Ah – you thought perhaps The Life was a 5 day – 40 hour work week? No, not quite. To me, The Life is at least a 6 day week with how ever many hours you can fit each day. I’d say take a day off or at least take it easy one day because I’ve heard from other Mac Indies that they wish they had paced themselves a little better and gotten more rest and relaxation along the way. I think I heard Steve Gerhman, who writes PathFinder, say that actually.

This morning, I presented at the local Mac user group, the Washington Apple Pi. At 9am. Not exactly the time I like to get up on a Saturday morning, but this was a special occasion: the first time I presented WebnoteHappy (the full version) to a live audience. It went well and the beta didn’t crash. Then again, it doesn’t really crash when I’m running it normally, but I’ve seen so many presenters crash and burn on stage in my life.

I sort of felt like the rookie. Or the 16 year old they bring along to the Olympics for ice skating just to see if they might have a chance of medaling.

Matt, who does Booxter, a personal library management app, I think won the award for most gadgets on-stage showing off iSight scanning, CueCat scanning, Bluetooth scanning, and my favorite: drag and drop from Amazon.

Steve, formerly of Apple (he programmed for the Mac even before it was released) and AOL (he had the chance to get steve@aol.com but is glad that he didn’t because other people who got their_first-name@aol.com eventually had to change due to an avalanche of spam), showed off RollCall Directory which creates directories of people as well as address labels, name labels and other sorts of labels. I thought that was a really good use of the AddressBook API. Now if only Apple would release good APIs for all the other built-in apps on OS X.

Jon finished with Golly Gee Blocks, which is a 3-D modeling app for students. Pretty cool stuff, especially if you have young kids. I’ll probably be picking up a copy in a little bit for my kids.

Even though I didn’t sell any licenses, I think it was well worth it to present. I had a chance to explain WebnoteHappy and how can help people to a wide range of Mac users and get their feedback. Plus I got a chance to work on my sales and marketing skills, which is probably my weak point (and the weak point of most Indies actually.) Even better, the other Mac Indies and I got together afterwards and talked shop.

I think that helps a lot in trying to live The Life. You see, there’s no “The Life U” like they have for people who want to run McDonald’s Franchises. There’s not a MTLA (Masters of The Life Administration) you can get. Not even a 6 week “The Life” certification! No – it’s more like a “street smarts” sort of deal where you learn things through the school of hard knocks. Or perhaps the school of trial and error. But when a bunch of Mac Indies get together, it feels more like an old-style Guild where you share techniques and experiences.

BTW, I actually didn’t get a chance to scan people’s eyes for “the click”, but several people asked questions – which is good. And more people came up to me after the meeting to ask more questions and give me feedback. That’s always encouraging to an Indie trying to live The Life.

I’m off to continue improving the drag and drop integration between WebnoteHappy and other OS X apps and then get some sleep.