Anyway, even though I had a full semester’s worth of micro-economic details thrown my direction, I absorbed very little theoretical knowledge about economics and economic systems. This remained mostly true up until this summer when the election and the sub-prime mortgage crisis collided, resulting in a glut of informative articles and pieces on economics all over the Web.

For a few months, my appetite for economic knowledge was insatiable, and I read everything in sight. I learned a ton about how the world’s economic systems are intertwined in a nasty symphony of paper-thin international promises, speculative deals, and general mismanagement due to greed and sheer ignorance.

Ever since I started selling WordPress themes for a living, I’ve been learning more and more about intelligent system design and, more generally, efficient systems. Economics, politics, and everything in between are essentially just huge systems that have slightly different rules and players, and one rule is true for all systems:

Left unmanaged, inefficiencies and errors will eventually erode a system from within.

Once I came to understand the nuances of system inefficiencies (through building my own), I began seeing them everywhere, in all kinds of different systems. They’re so prevalent, in fact, that I would almost advise you not to look for them, simply because you’re likely to conclude that our country (and most of the world, for that matter) is hopelessly fucked.

On the other hand, you may also go the optimistic route and realize that there are tons of things we should be doing better both as individuals and collectively to protect our economic futures. If everyone were properly educated, then the entire world would’ve cried foul in the late 90s when this sub-prime mortgage thing first got its legs.

Alas, nobody knows a god damn thing, and now here we are—poor, dumb, angry, upside down on mortgages, and hoping that Obama’s presidency is actually going to change our economic outlook for the better.

Sadly, Obama is not an economist, so I’m not exactly bullish on him addressing the bullshit that really deserves the attention of an economically-responsible government. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter what he does or doesn’t know about economics, but it absolutely matters what you know.

Of course, you’re not going back to school to learn this crap, and even if you’ve considered doing so, I’d advise against it. After all, they’re not going to teach you what you really want to know, and frankly, you’d be better off learning anything on your own (self-taught stuff just sticks better, ya know?).

Anyway, I don’t want this to come off like the negative rant that it is, so I’ll try to put a good face on things before you go back to surfing for pr0n and checking out cleavage pics on Facebook.

The bottom line here is that the path to economic reform is education, and fortunately, the Web has emerged as the ultimate place to explore just about every topic under the sun. Actually, some topics are better served than others, and fortunately, economics is really starting to get some excellent coverage.

Without question, the most authoritative, diverse, and interesting place to learn about economics and keep up with financial news is Tip’d, a social media site that is kinda like Digg, except with 99% fewer trolls.

The premise of the site is brutally simple and astonishingly effective—economically savvy users submit links to articles they think are informative and trustworthy, and then the Tip’d community votes on the merit of these articles. If an article cuts the mustard, then it shows up on the Tip’d homepage where it can be viewed by thousands of users who are hungry for good, solid economic information.

Ultimately, Tip’d is really freakin’ simple, but more important, it’s really freakin’ effective. If you spend a couple weeks reading articles you find on the site, I guarantee you’ll come away with not only a better understanding of economics in general, but you’ll also gain a better understanding of your position in the economic scheme of things. This kind of knowledge is extremely empowering, and it’s what savvy people use to make more informed decisions about things like elections, purchases, and what to have for dinner tonight.

For me, they’ve been elusive lately, but I have to figure that’s because I haven’t specifically focused on them. I wrote about Zen-like creative workflows over on Pearsonified, and I truly believe that you can trigger a higher level of productivity by performing simple mental exercises that force your brain into activities that you would otherwise suppress.

Take this very post, for instance. I only sat down to write it because I feel this incredible need to find focus in my life right now, and I’ve watched over the last few weeks as my inability to concentrate has caused my productivity to plummet.

I guess I have a love/hate relationship with the work that I’ve produced of late. I almost feel as though I received more credit in the past for work that was sub-par in so many ways, yet flashier on the outside. These days, though, the bulk of my work is characterized by an understated level of detail that extends well beyond that which can be digested upon a first look.

I haven’t resisted the temptation to produce anything different because I am more proud of my recent offerings than I’ve ever been of anything else I’ve produced to date. That said, it’s always nice to have that “wow” factor attached to something that you push out to market.

