If you're a striver like me who always thought that good things come to those who wait (and work hard), I hate to tell you, but that's not always true. And one more thing, there is no Santa Claus, or Tooth Fairy, or free lunch. What a bummer, I know, but we're talking hard truths here.
Poker will show you these truths faster than you can say "bad beat" twenty times. More likely you will be using more colorful language than that, but you get the point. You can work hard and read all the books and do everything right and then the dealer can lay down that one card, that one-outer, to take it all away. And in poker, as in life, it seems to happen when the stakes are the highest, too. When it's a cheap little "for fun" tournament (or a job application that you don't really care that much about) the cards (or the interviews) seem to run my way and my luck is golden. But when it really matters, when there's huge money on the line (or a huge job), that's when it always seems to go south.
I can get lucky in those low stakes tournaments easily enough, but when it's a $10,000 buy-in, like the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure a year-and-a-half ago, my cards will turn to luck deflectors that have been cursed to appear only with no faces, no aces, and boring off-suit color combinations. [Bad beat story coming here, I warn you. You can skip this part if you want to.] I swear to you, during ten hours of play at the PCA I never got aces, only got a pocket pair of any kind five times, and ninety nine percent of the time they were as described above--no aces, no faces, boring, boring, sad . . . sad . . . I didn't make it to the money in that tournament, but I lasted a long time, even with bad cards. So that was something, I guess, but it was just so disappointing to have my luck desert me at the most inopportune time. But, in poker, and in life, we can whine about it all we want, but it won't change anything. You just have to get up and shake it off, and then come back again the next day and try again.
That's one of the character qualities that poker helps you develop. If you don't have the perseverance and the emotional fortitude to keep trying, to keep coming back, you will never succeed. And that is what separates most successful people in any walk of life, isn't it? The ability to get up and try again after the most disappointing failures. I tell the students at the school where I work, "The most successful people are the biggest failures." This usually gets a blank stare. Then I say, "You have to be able to fail over and over again to be able to win sometimes. You have to try ten things that don't work to find the one that does. Ten interviews to find the job that's perfect for you. You have to go out planning to win each one, and it doesn't always work out, but when it does, it will be so great it will wipe out all the other losses in a matter of seconds."
My experiences with poker have taught me this over the last few years. I started out just winning a few tournaments here and there, then sometimes I would go on losing streaks for weeks at a time and I would get really frustrated and disappointed. (I HATE to lose.) Then when I would be just about ready to give up, I would win something big and get excited again. When I won the tournament that awarded the PokerStars trip to the Bahamas and the $10,000 buy-in event, it was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me in my life. I still can't believe it sometimes. Then that led to other wonderful things that have opened up a new page in my life that is all about poker. I write about poker, interview some of the biggest names in poker, and sometimes even get to play in those great events. And it's all because of that one time when it all came together to work for me, and I was there at the right place at the right time. Jung called it "synchronicity," some call it "The Secret," I just call being determined, hard-headed, and stubborn.
Life is not easy and it's not fair, but in the end, the luck evens out, and the ones who keep trying are the ones who will be around when it decides to circle back around your way. Hang in there for the long run and keep doing your best and give luck time to catch up with you. We can't win every time, but when we do, it is all worth it.
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Saturday, May 22, 2010
Monday, May 10, 2010
Life Is Not Fair--I'm slow, but finally catching on!
Before I get started I should probably warn you that this may sound whiny before it gets you where you--and I--need to be. I can't help that I'm afraid, because I have to tell you the whiny part first to explain why I now see how whiny the whiny part is.
