Monday, December 4th: School's Out

Two weeks ago, I did something that I had never done in the 2.5 years since I began playing online: feeling that I needed to do some preparation for my last set of law school exams, I withdrew every penny I had from every site where I play (which wasn't all that much, since I was still licking my wounds from one of my top 2 losingest days ever: -16K / yuck). And I didn't play for a whole 5 days. Cue the band.

But the good news is that as of last week, I am -- believe it or not -- a law school graduate, rendering the title of this blog somewhat inaccurate...or at least misleading (since i guess I'm still technically a 'dropout', albeit one that returned to school and finished up.) The past few weeks have been rife with activity, some good, some bad: birthday #27, conclusion of formal education, grandmother's unfortunately rapidly-deteriorating health -- a lot of stuff going on in my head. A ton of stuff I'd like to write about, so I'd imagine the next few posts will kind of run into each other, and might at times seem a tad disorganized. But such is life. At the very least, they'll come at more frequent intervals: the past couple weeks were a bit of a blur, since I was trying to make up for the past few months of academic delinquency.

I'm 27. I have without a doubt dragged this school thing out as long as freakin’ possible, and I've come to the following conclusion: I don't want to hear any college or grad school kid ever complain about how much "school sucks", or the like, because the fact of the matter is this: school rocks. I miss it already. The only people who say that and actually believe it are those who have never held down a real job -- the kind that gives you 2-3 weeks of vacation / year. Don't feel like going into work? Hung over? Just all-around lazy? Too bad. The freedom you get in school is like nothing you'll really ever experience again, so don't take it for granted.

Sidebar: In the 2+ years I've been part of the 2p2 community, I've noticed an interesting little evolution in the tone of responses to posts from kids who are thinking about dropping out of college, or taking some time after high school to play poker full-time. The general responses those posters used to get were very pro-poker, along the lines of: 'go for it!', 'strike while the iron's hot', 'don't let your parents tell you what's best for you!’ Funny to see how the standard response has changed in a somewhat-encouraging, or at least more responsible way. "Stay in school, idiot!" is the new official 2+2 party line when it comes to "dropping-out"-type posts. Could it be that 2+2 is growing up?? I don't think that's all that misplaced a suggestion either: the 19-20 year olds who were the high-volume posters a few years ago are now 22-23, and it's actually somewhat refreshing to see that the more poker they've played, the more they've come to realize the importance of a having (at the very least) a college degree in this world. Of course, that's not the only factor that has fueled this new attitude: the legislation, of course, better competition and decreased win-rates have really drilled into our collective minds the precarious nature of this golden-egg.

Being completely done with school, and just sitting here without any responsibilities or deadlines is a strange feeling. It’s somewhat reminiscent of how I felt after I moved to New York after undergrad…and it didn’t really phase me until I’d been there a week or two, and settled into my apartment, and I was walking home after work one day down the tree-lined street, watching a couple kids shoot hoops in a park, and moms push baby strollers, and then it hit me like a ton of bricks: This is my life. This is it. This was where the charted waters ended. I had somehow made it 22 years without making any real decisions for myself: primary school, high school, college (as if any of those were an actual choice), and then I had interviewed for and accepted a consulting job in New York. Maybe one of the most well-worn paths ever trodden, and there I was: “free” for the first time ever, and at the same time petrified, suddenly wishing for some kind of structure or safety net. That’s probably one of the factors that led me to enroll in law school in the first place: it was in many ways the ultimate security blanket: study hard, pass the bar exam, and go work for a law firm, and there’s really no way you won’t be a millionaire in 10 years. It's a fool's paradise that I've written about many times. So it’s somewhat strange now that I’ve more or less soured on that career path to be sitting around wondering just what direction I’m going to take my life next.

I've been battling some really frustrating demons the past few weeks as I contemplate the crossroads that I’m at, and I take stock of all the differently-situated people in my life. All my good law school friends graduated in May (as I would have had I not taken a semester off way back when), and have been working at their respective law firms for anywhere between 2 and 8 weeks. It’s been interesting to observe how they’ve all adjusted to firm life, many of them being flung into 70-hour work-weeks within their first 10 days on the job. Nearly all of them I’ve spoken with had to go into work either 1 or 2 days of this 4-day Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Some of them hate it, others claim not to mind it, while others take a bit of a helpless approach, acknowledging that their #1 priority is paying off their law school loans within 3 to 5 years, and viewing Big Law as the only reasonable option to do so. All the while I watch the situation unfold with binoculars from an ocean away.

