Slope of Hope Blog Posts

Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.

The Invisible Man

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Whenever I’m feeling particularly nostalgic or, as recently, severely melancholic, I get out my old high school yearbook from when I was a senior. In the words of Paul Simon:

Sonny sits by his window and thinks to himself
How it's strange that some rooms are like cages
Sonny's yearbook from high school
Is down from the shelf
And he idly thumbs through the pages
Some have died
Some have fled from themselves
Or struggled from here to get there
Sonny wanders beyond his interior walls
Runs his hand through his thinning brown hair

My hair isn’t thinning, but the rest of the imagery is spot-on.

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Journey Without End

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Long-time readers know how much angst I have about holiday weekends. This time it’s worse. Much, much worse, for obvious reasons. If I could, I’d just beam right over to July 10th after recovering from a hellacious H1 2023. Yet my desire to retain readers, and my neurotic work ethic, forbids it. Thus, I’ve got to think of something decent to say. I’ve come up with a topic, but it won’t keep you satisfied for a week, although maybe long enough to allow me to catch my breath and dream up some other posts.

It has to do with Prophet, my former company and, in my life, what passes for the most successful thing I’ve ever done. I founded Prophet on July 1, 1992 and sold it on January 26, 2005. It was hardly an overnight success, but I’m very proud of what we accomplished, and it was the only real business I’ve ever created in my life. What I mean by that is that it had an office, employees, revenues, and – – gasp – – profits.

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Rats!

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In the past, I’ve written that a person’s immediate reaction to a sudden situation is highly indicative of their internal character. This, to me, seems obvious and self-evident. The example I usually give is if a person is confronted with a situation (such as a building bursting into flames) in which they are immediately forced to choose between doing something heroic (some may say foolish) or elect instead to be passive (and thus safe). Heroes, I believe, are largely born, not made.

Perhaps you saw a video that just came out of a couple visiting Mexico who were terrified that they had been hunted down by a murderous cartel. I feel bad that these two men went through this ordeal, although I confess to smirking a bit at their pearl-clutching reactions (just watch the video). All the same, I’m glad they’re all right. I share this video simply because it’s one of those instances in which raw feelings are exposed because one doesn’t have the opportunity to think of a reaction and then act it out.

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