On one hand, I desperately want to people to understand why I choose to do things the way I do, but on the other hand, I don’t feel this overwhelming need to justify myself to anyone. It is what it is; I have my reasons; maybe you’ll like it; maybe you won’t.

For whatever reason, I cannot escape the stuffy confines of ubiquitous design—that which can be used by anyone, at any time, for any type of site that utilizes a CMS to handle content. As far as themes go, I hate to make design decisions that will preclude certain types of people from using my frameworks, and as a result, I end up producing what appears to be very minimalist designs.

Once you get under the hood, though, I’d argue that nothing could be further from the truth. But here I am again, shouting into the wind for no one’s benefit other than my own.

I suppose that’s ok in some cases, but it still feels lame nonetheless.

fulfillment

I’ve been depressed and weird lately, and for someone as analytical as I tend to be, it’s really strange because I can’t really explain what’s going on. I feel like I’m ambivalent about everything, and it almost seems to have crippling effects on my work, my personal life, and my general ability to achieve the things that I want.

In March of this year, I ended a 22-month relationship with someone who enriched me in some ways and tore me down in many others. I remember the man I was before I met her, and I certainly understand how I am different now. I think there’s probably a happy medium between the two that I need to find in order to make peace with myself over all the things that have gone wrong over the last couple of years…

When I was kid, I had this unwavering, blind confidence about damn near everything. I was good at things because I believed I was good, and I excelled because I believed that I could tackle every challenge that could be thrown at me.

When I got out of college, I still had this confidence, but it was somewhat throttled by the fact that I was so confused about corporate life, work, making money, and getting by in a non-scholastic realm. Four years later, I realize that I was confused because I was a square peg in a round hole corporate world, and no matter what, I was never going to fit.

In real time, these things are so hard to see, especially for a young person. I admire anyone with the clairvoyance and understanding to grasp that at such a young age, embrace it, and parlay that autonomy into success in their early to mid twenties. It’s remarkable, but in those instances where it does happen, I have to believe that those folks received some pretty sage advice from people who truly understand the path.

I wasn’t lucky enough to have a candid, experienced mentor during that stage of my life, and although I’m basically whining about it now, I hope that some day I will be able to help a young person avoid the pitfalls that I had to endure in my early twenties.

I may never be truly satisfied with my life or my work until I am able to do something like this, but I suppose that is both the ultimate blessing and the curse for people like me—fulfillment is always just one project away.

Lists

Lists are easy for readers to digest, and because of that, most people love ‘em. With that in mind, you oughta start using more lists in your posts! This theme comes equipped with three killer list styles, and your job is simply to choose the one that is best-suited to your particular needs. The first type of list is an unordered list, and it looks like this:

• List item 1
• List item 2
• List item 3
  • Nested list item 1
  • Nested list item 2
• List item 4

The second type of list is an ordered list, and it looks like this:

1. List item 1
2. List item 2
3. List item 3
4. List item 4

The third and final type of list is called a definition list. Although they are less common, they can be useful for presenting meanings, relationships, or simply for clarification. Check it out:

This is a definition list item title

This is the description text that is related to the title above

FamousAgents.com

Helping realtors dominate Google search results and discover the true power of the ultimate communication medium, the Web

Sub-Headlines

Sub-headlines have already been used twice in this post…did you spot them? The first one says “Lists,” and the second one says “Sub-Headlines.” Thanks to the flexibility of our themes, you can create similar headlines without having to do any styling on-the-fly. All you have to do is wrap your headline text in <h3> tags, and BOOM, you’ll get results like you see here.

If you’re using the Rich Visual Text Editor (which I absolutely do not recommend), you need to switch to the HTML viewer and enter your text between <h3> tags. When you’re done, click on the Update button, and you can continue writing your entry.

If you’re using the regular old text-based editor (cheers if you are!), then you could write a line that looks something like this:

<h3>My Headline Rocks!</h3>

and you’ll end up with this after you publish your post:

My Headline Rocks!

