut my teeth in the ‘real world’ (hardly a real world 🤣), where I lived in every number of crummy shotgun, pool house, or mid 19th century French Colonial (If you ever get the chance to live in one, I recommend it, even though the roach presence will astound you.).
On Thursday we closed, the title company handed me a check, and I promptly walked down the street and deposited it into the bank.
Then, instead of hopping an Uber from Carrolton and St.Charles Avenue, I decided to walk down St.Charles.
I walked past the home of the first girl I dated in the city.
I walked past Audubon Park, where I would spend hours running and biking the pedestrian loop.
I walked past the corner of Napoleon and St.Charles, where the Mardi Gras parades make their first major turn on ‘the route’ and the crowds stand 20 deep on either side for the next 5 miles.
Then, as one does in New Orleans in July, I started to sweat through my shirt.
So I hopped on the streetcar.
We rolled past the first house I lived in in the city, past Lee Circle where my first company’s offices were, through the CBD past my favorite downtown coffeeshop, downriver we went, to Canal Street, where I hopped off near the site of my first New Years party in New Orleans.
The city (and I) were dripping with nostalgia.
I knew I couldn’t live here anymore.
After 10 years I hit the peak of what one could do in a small city, and while there is nowhere on earth like New Orleans, I knew it was time to leave.
Yet there’s something that still lives here, and I imagine it will for the rest of my life.
I walked the familiar streets and bumped into old friends (“Oh, we haven’t seen you in a while! How have you been?”), it was joyous, but in the background, the machinations of Citadel Planning played along.
It became clearer and clearer to me that I would need to integrate the lessons of New Orleans into the building of the Bitcoin Citadel.
I needed to think not only of Water, Food, Energy, and Housing, but also Culture and Legacy (or as I’ve written of them previously, Connection, and Community).
There’s a reason New Orleans has survived over 250 years.
It’s persevered through revolutions (literally), boom times, lean eras, race riots, and multiple Cat. 5 hurricanes.
And still, it remains continuously populated by a set of diverse fanatics and celebrants the world around who know that nowhere on earth is quite like New Orleans.
So as I move forwards in planning my Bitcoin Citadel (or futuristic sovereign glamping/coworking for my Citadel phobic friends and their partners)
I’m left with the valuable lesson that if you are to survive over 250 years, you better know what you stand for, and you better have a culture that irresistibly draws people to you.
You must protect that culture like you protect your soul, and you must think with a much lower time preference to passing trends and fads (as we already do in Bitcoin).
I’m convinced that Bitcoiners love their culture, but I’m also convinced, because of the infighting and the label of ‘toxic maximalists’ that we’re still figuring out everything we stand for.
I don’t have any major takeaways for you this week.
No finance talk, logistics, wind farming or micro-hydro (all of that is coming).
I’d just like you to think about a Citadel that lives for 250 years.
What does it feel like to walk through?
Who do you see?
Where are you headed?
I hope you enjoyed this update! I’m enjoying the process of getting my thoughts down and hope you’re getting excited to build your own Citadel (or are actively in the process.)
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