I am now officially scheduled to get moved out of my apartment at the end of the month. After a visit home for about a week and a half, then it’ll be time to drive across the country and learn more about if I can still move back to my target city (in the current world of Covid getting worse again).
Assuming that the country doesn’t shut down more again before then. But I’m trying to stay optimistic.
I actually prefer the journey more than getting to the destination. Because as I’ve mentioned before here, staying at hotels while you travel alone is my favorite escape from life. Your troubles seem to cease being relevant for a short time, because you feel less obliged about fixing your life (when it’s not possible to do much about them from a distant hotel room).
The little things about getting to my hotel’s town for the night give me the small joys that life often doesn’t:
Seeing what options there are for dinner. Bringing some snacks, a small pint of milk, a 20 oz drink back to the room too. Turning on the TV and finding Jeopardy or a game later on (well, back when we had sports before the last four months eh). Seeing the different local channels that you never have before. Laying there in the dark and soaking it all in.
As it feels like the universe has stopped functioning around you for the next 12 or 18 hours. Just you and your temporary shelter off the beaten path.
It’s all a much-needed relaxing tonic.
Before the difficulties of returning back to the real world.
Drove by the apartment building where I lived during my 20s during my first stint in the city here that I’ll be leaving soon, and one of those times flashed in my memory. I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned any stories from my advantage gambling past here, so here is a quick one.
It was the first round of the 1997 NBA playoffs. Had been less than a year since I graduated college, so I was still getting my feet wet in the real world. Though as an avid sports fan my whole life, I felt a lot more seasoned than age 22 in that regard.
Normally a pro’s sports betting advantage comes from a more statistical approach that’s based on the current “market” of the betting lines. It’s usually way too difficult to predict what’s going to happen in sports, so that was not something I tried to do very often.
This was a rare exception to that rule.
The series between the Seattle Supersonics and Phoenix Suns was going to a deciding final game, and the underdog Suns had barely missed a chance to win the series at home in an exhausting overtime battle in the prior game. Seattle was a team that you beat by matching their high energy and competitive level (moreso than with precision on the court with your gameplan), and the Suns had given their all throughout the series so far….only to come up just short of finishing the Sonics off.
Now they had to travel back to Seattle and try to come up with one more big effort against a superior team, and there wasn’t going to be anything left in the tank, either physically or emotionally. I think even the Phoenix players knew it.
Seattle was favored by 9 points in that deciding game, and that seemed like a lot of points on the surface (given how competitive the series had been). But given everything described above, I knew the Suns would likely have a tough time staying anywhere close.
I found the best deals that I could on every Seattle way imaginable. To win the game, to win by more than 9, to win by as many as possible. Probably would’ve even taken their mascot to beat up the Suns’ mascot that day if I could’ve.
As the game came on that day and I watched the Sonics’ awesome player intros (bobbing my head to the music), you could feel what was going to happen. It’s now 23 years later, and to this day I’ve never felt as confident in my prediction of a basketball game as that one.
If you’d like to relive what I felt at that time, watch from about 4:10 to 6:10 here:
Seattle won easily, 116-92. You can imagine my look and feeling of satisfaction afterward.
But that feeling had nothing to do with a gambling “high”; it was all about feeling that I had an edge. Not just in this aspect, but in life as well. Even though it was only one game, it felt representative of what I could accomplish as a whole.
And for the next 10 years, that turned out to be true. Before I lost my way ever since.
As you might guess, I spend too much time thinking about the past. Maybe it’s because I hope that at some point, that will spark me to relive it eventually.
It was one year ago today that I started this blog.
The hope was to find more motivation and focus to tackle my issues. That hasn’t really happened. At least it doesn’t hurt as an outlet, though.
And during that time, I have acquired a reasonable amount of followers. Some have disappeared in recent months, as people either move on or get weary of seeing my continued frustrations being expressed! The blog would grow some if I let my creative writing abilities flow here, but that’s not usually my purpose for writing here (look back to these entries from my past baseball days for an example)
I’m not going to get into new life details at the moment. Not much to update anyway since the waiting game to resume life might continue (given the latest COVID concerns).
So, for now I just wanted to thank everyone who has been a regular reader and left their “like”s. I know I haven’t written the kind of material here that really leads to any comments, so any acknowledgements that someone might be helped by reading about (or relate to) my struggles are appreciated.
No idea how long I will continue to blog, but regardless, I wish everyone the best for the next twelve months as well.
This time I’m talking about actual nighttime dreams (rather than life hopes). Sadly, mine are often as much of a struggle as my life itself. There are a handful that happen on a regular basis, and it’s not too tough to figure out why I have them:
Trying to control a car from a distance. So bizarre. It’s like I have a slight two-dimensional view of what I’m driving in before long, and am trying to guide the car remotely. Usually a bad crash in the making.
Reason: My fear of being in a horrible car wreck that’s mostly out of my control
Being back in school (high school or college) and not having assignments done. Leading to feeling like I’m not going to graduate and other issues. I probably have this one more often than any other, and strangely it’s the one without a very strong reason for it, because I never stressed about any of those things back then. I did leave grad school without getting my degree, but I’ve never cared about that either.
