Flat Line

Yes, that’s right. I bought a Honda Civic. It’s the 2006 North American Car of the Year. And it screams “I am BadBlood.” Doesn’t it? I turned in my other muscle car, a 1997 Saturn SL1. It needed tires, a tune up, a new air conditioner, working driver side window and probably soon a starter. Other than that, not much else was wrong.



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Back in April, I was on top of my own personal poker world. I had eclipsed my ’05 win total after only playing four months. Of course I knew I couldn’t run good forever; anybody who’s ever been on a rush knows that feeling of dread when variance will catch up with him or her.

May came and I lost a good chunk of change early, but managed to recoup all of it by the beginning of Memorial Day weekend. A break-even month was welcome after how poorly it started. I was still on pace to meet my end of year goal of winning twice as much as last year.

Then June hit. That horrible month took away a third of my year to date winnings and I’m still trying to recover. So far in July, I haven’t. I’ve been pretty close to break even for July and continue to struggle. Sure there have been bad beats, but I can say my play hasn’t been stellar either; it ebbs and flows between real good and real bad. I continue to learn new things from players whose style is 180° away from mine, but I haven’t quite managed to get back to the win rate that I’d prefer.

So for almost three months now, I haven’t done shit in poker. In my short span of playing seriously, that’s quite a dry spell. It’s a little confidence shaking, but you know what? I don’t care.

You may have been thinking that this was a lead in to another “Woe is me” post. (When I typed that, I couldn’t help but think of James Earl Jones telling his minions to nail Arnold to The Tree of Woe.) Amazingly, I’ve been able to put this torrid streak of mediocrity in its proper place.

I hinted at it in an earlier post, but basically, after last Monday, there ain’t much that’s gonna bring me down. Not the clusterfuck (quote Random101, end quote) that I call my job, not the three months of a withering poker bankroll, nothing.

So I’m heading out to Vegas next Wednesday with zero expectations except to have a good time with the friends that I’ll see. I’ll play a shit ton of poker and I’ll strive to do my best. Results will be what they will be.

I’m not saying that I don’t care about poker as much, because I’ll forever enjoy its challenge. But what I’m saying is that I won’t get so worked up about not meeting my own personal expectations anymore. Life’s too short to make yourself miserable unnecessarily.