I suppose this would not be a traditionally proper note in a bottle if I didn't share certain experiences with more customary originators of such messages.  It therefore seems appropriate to mention that I once spent my days aboard a covetable "vessel" of the contemporary media variety (television news). 

Of the circumstances of my "wreck," which occurred many years ago, it is probably enough to say that when I encountered treacherous waters, my inexperience, coupled with some youthful idealism--plus a certain innate bullheadedness--brought me to the shoals.

I now live in a place that, from the standpoint of what our media consider noteworthy "life," could scarcely be more barren.  Yet I have gained many insights here into what actually drives and shapes our lives. 

In fact, what I have learned in this environment does a much better job of explaining my previous world than the "big" news stories and "major" issues I dealt with in that other world do of explaining what goes on here.  For this reason, along with the obvious fact that a lot more people live as I now do than the way I used to, I have learned to acknowledge my new home as the place of greater ultimate significance--i.e, as the Real World.

I have come to understand it as, among other things, a vast archipelago, the overwhelming majority of whose islands have been artificially created by our contemporary media "sea."  And I have come to believe that most of this isolation is reversible, once we make the decision to invest our own experiences and knowledge of the world with some long-absent dignity and worth.