Thursday, March 30th: Gettin' older

Just nice to be settling back into the poker groove after taking most of March off (because of various travels and the PPM cruise.) Funny thing about the 3 week break: I didn't miss poker one bit. It was a great break, and I'm pleased that I brought a non-poker playing guest on the cruise; kept me out of the ship's poker room.

As I enter the twilight of my law school career (for any newcomers: I originally titled this blog "The Law School Dropout's Poker Blog" because I did leave law school in Fall of 2004 to play full time, only to decide later to re-enroll and finish up), I am pleased to say that I'm pretty happy I returned to school, even while I'm pretty sure I won't be practicing law when I'm done. The fact is that I'm extraordinarily happy with nearly every facet of my life right now: I've got some financial security for the first time, I'm about to get a JD from an elite law school, I've got a group of great friends I feel truly blessed to have met, and all is well on the family front. Although I have never been all that religious, I even feel that I've gotten somewhat more philosophical and spiritual recently, a benefit that I think I owe largely to keeping this blog: it has really allow me to explore the values and beliefs that have played a huge role in my life (and I thank you for following along.) There's a well-known book (whose title escapes me right now) that analogizes all the various domains of one's life to pie-shaped slices of a circle...and roughly speaking encourages readers not to neglect any one domain, so that you can "fill in" each slice of pie to complete the circle and "roll" merrily down the path of life. Slightly juvenile perhaps, but it's just another way of expressing the importance of maintaining a well-balanced life...and I do indeed feel like I'm living a rich and fortunate existence at this time in all respects, save one: the romantic domain. It's a theme that I did not plan on discussing here in this semi-public forum, but I don't think that I can neglect it in good conscience, because it plays just as central a role as do the other life themes I've discussed here. Nothwithstanding my efforts to sidestep the topic, many people have recently left comments hinting that my thought process regarding many of the ideas I've discussed here would change drastically once I had a family of my own to support -- I think despite my initial reluctance, I should address this topic here.

While most I think would agree that at 26, I'm still quite young, the fact of the matter is that I'm not 17 anymore, and I've recently begun to feel a stronger and stronger impulse to find love and have a family. It's been a really confusing, and in many respects difficult last few years. As strange as it seems to admit, I've simply become bored with miscellaneous hook-ups; I don't even 'try' all that hard anymore when I go out with my friends, and even when things fall right into my lap, so to speak, I'm not even all that enthused about them. Whether this is just a function of 'growing up' or something else, I don't know if I've ever been more cognizant of a shift in life goals and attitudes. I've never really had much trouble meeting and dating women, but damn -- when I think about it, it's been an awful long time since I've been in a serious relationship with a girl I really cared about; call me sappy, perhaps, but I miss being in love, and I agree wholeheartedly that the views I've expressed here have been made almost exclusively from the vantage-point of "single-guy," and I'm sure can't be cleanly extrapolated to a life comprising the richness of the marriage and child-rearing experience. Do these themes have anything to do with my poker experiences to date? Not quite sure -- but if there's one comment from the hundreds that have been left in this blog with which I think I can safely say I most identify, it's the one that offerred bluntly: "Find and marry a good woman. The rest will take care of itself." As much of a blessing as poker has been in my life to this date, proving both financially and often intellectually rewarding, I can't escape the thought that any happiness it has brought me will be dwarfed many times over by the fulfillment of finding a soulmate ("a", not "the" -- or at least that's how I look at things), and raising children. I'm sure the preceding has been partly fueled by the fact that most of my friends are either married, engaged, or in long-term relationship, and as any man will attest: the 'relationship' grass is always greener on the other side. Age is a funny thing -- from the time a man reaches his early 20s onward, there's really no concrete reason why the number of days he's been on the planet should have much of a bearing on what his life aspirations should be, and yet it seems that society rigorously dictates what is supposed to happen, and when. You're 'supposed' to graduate from college in your early 20s, take an entry-level position in your field of choice, get married in your mid 20s to early 30s, throw yourself full-force into your career to build up a nest-egg, maybe buy a house, then procreate sometime from your late 20s to late 30s. I often ask myself what would happen if my parents told me one day that I actually wasn't born in 1979, but rather in 1976 -- which would make me 29, when I had believed this whole time that I was 26. Would that change who I am, fundamentally? Would it have a bearing on how I evaluate what I've achieved to this point in my life, or what I haven't achieved? Of course not, but it's so hard not to fall into the mindset of dwelling on where along the life continuum you're supposed to be, given your age. And right now, the relationship bug is weighing heavily on my mind.

The above are thoughts that I had kept mostly to myself, simply because, well, they're private, and self-actualized though I am, nobody likes to put their insecurities on display for all to see. Last year I watched Comedy Central's "Richard Pryor: I Ain't Dead Yet" special (before he died, of course), and while it didn't feature Pryor at all because of his failing health, it had a lot of other comedians commenting on his work. One of the comments that stuck in my mind was a guy who said that what he admired most about Richard Pryor was that while most comedians (and in fact most people period) do everything in their power to hide their faults, Pryor seemed most comfortable when he was standing up on stage confessing his own fears and insecurities to an audience of thousands. He was, in a word, real. Leaving poker for a moment, I think one of the biggest epiphanies I ever had in my life -- probably around the age of 18 or 19, was realizing that everyone is insecure. It had been so easy, until then, to imagine that I was the only one who was unsure or embarrassed about my shortcomings -- how was it that everyone else, so it seemed, talked and acted so confidently and effortlessly?? But it's all just an illusion -- everyone is insecure about some facets of their personality or life; it's just that some people have learned to hide it better, and it's that ability to conceal that our backwards society often rewards because so many people mistake it for underlying self-assurance. I think I've tended to gravitate in life toward those people who are candid and forthcoming in their interactions, even if it means they risk people rejecting them, and it's something I've worked to improve myself, which I'm sure has been evident in parts of this blog, this post included.