Saturday, October 14: Mind the Gap

Something has been on my mind of late: it's one of those things that you don't really notice as you're taking baby steps up the rungs of the poker ladder, until you get really high up and see how much distance you've put between yourself and the 'masses'. I'm not referring to poker skill or the like, but rather to the incredibly warped perception of personal finances I've developed, as compared to the general public. I mean, the chasm is so wide and deep, I feel like I can barely see the other side anymore. Let me pause to make a critical distinction: I'm not talking about a "having money" vs. "not having money" mentality; this isn't a rich vs. poor thing -- I don't really think I'd qualify as either, to be honest. I just mean that the fact that I can win or lose $10,000 in a day, and still sleep just fine at night is a tad bit frightening, and requires developing a mental fortitude to be able to alternate between one's "poker" and "non-poker" mentalities. You might be saying to yourself -- as I did, when I first began playing for high(er) stakes: "well, treating money capriciously is just a personal weakness that some people have, but I certainly won't ever fall victim to it. I'm never going to let money change who I am." And it's true: I think I've done a pretty good job of staying true to "who I am" and the responsible economic values with which I was raised. But as time has gone by, and I've become more accustomed to winning/losing amounts equal to most people's entire annual paycheck in a matter of days, I don't know whether I should fight this "big-money complacency" or not. In many ways, it's the catch-22 paradox of what I wrote about 2 weeks ago: to be successful playing high-stakes poker, you've got to develop an emotional neutrality to the amount of money being wagered...and at the same time, that very neutrality only widens the emotional disconnect that you develop between yourself other people away from the poker table (aka "real life"). I really didn't count on anything like this: flipping the emotional on/off switch when it comes to money has turned out to be trickier than I expected.

Am I making a big deal out of nothing? Maybe, but maybe not -- I've taken a few classes about leadership/work/life/happiness (kinda foofy subjects i guess), and a common theme that emerges time-and-again, is that those people who are happiest and most fulfilled by their lives are those that don't just look at their jobs as impediments that "get in the way" of their enjoyment of their real lives, but rather view their employment as part-and-parcel of who they are. It's the people who have really developed a synergistic relationship between the two such that their home, family, work, and social "spheres" are not separate but rather critically intertwined. The classic picture of the father who comes home at 6pm, and turns off "work dad" to become "home dad" is no longer the optimal picture, says this synergistic perspective. That's not to say that that approach "doesn't work", but it doens't compare -- in terms of life fulfillment -- to the guy who's developed a synergy between work, family, friends, and spirituality, such that he never feels like he's sacrificing one at the expense the other, but rather that his rising tide is lifting all ships. But the "compartmentalized dad" exactly what I'm running into with higher-stakes poker. At first it was an unabashed positive force in my life, and my friends saw it too. I was doing something I loved, I was happy, more pleasant to be around, and feeling good about, well, everything...but more and more I've found it necessary to turn off my "poker brain / money mindset"...a move that's largely antithetical to the synergistic approach above, which preaches harmoney among life domains.

Here's a really dumb example -- I've got a friend here who lives a few miles away, and when I go to over there, instead of waiting for the bus (which takes around 45 minutes including waiting time), I just zip over there in 10 minutes for a $20 cab ride. After a few of these round-trip taxi junkets, she asked incredulously: "I don't get why you don't just take the bus...I mean, where are you getting your money from?" Now she knows nothing about my poker-related income; as far as she knows I'm just a law student without any kind of job on the side. I mumbled something about having saved up some money from my job last summer, but in the back of my head I was thinking "geez, I can't believe she's putting me on the defensive for a half-dozen taxi rides? I can't even begin to imagine what the line of questioning would be like if she knew the full extent of my poker hobby." At the end of the day, I guess I'm just saying that this world of high-stakes poker is a bizarre little corner of society; and there's no explicit 'changing-of-the-guard' that signals your entry into this club: it's not something that really hits you right away, until you look back over your progress, see where you've come from, and appreciate just how much emotional distance you've put between yourself and the "normies". But it's a story that really hasn't been told yet, and hence is largely foreign to the general public, even to the point of being incomprehensible. I mean, people "understand" the story of the elite investment banker or lawyer who slaves away for a decade, makes partner/MD, takes home a million-dollar paycheck, moves to the nice neighborhood and sends his kids to private school. They've heard that story before. Just like they've heard the one about the guy who inherits a nice chunk of change from a dead relative. Or the kid who's fortunate enough to be born into a wealthy family. Or even the Silicon Valley secretaries who all cruise around in Jaguars because they just happened to receive some Yahoo stock options in 1995 as part of their salary package. These stories "makes sense" because we've heard them before, and can wrap our heads around them. You could tell even a stranger that you were the fortunate beneficiary of one of the above scenarios, and -- while they might be a tad jealous -- they'd at least understand the scenario as one that happens from time to time in our crazy world. But the story of the middle-class white kid who logs onto the internet, clicks mouse buttons for a few hours, and logs off $5,000 richer is one that's only now becoming understood, because this is, in a very real sense, the first time our world has ever seen it. In a bizarre sense, I'd almost rather admit to any of the previously-described "understood" scenarios than to my poker reality, even while at the end of the day they might all result in a some sort of financial windfall.

The following words were once immortalized by rapper Mase: "It's like y'all be talkin' funny, I don't understand language of people with short money." (Sidebar: funny the corners of popular culture that have provided conversation fodder for my blog, from Mase, to WWII documentaries, to Mike McD, to Montgomery Gentry, to Joseph Campbell) And while there's no indication he meant for that lyric to be taken as anything other than: "I'm so much richer than you, you pathetic punk," the white-guy interpretation is that it's emblematic of the emotional distance that newfound financial independence can create between yourself and others. Australia's culture makes this dichotomy all the more relevant, because I find that the difference between upper class and lower class here isn't anywhere near what that difference looks like in America. Maybe it has to do with the salary scale; first-year lawyers in Manhattan will take home $180,000 after bonuses. First-year lawyers here will earn the equivalent of around $55,000 USD. It's not that there aren't rich-folk here in Australia, but that the chasm between the rich, middle-class, and poor isn't anywhere near as jagged as it is in the US. So I guess what brought on all these thoughts of late is the fact that my life right now is a real curious hodge-podge of people, cultures, and social circles: I've got my friends who are starting their law careers in the US, my new Aussie friends, both those in school, and those working minimum-wage jobs, friends in Canada, some of whom have gone on to respectable careers since high school nearly a decade ago, while others still live at home with their parents, some of whom are married, a couple who even have kids. I feel like I'm at the center of a bicycle wheel, looking down each individual spoke and seeing a different set of values, life strategies, and degrees of financial independence, and I just keep whirring around in a circle, having to constantly readjust my demeanor depending on my audience. And it's sometimes exhausting.