I can’t help but noticing that the housing situation here in Seattle seems much better than in San Francisco. Is it “cheap”? No, that’s a myth. But it seems people have a relatively easy time finding something affordable, getting into a place that allows pets, and making a home without insane roommate situations.

This suggests an entirely different role for all people in the “socializing” professions – teachers, therapists, managers – that they will be stripped of their charge to enforce rules and extract specific behaviors from people. Instead they will be equal co-creators building environments that others can build in.

…is not an accurate description of the event happening downstairs in my house as I write. A group from Southern California comes up about three times a year for live artist modeling. This time the theme is pirates – timely. No one is actually naked, though there’s thigh and cleavage in abundance. This time the crowd is small and quiet. No photos allowed and I can’t draw.

For nearly ten years, my life revolved around my two cats, Marmalade and Luna. Then they were both gone. I decided to make animals my job. Like a good, little academic achiever, I considered a graduate program, pursuing the Animals and Public Policy master’s degree at Tufts. When I perused the list of graduates’ achievements, I saw the kinds of jobs that I knew would never pay enough to allow me to cover the student loans I’d have to take out (on top of the ones I was already paying.)

It is only in hindsight that I realized my good fortune in stumbling onto a path of “Profitable Adventures,” an education in Animals in Society beyond what I could have planned and richer, I believe, than a year of classroom learning could have supplied. My accidental curriculum:

• working on technology, PR, and communications for a big-city SPCA
• developing business for a pet acupuncture clinic
• editing for one national leader in the humane movement and interviewing another
• writing original articles and blog posts
• caring for dozens of dogs as cats as a shelter volunteer
• making friends and allies promoting the No Kill, rescue, pet hospice, pet loss awareness
• having my journey profiled in a national magazine
• having my dog featured on the Website of a major newspaper

Where I would have been after a one-year master’s program: $50K in additional debt. Gross revenues from this alternative course of learning: over $120,000.

My goal for the next phase – figuring out how to create profitable adventures that become passive income sources as well, gifts that keep on giving.

I returned home from my morning cafe break to a near-daily spectacle: a group of tourists gawking at my house. All wearing shorts, apparently under the common, mistaken impression that they would find California weather in San Francisco, they stood at the edge of Alamo Square Park, pointing. As usual, they looked surprised to see someone letting herself in.

(No, I don’t own it.)