Saying Goodbye.

The weather was perfect on my walk home and I feel a little bit lighter.  It hasn't sunk in yet, but there is no mistaking that this really is the end of this chapter.  Tomorrow I will load up everything I own, luckily it all fits in my luggage, and I will ride away from this place for the last time.  Its 64 degrees, it’s quiet, there are a gazillion stars in the sky, and my last day of work is over.

I would have never come to Oklahoma on purpose, and if you would have told me two and half years ago that this is where I would be, and would have been for the past two years, I would have laughed at you.  There were no plans I might have dreamed up that would have put me here, and I am the kind of person that dreams up plans.  But, as history can now indicate beyond dispute, this is where I called home since May 18^th, 2011.  I've made friends, I was lucky enough to have a job where I could help people, and I was a good employee.  I've left a lot of places, but this time is different because I leave knowing things are good and it’s just time to move on.  To say it is good I mean the experience was, I wouldn't just randomly move on if things at the job were good were like that.  I mean you have a goal and you accomplish it so when it is time to leave you have no regrets, or hard feelings about what you had just done.  You just don't slip out when no one is looking hoping not to have make eye contact or explain yourself.

Saying goodbye is always a let down.  I used to really get caught up with it though, never could get used to it.  Seems like everything should just stop and it could all last a little longer.  At this point with the way I've lived it is all too normal.  People and places come and go and I just try to remember the things worth remembering.   

I've met a lot of people here that I will remember and some I'm sure I will see again.  I can sleep OK, got a big trip tomorrow.

One of my favorite songs/performances that I've come across lately, unreally beautiful

Why go to Las Vegas?

I went to Las Vegas twice when I was in my early twenties.  Both times it was one of the last stops on month long cross-country trips, which mostly consisted of camping in national forests and parks.  I wouldn't have personally put this on my wish list of places to stop, it was one of the other two guys I was travelling with's idea, and I really didn't know what to expect since I had never been in a casino before.  I really don't remember that much about the first trip, like I don't even remember the strip.  I do remember being downtown and staying at the El Cortez, playing slot machines for the first time, and carrying around the buckets full of quarters.  None of these things were very impressive to me, and other than the lights and scenes like Vegas Vic and Vicky, the casinos were more of a novelty than a place I wanted to spend time in.

What I did like about Vegas was how completely different it was than everywhere else we had been on that trip.  People seemingly flocked to the middle of the desert with the sole intention of cutting loose, and per observation appeared to doing a competent job of it to say the least.  I remember walking down Freemont Street, the Freemont St. experience wasn't there yet, and watching normal looking people walking down the street with cocktail glasses in their hands at 12:30 in the afternoon.  You have to keep in mind that this was in 1994, before the internet was a household thing, and being from the eastern US the only way you could really get an idea of what Las Vegas was like was to visit it yourself.  I made a mental note to self that any place where you could drink outside without looking over your soldier was a place of interest, and decided that if I was ever travelling nearby I would stop in Vegas.

Two years later I was out west driving around again, this time with my girlfriend and brother, and Vegas was our second to last stop.  This trip was way different because somehow along the way we caught wind of a new hotel and casino opening up and booked a room cheap that I am pretty sure was never slept in before.  We stayed at the brand new Stratosphere and this was the Vegas I was led to believe existed from watching movies and TV.  The price was in the neighborhood of $29, and for 3 people who had spent 99% of the nights in the past month sleeping in a tent just off the road somewhere in the middle of nowhere this was baller.  Shit was shiny.  Shit was new.  Shit was telling us we had arrived at a place that treated us like we deserved to be treated.

That being said I don't remember much about the casino in the Stratosphere other than my brother, who was not yet 21, trying to sneak over and spin the slot machine for me a couple of times, instantly getting approached by security, and promptly being told to leave the casino floor at once.  A little while after that being the only Vegas veteran of the group I made an executive decision to walk downtown from the Stratosphere even though we obviously had a car.  It looked completely harmless in the Atlas and walking seemed to be the hippest of all options.  I mean we were not these people we were surrounded by.  We were not squares who busted our humps at a 9-5 only to make our way to Vegas and give our hard earned money back to these new shiny corporate owned casinos.  We did not need this new casino they were building that looked like New York City, we go to the real New York City.  We were not our parents, we get out there and walk around.

