Vince, Can You Believe This? He’s Reaching For Chips!

It has been a rough couple months.

Eight weeks ago I got sick. Flu. Someone told me they got the flu and they were “80%” three weeks later, still coughing. I laughed. I don’t get sick often, and I certainly don’t get sick for more than a few days. Four weeks after I got sick, I was still coughing. It was getting better, though. I went yurting, and I went snowboarding. My cardio wasn’t there and the altitude gave me a headache, but I did okay.

Then I got sicker. I felt weaker and the cough intensified. I called the doctor’s office, and a nurse told me I had just exacerbated the flu. Be patient, she said. This one takes time.

Two weeks later I was still sick. I went to the doctor. Bronchitis, she said. Here’s some antibiotics. I took the antibiotics, I drank fluids, and I tried to rest. But I’ve had trouble sleeping. My puppy has had diarrhea. And sometimes I would wake up thinking about this girl, and couldn't get back to sleep.

Another devastating rejection. The circumstances surrounding this one are rather distressing, particularly difficult to digest.

During the last two months, I spent a lot of time watching tv, contemplating what I did to deserve some of these awful things, and thinking about why I’m unhappy. The conclusion I came to is something I’ve known for years, but never quite faced head-on: I spend way too much time watching tv and thinking about why I’m unhappy.

I have many good friends. Most of them are relatively happy, or so it appears. I have studied them carefully during this time, looking for patterns of lifestyle, searching for ways I might be able to improve my own life. I lump my friends into two categories – those who are settled, and those who are unsettled. The settled ones have their lives roughly where they want them. There are things they would choose to change, but they are more or less satisfied with their place in life.

The unsettled ones are working hard to make their lives better. They have problems, but they zero in on them and attack them quickly. Some of these people work very hard. They are so involved in the things they are doing to make their lives better, they spend little time thinking about their hardships. They have setbacks like everyone else, but are able to quickly get past them because they move on to fresh pursuits.

I have been living the life of a settled man, but I have no reason to feel settled. It is natural for me to be complacent, to sit back and let life unfold in front of me. Typically I have done just enough to maintain a satisfactory existence. I have enough good things going for me that good people gravitate towards me without much effort on my part, that I rarely need to go the extra mile to get the job done. I have “enough” friends. I date “enough.” I do “enough” good things with my life. I write “enough” quality material. I work hard “enough” at what I do. In the back of my mind, I have deemed this good “enough” and done little to change my life. But no more. I am not happy “enough” to continue on this path.

There is no reason why I cannot be happy. My situation is exceptionally favorable. I have the physical, mental, and financial means to do whatever I want, to accomplish everything I have ever wanted to do. So during this moratorium, I thought carefully about what I most want to do deep down, the sort of things that I have always wanted to do but never had the courage or the desperation to really do right. There are three things I am going to do in 2010, things I have wanted and expected to do as long as I can remember:

1) An all-out assault on tournament poker

I vividly remember watching World Poker Tour for the first time in the summer of 2003. I instantly fell in love with the idea of traveling the country and world playing the biggest poker tournaments, chasing the dream, putting it all on the line and maybe, eventually, finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. And I am still in love with that idea.

The rainbow/pot of gold imagery may be fantastical, but this world does exist. You can play half a million dollars worth of poker tournaments in one year if that’s what you want to do. You can win or lose a fortune along the way, and one of these extremes may well be my destiny. But it’s not the money that excites me about the circuit.

It’s the competition. There is nothing that appeals to me more than competing at the highest level, and I have that opportunity. I owe it to myself to go all-out for one year, to give full effort to this one thing I love, to tangle with the best, to compete as hard as I can and let the chips fall where they may.

Here’s a tentative itinerary for the first half of the year:

Jan 4-12
PCA
Paradise Island, Bahamas

Jan 23-26
Southern Poker Championship
Biloxi, MS

Feb ?
FTOPS
Online

Feb 23-28
LAPC
Los Angeles, CA

March 1-3
WSOP Circuit
Council Bluffs, IA

March 8-10
Shooting Star
San Jose, CA

March 11-16
Wynn Classic
Las Vegas, NV

March 20-23
Hollywood Poker Open
Lawrenceburg, IN

April 11-15
WSOP Circuit
St. Louis, MO

April 16-22
Five Star World Poker Classic
Las Vegas, NV

April 25-30
EPT Grand Final
Monte Carlo, Monaco

May ?
Pokerstars SCOOP?
Online

May 29-July 10
WSOP
Las Vegas, NV

2) Writing a book

In third grade, when other kids were trying to master a complete sentence, I wrote a story about aliens that was over a hundred hand-scrawled notebook pages long. In middle school, outside of schoolwork, I spent hundreds of hours writing a third of an action novel about a prison hostage scheme. For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to write a book. Yet I have never written one, even though I have the ideal means to do so. I am in a situation where I have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

I wasn’t ever sure if I had the material to write a compelling book, but a few weeks ago I finally pieced together a structure that should be conducive to my strengths as a writer while appealing to a broad group of readers. The book will parallel my experiences on the poker tournament circuit with my experiences on the dating circuit. The two worlds are not as different as they may seem – the more I think about it, the more I think I can juxtapose the two simultaneous quests for the Holy Grail in dramatic, engaging fashion. Much of it will be first-person but the book will also feature several character profiles supporting the thesis that most professional poker players are brilliant in one area but lacking in others. There will be history, scrutiny, anecdotes, interviews, and mostly real-time trials and tribulations as I plunge into both these worlds. The story will be far more compelling if I have any success in either venture.

I haven’t spoken with an editor or publisher. The goal right now is just to get one book under my belt.

3) A dramatic lifestyle overhaul

This is nebulous, but it essentially means being more social. This will be the hardest one to tackle, as I was born an introvert and have traditionally avoided uncomfortable social situations. I am a good man and a likable guy, but not enough people know it. I have many ideas and strategies to get around this issue. Much of the book will be about facing and hopefully overcoming this dilemma. I have instituted several checks and balances – one of which is the book itself – to ensure the completion of this social renovation.

New Year’s is my favorite holiday because it clears off the muddled slate of another underachieving year and provides symbolic liberation. I am not in high spirits, but I can see light. There is hope, great hope. I do believe I can turn my life around if I work hard enough. It all starts Monday in the Bahamas. I will be staying with The Gambler, a man whose recent troubles make mine look like a float down the lazy river at Atlantis. I can't wait to write the first chapter of the book, of 2010, of my new life.