Digging Out

“You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair.”
- Douglas MacArthur
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It snowed for fifty straight hours last week in Boulder, dumping about two feet of snow. The ferocity and duration of the storm did not behoove October, but in Boulder, nothing that comes out of the sky is a surprise. I had a conversation with a friend a week ago about how Boulder has the best weather because it is so fleeting and heterogeneous. Nobody really wants to live in sunshine all the time. You see it all here, and you might see it all within the same day.

The glorious plateau has come and gone, and I am back to the uphill grind. Living alone and gambling for a living is not for the faint of heart. Just when you think you might be starting to figure things out, it snows again. Last year we started seriously betting NFL games, and the gambling went as smoothly as could be expected. I had designs on relying on football season for a significant portion of my income, hopes that each Fall would come with an assurance of pleasure and profit.

This season the pillars we depended upon in ’08 have crumbled and we find ourselves in the red. I still believe, unlike many, that the NFL can be beaten, but there certainly isn’t any measure of reliability this season or in the future.

The single life is as fickle as the Boulder weather. Ecstatic bliss, utter despair, fresh hope, crushing devastation, amiable assurance and nerve-racking anxiety can all be experienced within the same day. This all used to be so relentlessly traumatic for me. It will always stress me out – just as it will always afford some measure of excitement – but hopefully without those dire moments of hopelessness. You see enough snowstorms, you know that in time they will all melt away.