Blockquotes

This is one area where my themes have no peers…

Every theme worth its weight in bandwidth comes with some sort of pre-defined blockquote styling, but how many themes do you know of that come with three different blockquote styles? This is one area where my themes have no peers, and you can use these blockquote styles to your advantage as you liven up your posts for your readers. The quote at right is what is referred to as a “pullquote,” and you can create two types of these in your posts – one will be aligned to the right, and the other to the left. Use the following structure to make it happen:

<blockquote class="x">

where x is replaced by either “left” or “right,” depending on which side of the text you want your pullquote to display.

And naturally, no theme would be complete without the standard old blockquote, which comes out looking like this:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Quisque pharetra velit vel purus. Nunc tempor, urna sit amet euismod elementum, erat tellus auctor erat, non condimentum dui wisi non orci. Nam fringilla leo sed dui. Vestibulum ac elit sit amet diam vehicula scelerisque.

To use these, simply wrap your quoted text in <blockquote> tags.

Non-paying? Client? What?

It’s not entirely non-paying. It just doesn’t pay immediately, so that also makes it a little more difficult to finish, for some reason. Done well enough, though, it could prove to be worth tens of thousands of dollars—literally.

But anyway, the monitor represents everything that I ever wanted my workspace to be, and now that I have it, I feel compelled to “experiment” all day.

So far, my unplanned experiments have paid off nicely, even without any semblance of a business plan—and in some cases, without so much as a forethought.

I suppose I’m suggesting that it might, in fact, be possible to sustain oneself online through sheer experimentation within one’s own sphere of influence and expertise.

Don’t look now, but really good solutions for content management systems (CMS) like WordPress are currently finding substantial value for both clients and their hired developers.

Adapting CMS platforms to meet the needs of brick-and-mortar businesses is a sector of the market with huge growth potential.

I see opportunity in it every day, and I believe I’m going to be the one to prove that somebody with a well-tendered, blog-based solution can demolish the hosted-site marketplace in their industry—while earning millions of dollars in the process.

The reason why all this is possible is not because of some “magical” characteristic of blogs, but rather good old fashioned Web development principles and well-developed applications that utilize these.

I believe that a good developer can bend and twist a CMS to fit certain market applications. Done properly, this developer ought to be able to dissect an existing marketplace with a solution that is far more detailed and far better at handling small-business levels of content.

This is a huge marketplace.

Part of it will be mine.

Suffice it to say, though, that March did end up sucking, and there I stood on the 31st, right once again.

When you live in this part of the country, crappy weather during the “green” month is nothing if not par for the course. However, the one thing that skews my outlook is the fact that when I was a kid, I always viewed March as sort of a gateway to spring, which is an elegant way of saying that I thought the weather wouldn’t suck so badly most of the time.

Every year, this turns out to be wrong. If you live in the Midwest, March sucks.

leave already

During my senior year in college (’03), I went down to Miami with my girlfriend at the time. If I remember correctly, we were there for 3 days in the first half of the month, and I distinctly recall temperatures in the low 90s.

I remember throwing a football on the beach, and I can remember thinking that if I had the choice each day, I would certainly choose to blow an hour or two tossing the pigskin on South Beach.

If you want to crack a queer joke, I teed it up nicely for you in the previous sentence.

So anyway, I went back to Miami in March of 2005 and proceeded to have the time of my life. At that point, I realized that maybe March didn’t have to suck so badly after all. Maybe I just had to experience it from a different angle.

For my money, March in Miami is basically the most awesome time/place combo on earth. Not that I’ve been everywhere, but with all the crap that goes on down there during that time, I simply don’t see how you could beat it.

Needless to say, my own personal conclusion is that a vacation to Miami is not only necessary, but also the most awesome way to tick away a few of the otherwise-soggy hours that March typically brings to this part of the country.

In 2006, I unintentionally tested this theory by heading down to Austin, TX, to experience South by Southwest (SXSW). Once there, I was greeted by springlike, mild weather that was not only warm enough for shorts, but was also darn near perfect.

Maybe my Miami theory was wrong! Time to refine…

Simply going south during March is pretty much a necessity. After weathering (quite literally) the last 3 or 4 months of cold, crappy weather, nothing says “spring” quite like a trip to a place with warm temperatures and blue skies.

reality check

Today is March 1, 2007. It’s rainy and windy outside here in Louisville, KY.