So some back story first--I have always subscribed to the idea that if I worked hard and really applied myself, good things would come. And they did, for the most part. As I said in my bio, I have been an overachiever competitive person all my life, and it has gotten me some great gigs. Shortly after my first attempt at college, I spent twelve years in the travel business and got to take advantage of some wonderful travel opportunities. Then later, after finishing my bachelor's degree and then moving on to my masters in English, I got into the publishing business and was an editor for a major publishing company. I have owned a couple of businesses in my life and got to have a helluva time writing (and traveling) for my own travel newsletter and running a small graphics company. For the last six years I've been in the education field and work as an administrator at a private college. All of that sounds okay on the professional end, not star power or anything like that, but better than I expected when I graduated from a low performing high school where my inquiries about college were brushed off with applications to the local state run university with a sigh and a begrudging "good luck." In addition, I've had a wonderful family and a successful marriage that by all accounts, defies the odds on the personal level. So over all, a great life, but nothing really wonderful and exciting like I had always hoped and dreamed. "Don't we all," you're saying. "Grow up, honey! Life ain't all a bed of roses." I know, I know . . . and I felt guilty about even wishing I could have more, because after all, what I had was pretty good--right?
But then things started to get exciting when I won a seat to a major poker tournament that launched a new career-in-the-making-I-hope as a poker writer and marketer for women's poker. (My first entry will tell you all about this--How I Won My Seat to the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Without Really Trying--And You Can Too!) And I am telling you all of this, why? Because, as great as all that sounds, and it was/is, it's not enough. It never is. And I guess we're all that way. We all want bigger, better, more, MORE! Or don't we?
Maybe it's just me. I am always driven to improve on whatever it was I just accomplished. I'm working on ratcheting it down, I really am, and my poor husband is always telling me, "It's okay to just enjoy what you're doing. Why do you always have to be trying to one-up yourself?" But I do, and that's just my nature, I guess.
But in the last couple of years I've found it's getting harder and harder to do that. In many of the pursuits I've doggedly pursued during the last two years, I've run into brick wall after brick wall. No matter how hard I work, it just doesn't get me there. And that's a relatively new experience for me. Not to say that I've never failed at any thing--that would be absurd. But in the past, my successes have at least equaled my failures and when I achieved some of those things, the joy of the success was always greater than the sting of failure. But lately, it has been a long string of "almost but not quite," "in the right place at the wrong time," bad beat after bad beat. I lost out on a great promotion at work that everyone thought I was a shoo in for, I lost out on a writing job that I had worked very hard to pull together for over a year, I played two major tournaments and couldn't make it to the money on either one (horrible, horrible cards in both tournaments). Not slit-your-wrists kinds of disappointments, but very frustrating and very unusual for me to get that close and not be able to seal the deal.
It may be partly the economy, partly the fact that I'm not as young as I used to be, and what worries me the most--it may be that finally, my luck has just run out. I sometimes worry, and I know this is superstitious and I try to avoid that at all costs--that all the successes I've had over the years are now going to be evened out by bad luck, since as we know in poker, statistics prove that it all evens out in the long run.
Next I will tell you how poker has taught me how to handle some of these challenges in thinking and how I'm learning to accept that life is not fair.
So some back story first--I have always subscribed to the idea that if I worked hard and really applied myself, good things would come. And they did, for the most part. As I said in my bio, I have been an overachiever competitive person all my life, and it has gotten me some great gigs. Shortly after my first attempt at college, I spent twelve years in the travel business and got to take advantage of some wonderful travel opportunities. Then later, after finishing my bachelor's degree and then moving on to my masters in English, I got into the publishing business and was an editor for a major publishing company. I have owned a couple of businesses in my life and got to have a helluva time writing (and traveling) for my own travel newsletter and running a small graphics company. For the last six years I've been in the education field and work as an administrator at a private college. All of that sounds okay on the professional end, not star power or anything like that, but better than I expected when I graduated from a low performing high school where my inquiries about college were brushed off with applications to the local state run university with a sigh and a begrudging "good luck." In addition, I've had a wonderful family and a successful marriage that by all accounts, defies the odds on the personal level. So over all, a great life, but nothing really wonderful and exciting like I had always hoped and dreamed. "Don't we all," you're saying. "Grow up, honey! Life ain't all a bed of roses." I know, I know . . . and I felt guilty about even wishing I could have more, because after all, what I had was pretty good--right?
