UPDATE: Tony Wright posted his slides to SlideShare.

So what’s been happening over the last couple days….

First, last night’s STS presentation was stellar. Two great speakers – Chris Hopf and Tony Wright – gave two great presentations, Chris on the Freemium business model, and Tony on profit and conversion metrics. Chris has already posted his Freemium presentation slides up on his blog, and I suspect that, based on the frequency of Tony’s blog posts on his personal blog at http://tonywright.com, it may be a while before you see his slides The STS wiki will probably have links to video before too long, so keep checking there.

Next: kickball. Tonight was the first playoff game for PPA’s summer kickball league, and unfortunately….we had to forfeit, for lack of female players. We think they got scared away by the huge rainstorms that occurred right before the match. Massive bummer, but stuff happens. We ended up playing an exhibition match against the Steve Pool Sluggers, and had fun, tying 7-7 after seven innings. Overall I had a great time this season. My teammates were fun and competitive, and I’ll look forward to next year if I’m still with PPA.

Third: project work is progressing nicely. I’m doing some new stuff with LINQ and Expression Trees which is bearing immediate fruit. I would have spent some time tonight programming, but for….

Fourth: personal. Another down day, thinking of things that could have been; lost opportunities; missing elements in my life, etc. etc. ad nauseum. By the end of the workday, after an unanticipated surprise, I really did feel like throwing up my hands, wrapping up the entire day and returning it to sender. What I’d like to do is go back in time a couple months and rewrite history according to my needs and desires; of course that’s impossible. We have to take life as it happens, not as we wish it would have happened. But I’m sort of wondering when I’ll see the light at the end of the tunnel. As they say, every light lately has turned out to be an oncoming train.

Careful readers will suspect, and rightly so, that most of what I’m going through right now is self-created, but knowing that you put the rake down in the yard doesn’t make your nose feel any better when you end up stepping on it. Not the first time, nor the tenth time. Nor (god forbid) the hundredth time. Frankly I just want all the rakes to go away. I’m continually considering, and constantly (thus far) rejecting, making big changes in my life – personal, professional, you name it – to, in effect, force changes where none seem to be organically occurring. A good friend has counseled me that “the grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence.”. That could be true, but remember, it’s a relative formulation. And, in truth, the bright emerald green you see just over the white picket fence could truly be the most earth-shattering green lawn you’ve ever experienced.

You just never know.

So? You wonder about direction, solutions, probable tangents on the road to re-acquiring health and/or a healthy outlook, and I just don’t know. Burying myself in work – both day job and side projects – seems to be the most likely option; burying myself in an exercise program – to, in effect, try to become the Fittest Geek in Seattle – is another. My initial 30-day program is over next week, and I think I’ll pick up another 30-day program immediately. Re-invigorating myself with a serious round of tech/networking participation is a third option. Unfortunately, none of those things are my first choice; my first choice is now and forever blocked to me, so items 2-infinity will have to serve as pale replacements of the original need.

More to come later, as the inspiration strikes…

Imagine a one-eyed man playing kickball. Pretty f***ing difficult – hard to kick the ball coming at you, because you can’t tell how far away it is, and right next to impossible to catch the ball flying at you. That second eye gives you the gift of perspective – to be able to see how close or far away things are, to be able put them in their proper relation to each other.

When we lack perspective, things are too TOO. Too important, too close, too critical, too, … whatever. We get hyped up, aroused, overstimulated, overemotional. Time and distance help to realign things, but during those first close moments, everything is topsy-turvy, turbulent, and theatrical. Things become elegant and impractical, like fine china. Time gets distorted; mere seconds seem like hours while they occur, but looking back entire days go by without much getting done.

The key to kickball, if I may be allowed to pontificate for a second, after having attended my first kickball scrimmage since the 1980’s, is perspective. And, pontificating further, one of the keys to living your life in the best way possible is also having perspective. I’m not saying don’t dive off the cliff blindfolded every now and then. I’m saying that keeping perspective allows you to choose the right cliff

Thoughts?