While I don't know if the following is related, for maybe the first time ever, I’ve been overcome with a desire to do something worthwhile with my life. Something from which I can really derive a sense of pride. A lot of people frame the issue as one about contribution-to-society, and expend a lot of mental energy evaluating whether playing poker is any less of a contribution than many other so-called “respectable” professions: stock traders, real estate brokers, etc. I've often contemplated the same. But lately, I've felt driven by a different need: the need to do something worthwhile with my life. And perhaps it's just a semantic switch, but the idea of a "worthwhile" life strikes me as different than merely making a contribution.

In the first few months I kept this blog (immediately after I had left law school), I posted a lot about how frustrated I was that most people in the field of law seemed to be so unhappy and unfulfilled, and I did a lot of soul-search about the importance (or potential lack thereof) about choosing a profession that contributes something toward our society.I look at my fellow law school graduates now, and instead of evaluating the actual importance of the roles they are playing as cogs in the legal machinery of our society, I have begun to realize how high a value I place on doing something that gives me a sense of pride. It’s even a little refreshing to see that even when my friends are bitching about the hours they put in, they derive a sense of pride over what it is they do for a living, and it’s got me thinking that there's only so much pride one can take in being an elite poker player.

When I was working in my consulting job prior to law school, I remember asking one of my coworkers what she most wanted out of her career, and her life; e.g. what she thought would make her happiest and most fulfilled. And she gave me a definition that, while I didn't quite realize it at the time, I have yet to see equalled in terms of personal resonance: She said that whatever she did, she just wanted to feel as though she were applying all of her natural and acquired talents to the maximum of her ability. We're not all blessed with the athletic talents of Lebron James, or Sydney Crosby, each of whom was being touted as a potential superstar as early as the age of 12. Nor do we all necessarily possess the intellectual capacity of a Da Vinci, Einstein, Hawking, and so on. So what? Does that mean that we should just throw in the towel because we'll never equal those prodigies in their respective strongsuits? Of course not! The only way we "lose" in this game is if we don't put what we have been blessed with to optimal use. I've been blessed with some pretty impressive natural abilities, but I've also worked my ass off to get to where I am today, and poker, while it has fulfilled my intellectual and emotional needs for the past few years has simply been doing so to a lesser and lesser degree of late. I'm certainly not at the top of the food chain, but I'm damn close, relatively speaking. It just doesn't challenge me like it used to. "Challenge": that's an interesting concept. It's the reason I've taken (and then quit) jobs, left girlfriends, changed majors, traveled abroad, etc. I need it. I crave it. Poker has fit that bill for quite some time now, perhaps because it contains such an instantaneous and measurable barometer of progress, but I'm wondering if I've taken it nearly as far as I can. The fact of the matter is that I've got 2 Ivy League degrees. Is poker really the most worthwhile contribution I can make to this world? Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't, but this much is sure: if you had told me when I started at college that the career path I'd choose would be one that could be mastered by high school dropouts (Negraneu) as readily as Stanford PhD students (Ferguson), I would have wondered whether my life had taken a wrong turn somewhere! Making money was a very important objective of mine when I was younger, but it's funny how actually reaching certain financial summits has made realize how important other life pursuits are as well. I can’t play poker full-time for the same reason that I would turn down an offer to pump gas for the next 10 years, even if it was accompanied by, for examle, a $5 Millino / year salary: it’s just not the reason that I’m here. Creating and nurturing a solid academic foundation isn’t important solely for its ability to command a healthy income, but for producing, creating, improving, teaching. Sigmund Freud, when asked what he believed was the meaning of life, responded “to love, and to work." When I'm on my deathbed and I'm asked by my wife, or grandchildren, or spiritual advisor whether I'm satisfied with the way I spent my life, I'm faintly beginning to grasp the idea that I want a tangible body of work to look back upon that will allow me to say "I took my God-given abilities, and I used them to the absolute best of my ability. " And the question I find myself asking more than any other of late is to what extent teaching myself to be an expert poker player will contribute to that, if at all. These thoughts I know are pretty jumbled at the moment; I dragged my feet for a good week in making this post, fearing that not everything would come out as eloquently as I would like, but decided to go ahead and post it, and hope that perhaps when placed in context along with the next few posts, they'll contribute to a more complete picture.