Devote time to creating meaning in your life, something that you dedicate your default free time to. When you find out what you're driven by (hint: it's not a job), you'll wake up each day with a heightened sense of awareness and excitement.
Highly recommended book to read: Life on Purpose, Brad Swift
We list all TEDx events at http://www.ted.com/pages/view?id=348
But I see what you mean about auto-notification. If you could sign up with an account for TED.com, input your current location, and automatically receive updates from nearby TEDx events, would you use it?
I have a friend who spoke at an event in Croatia. Also, I think I discovered it even prior to that through some video or another that someone in my network shared.
Maintaining 400 projects is impractical, but it is possible to create 400 micro-businesses that don't need to be taken care of.
For example, you can create a website, write 10 high-value blog articles and make a landing page for a product you want to sell that is related to the articles. (This costs <$10) You have to put in the initial hours to tweak the content, maximize conversions and get good SEO, but after a certain point you can just let go.
Of course, you will get nowhere near the revenue you can get if you put in the hours to actually build the business. But if the purpose of the site is to maintain a certain level of income (like a lifestyle business) and grow no more, then this is definitely feasible.
Jeremy Schoemaker (online marketer) uses exactly this approach. 1) Find a niche, 2) create a product to help people in that niche, 3) create a system that will stay intact even if you don't touch it for a year.
http://www.igorinternational.com/process/igor-naming-guide.p...