Something significant has happened.

Well, shit. This wasn't part of the plan.

Honestly speaking, I don't think I ever had a plan in the first place. Just a really really vague idea of how I want my life to be in the indeterminate future. I don't have a 5-, 10-year plan or whatever it is that other more ambitious/confident people have. All I had was a vague idea where I lived a pretty comfortable and decent life, all my needs fulfilled and some luxuries thrown in for good measure. Maybe a small family. Nothing fancy. No expensive cars, no multiple properties. Working 5 days a week, maybe a weekend once a month, nothing too strenuous. My nights would be untouched. I would be free.

Things have taken a VERY sudden turn now though. It all started when I decided to pick up a freelance project from my boss. I would basically do it out of office hours. After studying the project, I knew I was way in over my head if I were to do it alone. So I decided to recruit my colleague to work on the project with me. We would split the payout and workload equally.

Near the end of the project, we started thinking about how we would want to be paid. After some thinking, we decided that we did not want to be paid a lump sum for our efforts. We weren't willing to just let go of something that took so much of our time and energy for a simple sum of money, no matter how large. In the end, we decided to work out an arrangement with our employer, where we would take a smaller initial payout in return for monthly royalties, based on how how many customers used this little software.

After some initial wrangling, we came out of the discussion mostly intact. But something had changed. We initially wanted chump change every month for as little responsibility as possible. But after negotiations with our employer(curse you Vincent and your rationalisations!), it looks like a very real possibility that I and my partner are on our way to owning our very first commercially-viable intellectual property. We would license the software out to our employer, who would pay us royalties periodically, based on how many of his customers used it. We would be responsible for maintaining and updating the software as and when required. Our employer would be mostly concerned with selling it.
This has essentially turned into a formal business arrangement, with negotiations, and contracts, products, services and goodness knows what else.

I am now effectively a businessman. Oh, the horror.

Nowhere in my shitty little plan for the future did it say that I would actually be involved in business. I'm not a visionary. I don't come up with sweeping business strategies. I'm not driven to succeed. I don't want to work so hard in order to make oodles of money. I am shell-shocked, overwhelmed and more than a little terrified of what this all means, and will entail. I don't know what kind of price I'll be paying in order to run a freaking business of my own. I am not prepared. I don't have the right mentality. I'm just a simple, lazy guy trying to make a little more money, that's all. I am afraid that this is going to be well over my head, and it will all come crashing down like a skyscraper being demolished. Neat, controlled, utterly devastating and somewhat spectacular(fuck the house of cards simile. This will hurt.).

I can't think about it. I'm afraid to think about it. Something has changed, and I am fearful of it, and yet, I am curious to see how it will all pan out. The cat has yet to figure out that his curiosity will kill him.

I think I had better buckle up. Life is about to get somewhat interesting, I think.

A perfect evening.

It was the 19th of May, 2008. A public holiday, I had spent the afternoon wrangling around with some work that needed doing. At around 5pm, I had gotten very bored and decided not to waste the whole day completely on working. I took a book, my iPod, my phone and my car keys and headed out the door.

I drove around a bit, trying to decide on where to read. After a while, I decided to head to a small playground of sorts. It was a pretty sort of place, with huge fir trees around the perimeter, well-kept grass and aging but sturdy playground equipment and benches, as well as gazebo-like things scattered all over. I chose a seat on one of the spring-fulcrum see-saws and started to read, bouncing up and down gently like a vertical-motion rocking chair. It gave my restless legs something to do while the rest of my body was engaged in other more useful tasks, such as holding the book in place and reading words off the pages. I began reading.

The sun's rays were muted, filtering through a bank of puffy white clouds. It provided a very comfortable light to read by, and warmed my skin slightly where it struck. It was quite a pleasant feeling. To top it off, there was a light breeze blowing through the grounds, heightening the idyllic sense of being I was beginning to feel myself slip into.

After a while, a car pulled up and the driver released a pack of truly adorable dogs into the playground, two Labradors and a chihuahua! The chihuahua was especially friendly, it came up to me and immediately started prancing about. After a few friendly overtures, I left it to tear up and down the field, chasing the other dogs. Ah, a dog's life!

Eventually the dogs had to go home and I was left to my own devices again. The sun was going down but the breeze still had not abated. I relocated to one of the gazebo-like structures, put on my headphones, piped music from my iPod through them and continued reading. I had multiple trains of thought running through my head at this time. Number one, that I had not felt this relaxed in a long time, revelling in my self-imposed solitude. Number two, Bobby Shaftoe, please stop hallucinating, pull yourself together and help Lieutenant Root toss that decoy off the plane already before AA fire completely ruins the whole mission and you die for nothing. THERE ARE NO GIANT LIZARDS HERE. Number three, if only I could replicate this setting more often. Or ever.

Eventually the sun dipped low enough and I had to stop reading. I packed up, got in the car and headed home.

I want more evenings like that.

Epiphany #2

It's funny how my most enjoyable vacations usually require another, more sedate, vacation with which to recover. I am so tired.

I've got a little black cloud and thunderstorm hovering over me.

You know how people are always using light and darkness as metaphors for good and evil? From a scientific point of view, darkness (or shadow, as some are wont to argue) is simply an absence of light. If you relate this property back into the good/evil metaphor, it means that evil is merely an absence of good. Therefore evil in inherent, all-pervading, natural. Good is the usurper here. Being good is unnatural. So when we complain about how fucked up the world is, it should cross our minds that it really isn't so much of people being selfish or self-destructive. Rather, the majority of us are simply being true to ourselves, and our own nature.

Sad, right? I'll leave it at that.