I should point out that when I say we, I really mean me and no one else thought this was a good idea.  But I had seen the lights downtown, and I was sure that taking a walk there in late August was a must do type of thing.  Needless to say once we arrived my girlfriend was no longer talking to me and my brother was pissed because he wasn't even allowed in these casinos.  It had been hot (we had been in Yellowstone the week before and saw it snow in august there), and there were some sketchy interactions with people on the street along the way.  I was not the most popular person in town, but there was a saving grace of sorts.  They had built a video screen that blocked out the sky over Freemont Street, and even the grumpiest of travelers would have to admit that that was pretty cool.

Luckily at some point in the trip I hit a jackpot on a slot machine and was able to take my non-square, non-consumer girlfriend to the Gucci store and buy her some sunglasses that she looked like a movie star in.  Looking back this is something unique to Vegas, I was an artist and a traveler who didn't shop in a mall let alone in a Gucci store.  I hated corporate america but somehow didn't mind these grandiose corporate eyesore casinos.  It was so over the top it was just in a league of its own.  A microcosm of everything that was ugly about america but somehow it worked.  I remember looking out at the view from the Stratosphere tower, and while it may have been influenced by my regular routine of smoking joints from the time I woke up in the morning until the time I went to sleep, I remember thinking while looking out that Las Vegas was a place I would come back to again someday.  Almost 17 years later I am packing up my stuff and headed in that direction.

(I nicked these two pictures from this page which has some cool old pics/history from Vegas)

Why play poker? - part 2

In my last post I talked about why I play poker for a source of income, pretty much a no brainer, especially as a side income.  In this post I will explain why I am planning to take a shot at playing poker full time.  As a disclaimer I will say that I am working on other things concurrently and poker would not be my only source of income, but it will be my main focus.  The plan is to move to Las Vegas in two weeks, grind live at least 40hrs/week, and try to build my bankroll.

Why take a shot at playing poker now?

There are plenty of people who would tell you what a bad idea this is.  From my frequenting forums like Las Vegas Lifestyle on two plus two forums I put together a list:

1. Most people fail.
2. You won't like poker as much once you start to play all the time.
3. You don't get health insurance.
4. It isn't worth it if you aren't playing high stakes and bringing in $200K a year.
5. You have to spend your days rubbing elbows with undesirables and degenerates.
6. In 5 years you won't want to do it anymore and will have nothing put away for retirement.
7. It will hurt you later because potential employers won't like your employment gaps.

These are all valid arguments and each deserves a closer look.  In my first post I mentioned that the point of this blog was not to justify my decision to try this, more of a way to keep me honest in future decisions, so this is really just my thought process for my situation, by no means am I saying this would apply to anyone else's situation.

1. Most people fail - This is absolutely true and cannot be disputed.  Human nature seems to make everyone who plays this game think they are somehow better than they actually are.  In my outlook this a win win kind of situation though, if I can't make it playing decent volume then it was not meant to be and I can move on.  If I can make it it will give me freedom to explore other options while I make enough money to pay bills.  I will also get piece of mind because I have invested a lot of time playing poker and will know for sure whether playing full time is for me.

2. You won't like poker as much once you start to play all the time - This is true of anything that I have ever done, and having known people who play for a living I realize this will probably happen.  Poker is a grind, a long game with ups and downs, but the job I have been doing for the last year and a half is also a grind and there is no conceivable way this will change.

3. You don't get health insurance - I don't have health insurance now and have only ever had it in 2 or 3 jobs I have worked long term at.  I see the importance of having health insurance, but the reality is the jobs I am qualified to walk in and get don't usually offer it.

4. It isn't worth it if you aren't playing high stakes and bringing in $200K a year - This one just doesn't add up for me.  I fear I may have missed the boat as far as getting the kind of job where one makes anywhere near that kind of money.  Can't really say much more about this besides I want to live in the world where people who say this feel certain that making good money is something they are entitled to, and feel confident it will happen for them.

5. You have to spend your days rubbing elbows with undesirables and degenerates - I don't really think about this.  On some level all people are interesting to me and annoying at the same time.

6. In 5 years you won't want to do it anymore and will have nothing put away for retirement - Sounds like my last 5 years.  This makes sense but seems a little short sighted to think that if you are looking for other opportunities that nothing else could come up in that amount of time.