Looks like I might be right once again.

And thus, a title was born.

Does it have any meaning? At this point in the text, I suppose not. At least my mind hasn’t really connected any virtual dots with it yet.

Perhaps it will in the next 5 or so paragraphs… Wouldn’t that be killer?

I’m starting to think that trying to work without performing an exercise like this is a little like jumping out of bed with no coffee. It can be done, of course, but things are shaky. And slow. And groggy.

Let’s face it, this is no way to produce!

back to the title

When I think about the title of this entry, I am reminded of poker chips, Las Vegas, and the now-irrelevant PartyPoker.com. Strange indeed, but not too much of a stretch when you consider the parallels between the different types of “chips.” Also, I suppose the phrase “chips fall” implies a bit of uncontrollable fortune, much like a game of poker.

So what I’m thinking to myself now is this: what on earth does poker have to do with my life right now?

Not a frickin thing.

At least I think it doesn’t.

Maybe it does, hell, because when I think of poker, I often think of my friends who play poker. I haven’t talked to some of those guys in years, so that could be part of it. I dunno, doesn’t matter right now. The only thing that matters for me today is knocking out this crapstick design for a client who’s not even really a client.

What’s even worse is the fact that I am stuck working with a color scheme that I’d rather not have any part of, and I don’t want to get too outrageous with the design because I’m not being paid for my time. I guess in the interest of disclosure I should mention that I am being paid in an offhand sort of way, but the amount of questions I’ll have to answer in the future will be significantly less if I just conduct a “simple” design instead of something that has tons of character.

On top of that, “good design” and this color palette are basically square pegs and round holes.

And now that I’ve wrapped up a topic that I don’t even care to speak about—much less think about—I’m not sure what else to say. My mind is so trapped in this stifling bit of garbage that I can’t even think outside of it right now. Frustrating!

It just occurred to me that I feel like I ought to reach some significant conclusion during the course of writing here. Like there has to be some sort of justifiable revelation at the end in order to warrant my being here in the first place.

But then you have to consider that the activity itself is, in fact, the goal of an exercise such as this.

More creepy evidence that my left brain is trying to creep into a party to which it wasn’t invited.

creativity in all of us?

I wonder if people are more creative than they let on. Like, maybe some folks are so controlled by their left brains that their rights never get the chance to shine.

What if they live their entire lives stifling a side of themselves that could change their outlook significantly? Conservative circles might say, “Well, they’ll make less money, of course!”

And then on the other hand, you’ll have your radicals who will die a little inside every time they hear something like that.

But really…Can you know yourself entirely if you remain strictly regimented until the day you die? I, for one, am an unbending creature of routine. I do the same freakin things every morning, only with a few notable, less-compulsive exceptions like showers and grooming rituals. Does this mean I don’t use my right brain? Nah.

I know for sure that my right brain is hidden away in a corner when I’m in front of my computer, needing to create something, and just coming up with piece of crap after piece of crap.

In a way, my experiences creating themes have probably pigeonholed me as a designer. At this point, I have trouble thinking outside of the frameworks that I’ve created because I know just how much additional work needs to be done in order to go from “somewhat custom” to “completely custom.”

Then, of course, I can contradict myself by pointing to Search Engine Journal, which was a site that I built using a heavily modified version of the Cutline theme.

Maybe I’m wrong about everything.

Maybe I just need to step outside my own box.

Maybe this will help me do it.

I think maybe it has something to do with the fact that I’m never truly able to relax anymore. Whether it’s worrying about one of the many things I’ve over-promised on or simply worrying about how I’m going to manage the things I’ve already got going on, there’s just too much crap that is sapping my attention at all times.

I’m so out of touch with my subconscious right now it’s scary.

Which I guess is why, after months of wheel-spinning and a general unhappiness with my ability to produce, I’ve decided to step back into free-flow writing. The deuce experiment, which basically defines this site, is something that I had long since abandoned in the name of pragmatism.

But maybe this was a big mistake.

