Sweet home. So, I'm back in San Francisco. Actually, we got back Saturday afternoon (amazingly, just three hours after we left London!). But I just chilled and recovered (and stayed offline) until this morning in order to, hopefully, not immediately lose the perspective I feel I've gained. Now I get to dive in and start recovering from the still-unexplained ISP outage. Still lots of servers and sites down and no connection at the office. Speaking of which, I also need to decide if I'm even going to keep that office. The good and cheap Internet connection was one of the few things keeping me there, and our lease is up at the end of this month. If you have any space in SF you'd like to share, lemme know. (I don't need much.) I wouldn't mind getting out of the basement.

Overall, the trip was amazing. As I mentioned before I left, I hadn't had a significant break in many years, nor had I been out of the country. And the last few months had been particularly intense. I was badly needing perspective. Sitting around in sidewalk cafes and wandering museums in Copenhagen, Amsterdam, and London for a couple weeks is a good way to get perspective when you're used to sitting in front of a monitor in a basement in SOMA 16 hours a day. Of course, three or six months would have been a more adequate break, but I'm in the middle of too much unfinished business for that.

The idea behind Reboot, the conference in Copenhagen that was the impetus for the trip, is to, once a year, take a day off, get some perspective, get some inspiration and new ideas, have a big-ass party, and, as a result, "reboot" your mind. It's a great idea, beautifully executed by Thomas and the rest of the Reboot team. For me, this trip was one big reboot for my brain -- and I'm still coming back online. Rebooting may not be quite the right metaphor. I'm actually in the mood for some major recoding. Rearchitecting, even.

But I have yet to figure out what that all means. For now, I have to get some servers back online, deal with a thousand other tiny business gnats, and try not to get too caught up in the day-to-day while I figure it out.