this company's business model centers around two things: versatile lateral thinking, which allows it to be successful in a wide variety of things, and the excited packaging, which allows it to output entertainment in the form of stories or ideas or whatever. it's a good business model -- times change, so being adaptive is key, and people will always want to be entertained. this has seduced many an "investor," with the result that i've accumulated several rounds of venture capital and profited from it. the company looks successful.
but now's the time to sell your stock. the problem is that the company, despite the continued appeal of the business model, has stopped paying dividends. let's take a closer look. first, the lateral thinking. as evidenced by my complete inability to do well at games recently, and my dismal "contribution" to the puzzle hunt, it's not looking as bastionic as it once did. i haven't yet met the newer, better version of myself, but it's probably not too far away; i did, after all, meet the older, worse version of myself when they were as old as i am now. (no, not you -- and not anyone you would ever guess either.)
the more important problem with regards to the lateral thinking is that as my environment gets more and more specific, it becomes less and less useful. vocationally is the main thing. we live in an age of specialization, not jack-of-all-trades... er, -ation. and as i narrow my field down, it is becoming apparent that what's required is no longer lateral thinking but incisive thinking. (i need a better antonym! help me.) i've always done breadth-first searches, which work because the solution is usually simple and surveying all the possibilities will lead you to it fairly quickly. but what's required now is depth-first searching, since the solution is both complicated and guaranteed to be of a certain type.
this is, to a lesser extent, also true with respect to my life, but this is where the entertainment comes in. lateral thinking has the advantage of providing far greater stories than incisive (ugh!) thinking, and the personality shift towards incisive thinking, while perhaps necessary to save the first part of the operation (which, after all, is more important, since you can't have entertainment without societal survival), is impinging upon the second part of the operation. simply put, i am not likely to output any particularly interesting stories anytime soon. i'm not unhappy with my personal life, but the stark facts are that it is much less complex than before. i can't afford to pay out dividends; i need to conserve the capital in order to stay afloat.
the analogy has, of course, completely broken down, but it's not a great time to be a friend of yours truly. if i were meeting myself, i'm pretty sure i would dismiss myself as simply not having enough content of import or humor value to be worth spending much time around. i can still come up with philosophical mumbo-jumbo, but this is insufficient. there are a couple of projects that my r&d division is working on that might bear fruit, though, so if you hold your stock it might rise again. but if i were you, i would probably cash out. assuming you bought low, the profits right now are pretty good. take the money and run.