When I look back on things now, I can see that I enjoyed one of the most fruitful creative periods of my life between late September through early December of 2006. Although I’m not looking at the dates while I write this (because that’s kind of against “the rules”), I think the last post I made here fell sometime around the 11th of November. Perhaps there’s a carryover when you do exercises like this—your mind is lubed up for a while and works great, but that grace period doesn’t last forever.

And I’m here to tell you that it definitely didn’t.

By late December, my life was so full of distractions and just general crap that I felt as though anything that detracted from my core focus was simply extraneous and should probably be cut out.

The real irony here is that by ignoring these “outliers,” I actually caused way more harm than good. I retracted into a hollow shell of production and focus, and as a result, the quality of all my work declined significantly.

In short, I lost my zen completely.

bringing zen back

By some strange twist of fate, a post that I had written on October 2, 2006, over at Pearsonified was featured on Lifehacker on Sunday afternoon. The post was entitled How to Find Your Creative Zen, and I had actually written it on the heels of developing this site and this experiment.

The ultimate coincidence here, though, lies in the fact that the Zen post was the first to be featured on the new Pearsonified design. That may not sound overly special to you, but to me, the current design of Pearsonified represents the nexus of a creative period during which I really found my identity as a designer and Webtrepreneur.

When I look back on the events of the last couple of days, it’s almost as though I needed a reminder of who I am, where I came from, and what tools I used to get here.

I’m not going to lie—I need a pick-me-up at this point, and although it’s after midnight here, I am willing to give this free-flow stuff another shot in order to find that zen once more.

Maybe this really will be just what I needed.

For quite some time, I’ve been a person who believes that true answers come from within, and the only real issue is actually finding them for yourself. I suppose that I’ve fallen short in the area of practicing what I preach, but dammit if the practical side of my brain isn’t always sticking its nose where it doesn’t belong.

At this point, it’s clear that my greatest enemy is myself.

So I just realized that the title of this post points to lucid dreaming and its relation to zen. I suppose there is a logical tie-in between lucid dreaming, free-flow creativity, and finding oneself amidst the mess of details and distractions that make up one’s life.

Maybe my complete lack of dreams is something that I should have paid attention to—like a bad cough or a severe headache.

Or maybe it’s just time for me to go to bed.

Expect much, much more of this in the future. It’s hard to convey how relieving it is to exhale these thoughts—this river of the subconscious—onto a site such as this one. All of the feelings that I had in September, October, and November are coming back as I write this…

Sometimes I felt as though I said things that were embarrassing, and maybe that’s why I stopped doing this. Other times, as I mentioned earlier, I felt like this site wasn’t “practical” and should therefore be avoided or written off as a waste.

I’m beginning to think I couldn’t have been more wrong.

With each passing day, I realize just how little everyone else’s advice and game plans matter for me. I am definitely my own man, running on my own clock, free from everyone else’s crap. At this point, I’ve proven unequivocally that I’m not worth a damn on your watch, and to be quite honest, I’m sorry about that.

Sometimes I wish things were different.

They’re not.

I am happy with the things I’ve been able to produce over the last year and a half, and everything that I truly appreciate has been the product of my own schedule, my own time, and my own planning. I didn’t try to fit some big, scheduled puzzle together, and I didn’t have constraints on the way in.

I started projects; I let them evolve; and some of them turned out good.

I see no reason to operate any differently in the future if my goal is to one day look back at a catalog of “good” things that I’ve produced.

Food for thought, anyway. Maybe I’ll dream tonight.

Today, they are totally irrelevant. Out of the national title chase, likely out of any shot at winning the Big East and getting a BCS bowl berth, and out of the spotlight.

Irrelevant.

a love story

I suppose a lot of people don’t understand what it’s like to really love a sports team, so I’ll do the best I can to share my story.

I remember the late 1980s, when Louisville was a virtual nobody on the college football landscape. They had a gruffy, pipe-smoking, moustache-laden, baritone-voiced baron of a ball coach named Howard Schnellenberger — the same Howard Schnellenberger who led a bunch of nobodies from Miami to the top of the college football world in 1984.

In 1985, Schnellenberger made the seemingly ridiculous statement that Louisville was a program “on a collision course with a national championship.” Everyone else in the nation lauged.

