Work (shudder)

So with the economy tanking and all, and the investments that allow this slacker lifestyle falling like a prom dress at midnight, I’ve been thinking about work. What would be a worthwhile pastime that would fit my skills and allow a semblance of our current lifestyle? It’s tough to reconcile the need to spend a lot and the desire to be lazy. Work was always enjoyable when I did it, but sleeping till nine or so is really, really habit forming.

Anyway, I don’t want to go back to a 60 hour a week executive gig, with suits and HR and all that happy horseshit, but what else to do? I’m thinking a solar energy consulting/installation thing might make sense. I need to do some research, and the economics were more compelling with oil at $150 a barrel, but I think we’ll be there again soon enough.

I’m not sure if Maine or Florida do it, but there are provisions in many places for selling back excess capacity to the electric utility company, plus tax credits, so it seems like a winning field. iTulip has called the next two bubbles, alternative energy and infrastructure, and I don’t know squat about roads, dams and bridges, but I do know a little about photovoltaic systems, having lived for weeks at a time on two catamarans I owned and sailed from Maine to Florida and the Bahamas. So I guess a little study time is required, and then maybe we give it a go.

Liz and I have looked at houses off the grid in the Florida Keys, primarily on No Name Key and Cooks Island. Both are really wonderful wild areas where water comes from a cistern and electricity from the sun. Cooks was accessible only by boat, through half a foot of water, which would be a challenge, but I think we would have enjoyed it. Obviously, the Keys are a good place for solar, since it’s sunny all the time, and the cistern thing works because of all the rain. No, that’s not contradictory; in the Keys it can rain inches in minutes and then be sunny again.

Anyhoo, we’ve spent some time with solar powered stuff (Harvey the RV has a photovoltaic panel on the roof) and I think I understand the basics. Just need to figure out the business case. Probably worth looking into wind as well. As it stands now, the weak point in the system is storage. Battery technology is getting better, but still sucks. If fuel cell would come down (a lot) in price, storing hydrogen gets interesting.

Work. What a concept. Stay tuned for more on opening a business.