Hi, I’m Darius Contractor, this is my blog, and this is my post attempting to tell you why I am blogging.

First, a little history.  I’m 29, graduated Stanford with a Computer Science degree in 2002, and worked for two websites, Tickle.com and Bebo.com.  I learned a bunch about social networking, how to run a web business and how to get people to click on things.  At Bebo, I became a manager and earned enough to take a break.

My last day was Dec 31st, 2009. I took a 3-month world trip to see friends, did a 1-week Buddhist retreat and now I’m home in San Francisco thinking about the future.

I’ve had so many thoughts about what I need, what the world needs, and what’s newly possible at this time.  If I had to give a few high-level bullets they might be:

• At this point in my career, I don’t need to focus on making money; I’d like to focus on making meaning.
• The best way to make meaning is to bring people happiness.  The deeper and longer-lasting the happiness and the more people you bring it to, the better.
• My past job was understanding complex systems and making simple solutions that work.  I’ve done this in technology and in management.
• I think the biggest block to happiness in the developed world is ourselves.  People not knowing how to focus their energy for the long term happiness of themselves and the people around them.
• I think the world is ripe for change.  More than ever you find:
  • Books looking into how people really work
  • Fresh focus on happiness over productivity
  • Expanding consciousness of other peoples and the environment
  • Growing disillusionment with simplistic and traditional systems of us-vs-them thinking
  • I’ve thought about these issues for years.  I feel that now is the time to really delve into them and see what I can learn and, perhaps, create.

This is some high-level stuff, but that’s the purpose of this blog.  It will help me to clearly lay out my ideas and I hope very much to get your feedback.  I think the resulting understanding and inspiration will be worth the work.

As I write this blog, I will be continuing to research these topics, improve my technology skills and rejuvenate myself.  My hope is that the ideas in this blog and my own abilities will come together within 2010 and result in worthwhile mental architecture, companies and systems for human interaction.

So, dear reader, tell me your thoughts on this post and what you’d like us to talk about next. Comment below or, if you like, email me at blog at-symbol darius . com.