Everyone in Louisville wanted to believe.

And we did believe.

We started packing our woefully inadequate stadium for home games. We launched the Cardinal Crunch Zone, a frenzied section of the stands whose rowdy characters and spirit live on in the end zone seats of the new Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium.

I remember.

In 1990, we shocked the nation by rolling out a 10-1 season and earning a berth in the Fiesta Bowl. In that game, which was played on Jan. 1, 1991, the University of Louisville earned its first major victory over the “old guard” with a 35–7 asswhooping of Alabama.

I watched it. I cheered. I was 9 years old.

I remember.

In the years following the Fiesta Bowl win, I remember wanting desperately for the Cardinals to break into the national spotlight and compete with teams like Florida State, Tennessee, and Penn State. We played each of those teams through the first half of the 90s, and to my dismay, we were not competitive. It was clear that there was still a mountain to climb.

But we Louisville fans are a resilient bunch, and we still had hope.

I remember.

In the mid 90s, our general, Howard Schnellenberger, left us for Oklahoma. In the process, he destroyed the program, but really not by his own accord. Fact is, we held onto a position of respectability because he was such a well-known coach, and when he left, so did our credibility.

We suffered through three awful seasons in which we were realistically one of the worst teams in Division 1-A. All of the joy of college football was gone.

I was raised on U of L, and to have that facet of excitement stripped from my life was a bummer that’s simply hard to explain.

When you want to love something so badly, but you can’t get any response or reciprocation, what can you do?

I left the city and went to Georgia Tech, where we had a competitive football team, a Heisman Trophy candidate, and something that Louisville was short on — hope.

Football games are some of my fondest memories of being at Georgia Tech, as the excitement and energy we had during my first couple of years were something that I had never experienced before. It was invigorating, and it made me remember the days when I thought Louisville might some day end up in such a favorable position.

Sadly, Georgia Tech never climbed over the hurdle that was Florida State, and the Yellow Jackets got progressively worse over my final two years in school.

Louisville, on the other hand, had acquired a great coach out of Utah by the nearly anonymous name of John L. Smith. John L., as we called him, breathed new life into a dead program, and he made Louisville competitive once again. Recruiting picked up, the team hammered out a great contract for Thursday night games with ESPN, and the Cardinals were back on the right track once more.

I watched with great interest as the team, which was nationally ranked, battled Florida State in 2000. Just like it was in the early 90s, it was clear that Louisville still wasn’t ready for prime time action, as they went on to lose by an embarrassing 31–0 margin.

In 2002, however, the Cardinals took it to Florida State in the midst of a hurricane rain storm, and they captured their first-ever victory over a top 5 opponent.

I remember where I was that night, and I remember the play that ended the game.

I remember.

Over the next three years, Louisville continued to rise in national prominence, drawing some heralded prospects from Kentucky, Florida, and other states in the hotbed of SEC recruiting. With a jump to the Big East in 2005 and a quarterback regarded by many as a future first round draft pick, the Cardinals seemed poised to make a legitimate run at not only a BCS game, but perhaps even the national championship game.

This year, it looked as though the stars were aligning, as Louisville registered quite possibly the most impressive twenty minute stretch of football seen anywhere in the nation during a first-half blitzing of Kentucky. By the time most fans had settled into their seats and downed one beer, the Cardinals were up 31–0, and the rout was on.

You could see signs of the growing power of Louisville football all over the city — flags on cars, flags on houses, news coverage all over the place.

Now regulars on ESPN, Louisville became a media darling, and after racking up eight straight wins (including a huge win over #3 West Virginia), the team appeared to have a legimitate chance at earning a national title.

I was in the stands during the West Virginia game, and I could see how all the guys around me lived and died by every play, just as I did. We all shared the same sentiments, mostly because they, too, remember the Crunch Zone from the late 80s and early 90s.

They remember.

We all remember because we love. And I suppose that we love it so much because we remember.

And we all want to believe that our team can climb the college football mountain — that we can share the same pride that fans in Columbus, Austin, South Bend, and Ann Arbor do.

