A Wasted Life...

I ran into a poker player that I knew from back in the poker heyday of 2005-2010. This player had done remarkably well in that time frame and had cashes well in excess of seven figures. Today, he's broke and struggling just to make ends meet... living with friends and family... roaming... searching for the glorious life he once had. He told me how he had fucked it all up. How it was all his fault. How he gambled thousands away in the pits. Loaned the wrong people money. Spent it on partying and drugs. I was going to write a blog piece about him (keeping his name anonymous) and talk about his wasted life. And then a realization hit me. My life was a wasted one too.

Now I'm not wanting to turn this into another pity party like my last entry, but well when you've hit middle age and are reflecting on your life, it's easy to do so, so for the few of those who read this, bear with me and my apologies.

I had a life with so much potential and promise and I've pretty much thrown it all away. Don't get me wrong, I love getting to write about poker and I'm happy to be doing it but, and this is a big but, I know I could do better. Well at least at one point in my life, I could have.

While I might post photos of me winning/cashing in a poker tournament here or there, for the most part I'm a pretty modest guy. I post those mainly because I'm insecure in many areas of my life and crave attention. Sad, I know, but it is what it is. Here are some things most people don't know about me and this isn't bragging, it's just evidence of my wasted life:

-- I have a genius level IQ
-- I scored an 800 on the math portion of the SAT
-- I scored above 170 on the LSAT
-- I was accepted to Harvard Law School (but turned it down because I couldn't afford it)
-- I had a 4.0 GPA in undergrad

So yea, all that does is clarify that I'm smart. Whoopity-Doo. Being smart gets you no where in life if you don't do something with it and I haven't done a damn thing with it, and probably never will if I 'm being honest about it.

I'm lazy and an underachiever plain and simple. Yes, I can work six 14 hour days in a row covering poker tournaments but when it comes to accomplishing the things I am capable of, I'm a sloth.

I have a MFA in Creative Writing and won top fiction honors from my graduate school. What do I have published? Absolutely nothing unless you count some obscure poker fiction I wrote for pokerpages.com back when I was working for them.

I once had over six figures in my online poker accounts and was a profitable player for over five years before Black Friday hit. I taught people to play, wrote regular strategy articles for countless publications, was hired to run a mentor program at an online poker school, and made my living off of solely poker for over five years. One of my students once called me "the best player no one's ever heard of" but I've done nothing with those skills other than turn it into a semi-permanent job covering the poker tournament circuit.

I went to law school for two years and quit to play poker. I told myself, and everyone else, that it was because I didn't want to be a lawyer and loved the freedom that poker brought me. While that's true, the bigger reason was I was just too damn lazy to want to work 14 hour days as a lawyer.

So here I sit, three months away from my 45th birthday and what do I have to show for my life? Other than a great girlfriend, a nice car, and a roof over my head... nothing. I'm running out of money and the bills are getting harder to pay. Eventually I will run out of money and be forced to look for a "real" job but who wants to hire someone that hasn't worked in the work force in a decade and whose degrees are in English and Creative Writing?

I'd love to play poker full-time but that's easier said than done. I can't play online because of our ridiculous government and I don't have the finances to even attempt playing live. I don't even know if anyone would back me because it's not like I am some 22 year old internet whiz kid (even though I feel like I could play with any of them) and my live success is fairly limited to small buy in tournaments, many of which are not documented.

So where do I go from here? People say it's never too late. My Mom was living proof of that as she ultimately went to Harvard Law School in her mid 30's and became a successful health care attorney before succumbing to cancer. I feel that it is too late though. My teeth are falling out from not going to the dentist for fifteen years (lazy), my finances are mediocre at best (lazy), my future is bleak and there is only one person to blame for it all. Myself.

And so it comes that I realize I've wasted my life. I'll keep living. Keep moving on day by day. But deep inside I know, that I failed to do what I was capable of doing and that I could have been so much more.