A Map of Possible Futures

I tried to make long complicated decision trees with different subheadings but I found this narrative style to be more useful. It’s a good exercise to see that there are different possibilities and to also imagine how some of them will feel. Let’s face it: The Map Center is probably not gonna make a ton of money. I’m doing it because I think it will be fulfilling more often than it will be obnoxious bullshit. You can optimize a business for growth, for sales, for numbers, but at the end of the day, you have to do what feels good and makes a life worth living. I think I’ll keep adding to this over time. Comments welcome.

Scenario One: Relocate and Thrive

The Providence small business folks find me a small space on the East Side. It’s close to RISD and it’s just the right size, by which I mean it’s just a little too big but I have a new small business roommate who I don’t hate. After a decent Christmas season, I take the month of January to move everything in and by February I’m mostly all put together. Having a roommate means we can watch each others’ registers for a while when the other goes to the bank or makes deliveries which is nice. Sales pick up slightly because I’m closer to students, educators and tourists who hear about The Map Center from all over but it’s still not enough to live off. I hire some part-time employees to take care of the place on weekends and I have reduced hours during the week. I work remotely from the store again doing some boring utilities stuff but I still get to do library talks and chat with customers. I have a slightly better work-life balance and the store pays for my attendance at conferences which still elevates my status in the map making community. I help my friends get paid. I move apartments to get closer to the Map Center and even though my commute is a bit longer, I bought an ebike and I’m closer to things happening in downtown and on the Brown campus where I’m making some more inroads with the very talented geospatial staff that I used to struggle to connect with. My store becomes the de facto headquarters of RIGIS and I have an author night every couple of months. There’s a cat who lives in the store who has an Instagram account run by my part time employee and it has 12x the number of followers as I do. I meet a professor at one of the local colleges and we hit it off, moving in together a year later. Providence isn’t perfect but it’s home and I start to feel more connected to the community not just as a local character and resource but as a friend. Staying involved in the geospatial community makes me feel like I haven’t totally dropped off the face of the earth or given up. One of the kids that came to a Map Center field trip as a high schooler comes back as a college student to be a summer intern. I feel like I’m making a difference.

Scenario Two: Walk

I find a couple of different spaces around Providence although none seem to really work out. The rent is high, the cost of living is high. The math ain’t mathin’ and there’s nothing exciting enough to sign a lease on. I haven’t been able to nail down a remote job, just a few interviews for in person stuff around the region. The economy isn’t great and I’m not really in a position to say no when I get an offer. I’ve been wondering what I’m doing here for ages so maybe it’s time to pack it in. I put up another ad like the one that I answered to start this whole adventure. I call up the Providence Journal. There’s clearly an interest in this kind of business, surely there will be just as many offers now as there were, only now with my elevated status and the work that I’ve put into the place, I look for a retiree who needs a hobby and can afford to drop a few grand to make everything official. I even get an offer from a local cafe owner who wants to capture the chaotic map vibes even though he’s never read a map in his life. He’s a nice guy and it’s almost cool enough to make me want to stick around but the whole point is that it makes the cafe more money but not enough sales to maintain itself. After a few weeks of emails and long phone calls with friends, I give the keys to the new owner. I spend a few weeks getting them set up with the equipment, the logins and the passwords and the names of some of the vendors. They seem like decent people so I leave them the neon sign. Seemed right. I’ve never lived in New York City before- now’s as good a time as any to try it out. I’m glad to be moving before I run out of money but it still feels weird to be starting over again from scratch in what feels like such a short period of time. One day I’ll feel like I have my shit together.
We had a good run, or something like that. I dunno. There was a lot of heartbreak but a lot of good moments too. It wasn’t wasted time, that’s for sure, just a strange chapter of my life. Did it make me a better person? Did I make anything lasting or worthwhile? I did my best and I try to remember that. I don’t have anything in hand to show for all the work, all the loneliness, all the personal failure. I guess it’s a blessing to even get to try. Besides, New York is pretty rad and I get to hang out with some old friends that I’ve reconnected with. The dating scene is better and I move into a little apartment in Flushing of all places. There are a lot of things I didn’t see coming. That’s okay. That’s life.

Scenario Three: Move and Stabilize

The Map Center has been limping along for too long. When do I finally pack it up and get to live my life? Any time I want to, it turns out. I move back to California and get a job at EBMUD in Oakland. I reconnect with friends and help out with the BayGeo board and teach classes periodically at Lake Merritt College. The Map Center stays open on weekends in its current location. I’m still the owner of Middleton Geographics LLC, I just hire some help remotely to do the day to day and a local artist moves in to the space too reduce rent burden since the overhead keeps going up. There’s a good cadre of employees and seasonal interns that make it all work and I finally have a local business partner to manage things. I do most of the paperwork but now I have an accountant. I do some book selection and deals to keep the place stocked and I do some talks. The day to day stuff is handled by other people and I try not to get too tangled up in it. Some months I have to spot the place for rent or when wages exceed revenue and I write it off on my taxes. Sometimes the place runs a surplus and I give the employees a bonus. I don’t make any money at all from it, just enough to pay for a trip to NACIS wherever it is each year. I think some people are disappointed I wasn’t able to make it work and I still get lots of unsolicited business ideas to make more money. I just delete them. Being a GIS Specialist actually makes money and I like being back at Kaiser for my health stuff. It’s sustainable in its own way and I have time for my relationships and my hobbies again. I become a Reefcheck diver and do a talk at Stanford and CSUMB about marine cartography. I say I’ll come back to visit the store regularly but I don’t.

Scenario Four: Grow and Stay

John, the printer and owner of Red Blue Digital, is 75 years old. In 2023 he spent two weeks in the hospital for congestive heart failure and he made an admirable comeback in a shockingly short period of time. But then two years later his priorities began to shift and he started to make decisions to spend more time with his family. In fall of 2025 he hired a part time assistant to help him clean some things up and organize his sprawling printing empire and throughout 2026 he took additional steps to offload the business. I was the principal buyer and I started by buying up a printer in cash, the second with some of my own personal money and the third, after some negotiation, with a small business loan. By that time, John was only coming in a couple of times a week and then mostly just to see his regular customers. As Red Blue Digital waned, Middleton Geographics swelled, both to consume more of the space’s real estate and also to take on regular printing duties.
Of course, John first offloaded the printers most in need of service and the repairs were nearly as expensive as the machine itself. There’s something about old men that makes them think that all purchases accrue value like their home purchases in the 1980s and his subsequent sales required aggressive negotiation to demonstrate what the real value of the equipment was. I took over more of the space and therefore more of the rent and the finances were pretty dicey even as my cash flow improved. Keeping John’s legacy customers happy wasn’t too hard and with a more organized system, a cleaned up website and an automated ordering process, I managed to double his revenue and win back some of his customers that he lost to his cantankerous temper and disorganization. Of course, the costs increased quickly and the profits increased slowly which made things pretty dicey for a while. Between the Map Center and the printing, the businesses actually started to pull some real money by the end of 2026. By then I had a few more friends, a few more GIS freelance gigs and a lifestyle that involved a lot more work and risk than my old consulting jobs and I was still pulling barely half of my old takehome. Of course, finding someone to run a print shop is much easier than finding someone to run a map store but the nice thing about running multiple businesses in the same space is that most of the time you only need one person to work a single register. Printing, framing and laminating pay the bills even if they aren’t what I ever wanted to do with my life. At least they subsidize a successful map store and I still get lovely comments from strangers and warm emails from talented professionals who respect me. I get an ebike and a condo and I move a bit closer to Providence. Now that I know where I’ll be for a while, I can invest a bit in the future and see what’s next.