It’s been a long journey, but it’s also been a tough one for Louisville fans. Each time we’ve appeared to reach a summit, we would fall devastatingly short thanks to just a few horrible stretches of mediocrity.

If it weren’t for about 60 minutes of terrible football over the past three seasons, it’s quite likely that Louisville would have been to two consecutive BCS bowls and probably a national championship game.

And today, we find ourselves in a familiar position.

After a 28–25 loss to Rutgers (who?), Louisville has once again been knocked off the precipice. Optimists would say that “we’ll be back next year,” but the truth is, one can never be sure. Being a champion in any sport is contingent upon opportunistic victories, and as much as I hate it, Louisville has an established tradition of blowing major opportunities.

A loss to Rutgers is so much more symbolic than a loss to West Virginia or even to Ohio State or Michigan, which could’ve been the outcome had we actually made the championship game. Although they have an unblemished record at 9–0, Rutgers is no powerhouse. They are not even on the same stage as the “old guard,” and although Louisville was trying to break into that mold, it’s clear that they, too, are not on this stage.

A great team would have taken it to Rutgers and walked out with a victory. An Ohio State would’ve beaten them. A Texas would’ve won. A Michigan would have rolled.

I remember our missed opportunities.

Miami in ’04. WVU in ’05.

Worst of all, Rutgers in ’06. It hurts so much more because it’s Rutgers, too. Though I realize that it’s a disservice to their fans (who believe just as we believe), Rutgers is a nobody.

For the remainder of this season, the Cardinals are nobodies, too.

I still love them, but they are nobodies.

I love them because I remember the hope I held onto, even as recently as yesterday morning.

I still remember.

I just want one more chance.

We all just want one more chance.

You’d think it would be easy to get up out of bed in the morning and go work on things that you know will be profitable. But then again, if it’s hard to focus on things like that, then perhaps that’s not really what your heart desires…

I’m not really sure what in the hell I desire at this point. All I know for sure is that I want to feel excited, and I want to see the public respond to things that I’ve created.

Without question, nothing has received a greater response than the free things that I’ve produced — most notably, my two WordPress themes. I truly enjoy helping people use the theme, and for some reason, I get this great sense of satisfaction when I improve the theme and solve user’s problems in the process.

One thing that’s really strange about all this, though, is the fact that if the themes weren’t distractions from my regular work, then I probably wouldn’t like them as much. Then again, perhaps I’m wrong on this.

You know, the more I think about it, the more I see that all of my actions of late point towards my more selfish character qualities. It sounds bad, and I guess it is.

I’d hate to think that I could be so selfish that I would actually shoot myself in the foot, but I can absolutely see how such a scenario is possible given my effed up frame of mind.

doing what’s right for you

I still haven’t found the sweet spot that is located at the intersection of goodwill and profit. I’ve found profit, but at the same time, I felt as though I wasn’t making anyone else’s life any better, and more than that, I didn’t feel as though I was really producing things that had lasting value.

On other occasions (and more recently), I’ve found goodwill. Problem is, wherever I’ve found goodwill, profit seems to be AWOL. Right now, I like goodwill better, but every time I look at my bank account, I think that perhaps I like profit better.

Really and truly, I just want both. And I want them both to exist at the same intersection.

More and more, it looks as though I’m going to have to put up with a bunch of stuff that I don’t like in order to get to that intersection. I’ll even go a step further and tell you that even the thought makes me sick, but that’s the way it is.

Why should I assume that I can accomplish my goals without toiling on a bunch of shit that I can’t stand? Why should my path be any easier than anybody else’s?

Why can’t I just fucking do it already?

maybe this is what they call a plateau

Just like an athelete tends to hit a plateau in training, perhaps I’ve hit a temporary plateau in my creative and professional life.

It may sound a little cheesy, but I seriously feel as though I’ve conquered stage one, and now I’m ready for stage two. Problem is, I’m just not quite sure what in the hell stage two is, exactly!

I think stage two probably contains more metrics and analysis than stage one did, as this actually harkens back to my college days and a time when numbers were king. For quite a few months now, numbers haven’t really mattered all that much, but now I think I’m at a point where I can take what I’ve learned and sell it/package it/promote it in such a way as to produce data — data worth analyzing.