7. It will hurt you later because potential employers won't like your employment gaps - If you read my Invisible Mountain post this is the kind of thing I am dealing with already. This is why I am also giving myself 3 months to see if this is a workable plan.  Also I will be doing other work so I won't have a complete gap.

There are many other reasons why palying poker full time would be a bad choice for many people.  I am going into it with my eyes open.  I have to roll to play and have 3 months rent set aside, so to me it seems like as good a time as any to take a shot.

invisible mountain part 2

In a previous post I mentioned the feeling that there was an invisible mountain in front of me, on the surface this might seem a little dramatic, but anyone who knows me knows I am not that way.  I'm not a dramatic person, far from it in fact, so the mountain is more of a self actualization than some sort of an attempt for attention.  I think the best way to describe my situation using a saying people are familiar with would be - I don't look good on paper.

The reason I mention it is because this is something I believe many people have in common, many people who find themselves in the position to have to start their lives over.  My invisible mountain exists as a direct result of me making poor choices as a young man and continuing to do this until the present day.  These were my decisions and I take responsibility for them as no person or no particular thing made them for me.  Most of these bad decisions were directly related to my propensity to abuse drugs and alcohol, but this is a hurdle not an excuse.  The bottom line is that the road is distinctly uphill at this point and I spend a great deal of time wondering if things will be any different this time.

As I plan on making a move, I do what I always do, I think.  Recently I have thought about things in a more positive light than I have in the past though.  Partially from experience, but also because I am trying something different.

Today I am thinking that personal strengths and weaknesses are not black and white, and I am searching in the grey.

invisible mountain

I woke up this morning with a lot on my mind, this is usual.  The thing getting lots of play in the rotation is that I am getting ready to move in a little more than 6 weeks and once again start over. I've got a plan, it is the best one I've thought of, but I imagine it's the kind that when you tell other people about it they immediately wonder what is wrong with you.

I'm in the shower, washing my hair thinking about moving and thinking about words.  I am thinking about where I am both geographically and overall in my life.  I can't help but think I am out of sight so I am thinking about words like unseen, covert, ghostly, unobserved and so on.  I am also thinking about what is ahead and there seems to be an unmistakable mountain to climb.  Not like a mountain with a clear cut path to the top with places for stopping and taking in scenic views from overlooks, but like a big impending obstacle of something much larger than your average hill.

So I think more about words and I come up with this idea for a name for my new blog - "Invisible Mountain". I know this is the right one, but as you can see it is not the name that I settled on. After toweling off I did a quick google search and realized that Carolina De Robertis had already wrote a book with that name.  I didn't read it, or even the whole review for that matter, but it doesn't seem to be about the same thing I was thinking about in the shower. It wasn't too much longer before I settled on Unseen, Uphill which had also crossed my mind more than once. We could have a conversation about how all the good ideas have been used, but I think that would underestimate human ingenuity.  We could also have a conversation on how cool it is that so much information is so readily available to people these days, but why derail a good thing.

Sometimes you see movies and they make you think of something new.  Other times you watch movies and you instantly connect with them because they are talking about things that you have felt and thought before.  Olso August 31st is the latter of the two, and I think even from the trailer you can see how it connects with my invisible mountain.  It is also a pretty good movie to watch if you are the kind of guy or girl who doesn't mind reading subtitles, it may have particular gravity if you have experience with recovery from an addiction like i do.

how to start a blog

I am not blogger.  Well, I guess I should say that I have never made a blog or a blog post. However, for the past couple of days I have been thinking of starting a project and I've settled on this, my own blog.

When I did a google search on how to start a blog the overall impression I got is that before you start one you need to decide what you are going to blog about.  I have failed in this effort thus far, but I am motivated to figure this out.  It will be about my life and the transition I am about to make but I hardly expect that that in itself would be interesting enough to entice traffic here.   I am in the process of starting over so I have the luxury to change things into whatever I would like them to be, and that is something.

So I guess I will start with what this blog is not.  This blog is not an attempt to justify my decision to move to Las Vegas and try to play poker for a living for a while.  This blog is not a deluded attempt to glorify my existence or to somehow validate my choice of lifestyle.  Although I will try to explain this as it may seem impossible to explain to some people.

The idea I have for this blog is that it can challenge me to think about my life in the world that we all live in and to keep me honest with my direction in it. It may start off slow but I am hoping that I can settle in to routine that includes regular updates.

I want to be hungry again.  Can a person become hungry again?