Why I Choose To Delude Myself

I’ve opted, as you’ve probably noticed, to delude myself.

Even worse, I’m trying to convert the delusions into income.

How else can you explain this?

Or this?

In the works is perhaps the greatest self-deception yet, a tribute to Syracuse, New York.

But why?

A recent visit to Nashville reminded me about the importance of the delusional, even if all they have to offer at the beginning are just silly thoughts.

Let’s rewind the clock to 1990.

In that year, the modest metro area in Middle Tennessee had just over one million residents. By all objective measures, it was just another dot on just another river (the Cumberland). In fact, in that same Census, another modest metro area on another river (the Genesee) claimed essentially the same exact numbers—a certain Rochester, New York.

Neither town had major professional sports, though both boasted Triple A baseball teams.

The key difference, however, was that one was full of delusional people, the types who thought a landlocked village in the middle of nowhere could blossom.

The other was full of the cautious types, content with their burg and even more happy to ridicule big thinkers, particularly the ones who failed.

Three and a half decades later, delusional Nashvillians can boast the following:

• A metro area of 2.1 million and counting.
• An NFL team.
• An NHL team.
• An MLS team.
• Rumors of an expansion MLB team.
• A new football stadium vying to host the Super Bowl.
• Something like 80 new residents per day.
• The presence of tech companies like Asurion, Amazon, Cisco, Google, Oracle, PwC, and Toast.

Meanwhile, cautious Rochesterians can boast the following:

• A metro area of just over one million.
• A Triple A baseball team.

If I were grooming the next generation, I would send them to learn from the crazy people.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to delude myself and believe that Upstate New York can change, one blog post** at a time.

(**Note: Capital is far more effective than blog posts in effecting change.)