Cannot Sleep; Pondering Life
At 0435 on Monday morning in Stockholm, the sun shines brightly through fissures in my makeshift towel-drapes and keeps me from further sleep. I blame the reaching fingers of Sol, who rose over Terra almost two hours ago, for my consciousness, but likely ought to assign fault only to my rabid mind.
I am awake, thinking of life and the role of work in my life and escalating points of diminishing return for raw effort, time and self expended towards professional productivity and achievement.
Change, as well all know, is a constant. We can never really appreciate a zenith or nadir until the point has passed and there’s room between now and then for reflection.
I lie awake now, reflecting. There’s so much to say about the change and the aftermath of change and the rippling effects of all those pebbles dropped into my pond of ersatz tranquillity, but there’s so little I actually can say for so very many reasons.
I think it will make for an extraordinary tale one day, perhaps reserved as a sub-plot in a future novel. The dramatis personae and their motivations, interlaced with cascading decisions of questionable commercial acumen and widely varying people-chess skill, will make for a dynamic play full of intrigue, colour and joie de vivre.
That, however, will be a story that needs greater reflection before it is told. After all, the cliché rings true: Only time will tell.
Or, maybe, in time, I will.
I could perhaps concoct the story with multiple media while dissecting the conversations filed in my head. Carefully, I would reach inside them with cold pincers and extract crawling agendas. These I would then drop into boiling water with the hope they could be distilled to find the warm essence of truth and reason.
Alas, I say too little with too much art. I encourage you, dear reader, to simply delve between the lines.
Speaking of storytelling...
I’ve had a tremendous number of conversations recently about the origins and future of the online gaming industry, particularly at GIGSE two weeks ago and afterwards in Toronto. I’m frequently amazed by how shallow most of my peers’ knowledge and speculation is about these things. How can people move forwards without extensive prognostication? Maybe not everyone is such a pugilist, or I am too into pontificating? Or perhaps I just like five-dollar words that start with P?
How online poker has so far emerged as a viable, sustainable business is a fascinating story, about which I believe I could write a fairly compelling book. I’m now an expert in the area, know most of the major players, and have deep insights into the technical, financial, legislative, jurisdictional and operational business issues relevant to the industry.
From the rush to build between 1997-1999, to the great PlanetPoker debacle that almost destroyed the nascent industry, to the tremendous 91% marketshare that ParadisePoker pissed away, to the tipping point of 2003, to the emergence of the top-5 dominant brands, to the current wave of IPOs and M&As, I think chronicling the evolution of online poker would be a fascinating experience.
Of course, I’m a tad busy with my regular responsibilities, my secondary responsibilities, and executive producing the ONPC. So this will have to wait a while, but it’s something I’ll think about doing when and if I get some spare time.
More to follow, as I ponder.
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