well, i’m rolling off my project up in green bay in the “hopes” that i’ll get staffed on something in healthcare (btw, exactly what i just asked 4 weeks ago to NOT have happen). if it sells it’ll be in jacksonville, and that’ll be great. if not, i get the joy of being unstaffed again. this project should be a slam dunk, so i’ll put the odds of it at close to 50/50.
btw, the project was scheduled for go-live this past weekend, but it got pushed back two months by the steering committee go-live week. kind of a bummer since all these people had been working a ton of weekends in preparation for go-live.
anyway, i had a flashback to “covation” when i stumbled across this downstairs.
anyway, wisconsin was beautiful (except for this one house with the “brady bunch” astroturf lawn)
soooo, here’s the beautiful part of wisconsin.
bye, bye green bay!!
Posted in Uncategorizedwith Comments Off on last days in green bay
| Many important lessons in life can be learned through sports. One revelation of particular relevance presented itself as I neared the end of my not-so-illustrious basketball career. In high school, one of the biggest problems a team faces is dealing with the press. The problem is that when several men who seem to be at least three times as large as you come streaking in your direction (often frothing and yelling), a lot of things whirl around in your mind. “I hope I don’t make a turnover, coach will get mad, I’ll look stupid in front of the cheerleaders, etc.” These thoughts whirl around in your mind. The pressure crescendos until you break out into mild schizophrenia right there on the court. Wild screaming voices tell you forty different things to do with the ball, the most appealing of which is to get rid of it….fast. Confused, perplexed, and out of time, the inevitable would soon happen. Eventually we would freak out and pick a general direction to heave the ball, usually resulting in pretty lay-ups for the other team or souvenirs for a few lucky fans. This single problem probably accounted for 50% of the approximately 60 losses we all suffered through during four years of high school basketball. But, it occurred to me one game while watching from the bench, a position I was not unaccustomed to, that there was an answer to this problem. When I sat back, unattached to the action, there seemed to be a lot more time to react than I had ever realized while in the heat of battle. Another fact that presented itself was that there was an enormous amount of empty space on the court. It was not, as it had seemed, covered with an army of opponents. It all came down to point of view. When the ball hits your hands and those monsters are rushing toward you, it feels like you’ve got only a closet to move in, and like they arrive before the ball |
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even gets to you. In the frenzy of activity we were giving up our two greatest assets: time and space. I realized the secret to playing at a higher level, to controlling the game rather than being controlled, was to relax and slow the game down. When you relax and separate yourself from the anxiety, it’s easy to make the correct move. An important aspect of this is that it allows you the opportunity, if your eyes are open, to see the whole court. When you can see the situation in a context greater than your immediate point of view, it highlights all of your opportunities and enables you to evaluate more appropriately the correct action to take. You are making a decision that is truly informed, not running blind into a minefield. The only thing left to do is to trust in the accuracy of your decision and carry out your plan with conviction. This is important, because the second guess is often the first mistake. By relaxing and seeing the whole court in daily life, it becomes easy to handle the “press” whenever it arises. You enable yourself to transcend the current onslaught by seeing that the world is a huge expanse of land where opportunities abound, and that there is time enough for all of us.
Celia Luce provides a brilliant example of the benefits of being of this mindset.
A small trouble is like a pebble. Hold it too close to your eye and it fills the whole world and puts everything out of focus. Hold it at a proper distance and it can be examined and properly classified. Throw it at your feet and it can be seen in its true setting, just one more tiny bump on the pathway to life.
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Posted in Things I Wrotewith Comments Off on Relax and Slow the Game Down
bliss • 07.25.05
| A cold rain falls on the dark streets as twelve bells sound the start of a new year. Elsewhere people are embracing, besottedly welcoming the new year in and ushering out the old one with which they had grown so bored. But, here there is no cause to celebrate another year when one has endured all he can stand in the year gone by. The rain, and the champagne, and the glitter and the laughter all run down the street in one undulating tide. But by the time this potpourri reaches him its joy has been drowned in the dirtiness and meanness of its surroundings. As it filters through the grate splashing down beneath Trey’s feet he is almost overtaken by the sadness of his reflection in its ruddy mirror. The current brings with it the foul stench of a place too long unwashed as Trey looks down through the steel bars at the party’s end. He shudders to think of how far he has fallen. Alone and despondent, he huddles, cold, longing for something, but not even able to recall what it is he’s longing for. Faint half-recollections of a life separated by an unfathomable chasm from his present state muddle his thoughts. Flickering pictures of another time bring warmth to his damp hovel, but he is tortured trying to discern if these are really memories or only unsubstantial dreams of some imagined happiness, they seem so surreal in his present surroundings. |
Posted in Things I Wrotewith Comments Off on bliss