But then things started to get exciting when I won a seat to a major poker tournament that launched a new career-in-the-making-I-hope as a poker writer and marketer for women's poker. (My first entry will tell you all about this--How I Won My Seat to the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Without Really Trying--And You Can Too!) And I am telling you all of this, why? Because, as great as all that sounds, and it was/is, it's not enough. It never is. And I guess we're all that way. We all want bigger, better, more, MORE! Or don't we?
Maybe it's just me. I am always driven to improve on whatever it was I just accomplished. I'm working on ratcheting it down, I really am, and my poor husband is always telling me, "It's okay to just enjoy what you're doing. Why do you always have to be trying to one-up yourself?" But I do, and that's just my nature, I guess.
But in the last couple of years I've found it's getting harder and harder to do that. In many of the pursuits I've doggedly pursued during the last two years, I've run into brick wall after brick wall. No matter how hard I work, it just doesn't get me there. And that's a relatively new experience for me. Not to say that I've never failed at any thing--that would be absurd. But in the past, my successes have at least equaled my failures and when I achieved some of those things, the joy of the success was always greater than the sting of failure. But lately, it has been a long string of "almost but not quite," "in the right place at the wrong time," bad beat after bad beat. I lost out on a great promotion at work that everyone thought I was a shoo in for, I lost out on a writing job that I had worked very hard to pull together for over a year, I played two major tournaments and couldn't make it to the money on either one (horrible, horrible cards in both tournaments). Not slit-your-wrists kinds of disappointments, but very frustrating and very unusual for me to get that close and not be able to seal the deal.
It may be partly the economy, partly the fact that I'm not as young as I used to be, and what worries me the most--it may be that finally, my luck has just run out. I sometimes worry, and I know this is superstitious and I try to avoid that at all costs--that all the successes I've had over the years are now going to be evened out by bad luck, since as we know in poker, statistics prove that it all evens out in the long run.
Next I will tell you how poker has taught me how to handle some of these challenges in thinking and how I'm learning to accept that life is not fair.
Better Late Than Never--Right?
It has been some time since I posted on this site, and for that, I apologize. Since I apparently have only one follower, that means you, my friend, so please accept my sincere apology for leaving you hanging. However, in my defense, I did tell you right from the start that I was an unreliable narrator, so blame my obsessively focused but short-sighted commitment to things once again. I tend to get totally focused and obsessed with something, then if it doesn't lead to the immediate success, as I think it should, I move onto something else. This is something that poker has helped me with in the last few months, so if you continue reading, you will see where I'm going with all this. So if you've got the patience of Job, bear with me, and I'll get you there.
I got sidetracked by some other writing projects that have taken some time and focus. Since returning from the PCA, I got involved with writing for Examiner.com, which by the way, is a great venue for writers who want to get some exposure in their subject area. It has opened a lot of doors for me. If you're interested in seeing any of the articles about poker I've written for them (67 so far!) here's the link: Examiner.com National Women's Poker Examiner . I've also written some articles for the PokerStars blog at this address.
It has been a great year and a half since my first post about winning the seat at the PCA. If you want to know more about how all of that turned out, please see my first articles on Examiner. Suffice it to say I didn't win, but had a wonderful time. There are quite a few pictures of Atlantis and other poker venues, players, etc., on the site as well.
But now I want to get back to writing on a more personal level about the game I love (and hate!) and the challenges that result, the things I've learned, and so on. So if you're still interested in following along on what has been the most adventurous, surprising, rewarding, exciting, disappointing, frustrating, and overall the greatest roller coaster ride of my life, stay tuned. My next post will be about one of the great life lessons poker has taught me: Life Is Not Fair. I'm slow to catch on, but I think I'm finally getting it. So stay tuned.
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