It would be neat to see the different stages of my life from the past 8 years come together in a sort of business harmony.

I’m still not totally convinced that I’ll be thrilled by this, but what the hell…If it can buy me a couple more months’ time, then I suppose that’ll have to be good enough.

And hey, maybe somewhere along the way, I’ll find the intersection of goodwill and profit.

I don’t buy it.

For me, I always wanted to be rich. Not just because I wanted a bunch of money, but because I saw early on what a stifling bummer not having enough of it could be. I mean, does anyone else find it ridiculous that “no, you can’t do that” because you simply don’t have enough money to afford it?

That’s my definition of ridiculous.

We live in a society that purports to be all about freedom and democracy, yet the truth is, a vast majority of us are beholden to an economic system that has pretty stringent rules. For the most part, our capitalist society is fair, but I think there is a certain class of people who represent square pegs in a round hole universe.

I believe I am a square peg.

I’d like to illustrate exactly why this economic structure is fucked up by posing a very simple question.

What would Einstein, Ben Franklin, the Curies, Edison, Voltaire, or anyone else whose intellectual contributions have defined their legacies have done if they were tied down to a stifling economic framework?

To be sure, it is harder to hack it nowadays because in our capitalist society, everything has now basically become “capitalized.”

Which is another way of saying that you’re paying for a hell of a lot more for a hell of a lot more shit these days than you would have even 50 years ago.

The great minds that I mentioned above were, for the most part, able to focus on continued learning in their areas of interest. In some cases, such as Franklin’s, these interests spanned a wide range of topics, thus making him one of the great scientific thinkers and contributors of the last 500 years (maybe ever?).

Admittedly, I’m not all that big on admiration and/or respect, but I will say this — the older I get, the more I truly appreciate what somebody like Franklin was able to accomplish through the course of his life.

I can see that we share a kinship that is not so much mental by nature, but more emotional.

Clearly, he suffered from the same afflictions that I do today (and some of my friends as well, as I have discovered). Franklin was a master of many different disciplines, and I have to believe that it’s because he enjoyed — nay, needed — to conquer topic after topic in order to stay sane.

It’s simply how he was wired, and when you combine that with his keen wit, you get somebody whose historical contributions will likely live on forever.

Accomplishing something similar in my lifetime would be the ultimate validation of my very existence.

But, to get back on point here, the bottom line is that Franklin was able to focus on many different subjects throughout the course of his life, and I suppose I feel that this is harder to do in 2006 than it was 1770.

And I also believe that we have capitalism to thank for this.

That aside, I’m really not big on excuses. The bottom line is that excuses simply arise when you haven’t gotten the job done, and I realize that if I’m to live up to my own expectations, not getting the job done is simply not an option.

It’s quite obvious to me that I have to conquer the capitalist realm, all the while trying to establish and extend my legacy in the world of intellectual contribution.

What I really want is to be able to continue to produce things of universal value until I can no longer do so.

What I really need to get there is a lot of damn money.

schmentrepreneur

I think a lot of bulldog entrepreneurial types would look at what I’ve written here and kind of shake their head in disapproval, but I have something to say to them.

You aren’t smart enough to understand…

…yet. Perhaps one day you’ll see the light, and your life’s journey will turn down an unexplored path that will lead to self-validation.

In the meantime, though, please know that the money you extract from the economy will not live on beyond your time here, and I hate to think how empty you will feel as your clock winds down.

I cannot walk that path. I must have more.

It’s not about the metrics that society, capitalism, or Webalizer throw out there. These are not the standards by which you will ultimately judge yourself.

After all, if you cannot serve as the primary filter for your actions, contributions, and life, then who can?

Why does it have to be “god?” Why does it have ot be somebody else? Why can’t it be you?

Are you lazy?

Are you scared?

I’m not scared; hell, I’m on a mission.

bringing it home

So, what is your lot in life? Are you operating on a plane that is above all the metrics, all the distractions, and all the bullshit?

At the end of the day, your character will be defined by how well you are able to conduct your actions in life, and that, my friend, will be your lot in life.

Fuck the metrics. It’s you vs. you.

What’s stopping you?