Reason: this is the only dream that I really have to speculate. The best answer I can come up is how I’m not comfortable with my lack of work ethic and tendency to procrastinate until the last minute to do tasks (and that even though I never got burned doing that in school, my concern about those habits being a big problem are manifesting this other way in my dreams)
Starting out at a dorm in college. This one is more recent and is happening more and more. I often know that I am actually in my mid 40s as I have this dream (and how weird it is to be back in a dorm), but that still doesn’t stop me from hoping that it will work out. Things don’t get too far before I wake up.
Reason: Hello midlife crisis and wanting to go back to the good years.
Checking a stock portfolio (on AOL, because that was the time period when I was usually trading securities instead of other financial instruments, right after I graduated from college.) Sometimes the stocks are doing well, and sometimes they aren’t. But I’m usually feeling good about the overall picture in this dream. Only to eventually wake up to my sad reality of the last dozen years: that there IS no portfolio anymore.
Reason: An obvious one. Longing for my past days of success in the market
And now, my trademark dream. Also the one that has haunted me for the longest:
Struggling to get somewhere or to escape someone who’s after me. This one is fairly frequent and it’s always on foot. The locations are places like malls or being in my hometown (these never seem to involve my many years living in big cities). Sometimes it’s like I’m a kid again, but often I’m an adult in these dreams. And I never get where I need to be before I wake up.
Reason: I’ve never found what I needed to have the right life, and am still struggling to.
I may not write about the world around me all the time, but I’m always just as aware of other people’s lives as my own. Occasionally I find myself envious of the few who genuinely have a worthwhile, fulfilling existence.
Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of those people out there. It only appears that way. Can’t tell you how many supposedly ideal white-picket fence family lives are actually a miserable struggle beneath the surface. You just don’t see that side of them too often.
A perfect example of this was a 20 year high school reunion that I went to about six years ago. It wasn’t even anywhere near my own reunion, but I was the guest of an alum and it was where many of my best college friends grew up (so I fit in even easier than some people who’d gone there).
Once drinks began to flow, a former friend of my old friends introduced herself and started hanging around. It wasn’t long before she was showering me with compliments about how “at home” I seemed at their reunion, despite how it also became apparent that we were polar opposites (she was a married mother of three who teaches in a christian school; I am a perpetually single heathen). However, this didn’t keep her from starting to announce how much she “loved me”.
And as you might guess, those announcements became more frequent and more emphatic with every drink that came our way. As did her attaching herself to me.
Did it matter that her husband was AT the reunion with us? Apparently not. She paid virtually no attention to him all night. And one thing I’ve learned over the years is that losing alcohol-related inhibitions doesn’t just have to do with things like losing yourself in the moment and having sex (which we did not do given the circumstances, despite the obvious mutual attraction).
Losing those inhibitions also shows something far more innocent, but much more important: who you actually want to be around. Whether it’s who your true friends are, or who you truly desire. I’m not going get into further details as to why she wasn’t interested in her husband; suffice it to say that the story fits well beyond how she acted that evening.
So it was clear that her short time hanging out with me was an escape. An escape from someone she didn’t really want, and probably an escape from a life that she felt uncomfortably trapped in (despite how her family life appeared so ideal on the surface).
The night ended. Nothing more than flirtation happened. I went back home the next day. We remembered the bond that was there, though: two highly different people with vastly different lives. But who still connected and shared one vital thing in common that meant more than any of that:
The need to get away from the life we’d built for ourselves. Even for just one innocent night.
The last couple days have just been filled with catching my breath after the awful week that I just wrote about. You know what’s just as bad as once again losing too much of your wealth, pride, and future options?
How it makes you feel so down about life again.
Even though my prior upswing wasn’t really earned, it still helps a lot to just feel better about something going well again. You play more upbeat music. You look forward to the next day. You smile more.
And you have more hope.
Now, that’s stripped away again for the time being (at minimum). Things will be a lot more stressful and questionable in the upcoming months too. It won’t be easy to hold on, and I’m not sure if I will. Every day could be a ticking time bomb. You just don’t know which one it will be.
Late last night, my demons finally won out again for the first time in awhile. I had a very big setback and ate a huge loss. As usual, the kind of thing that there was absolutely no excuse for.
The bad news is that a lot of the large recent post-inheritance gains are now gone, which basically functioned as an unexpected early boost to my new-life work capital and as a nice cushion for starting life over again soon . And the chances of making that back anytime soon are very slim.
The good news is that I can still follow through with those life-changing plans and work for myself again, although now that situation just got more tenuous. The money that I expected to use for that is still there.
Also….as difficult as this latest huge setback and failure is to take, there’s a factor that makes it easier to stomach: I shouldn’t have even had so much extra already to begin with, because most was made by just getting lucky in the very short term. If I’d given up a lot of hard work where I “earned” it doing things the right way, that would be different. But that wasn’t what was going on lately. My market trading has been off in recent days, and I simply got lucky for awhile doing other stupid shit to make up for it.
Obviously that doesn’t excuse what happened last night, but it’s still how my mind sees the overall picture. And at the moment, I need to stay as positive as possible to keep from completely falling apart and ruining my future again.
So, where does that leave things going forward? First are foremost, STOP the latest downhill avalanche here. Especially since my career freedom is likely still at stake. Find some solace in how I’ve acquired a valuable sports card collection (which I don’t plan on selling much of regardless, but still). Take that collection, my inheritance, and the small gains from it that are still left, and prepare to move later this summer. FORGET what just happened. Or at least keep it from affecting future decisions.
Life would be so much easier if I wasn’t a wreck…..
I’ve talked some in recent months about having to juggle the various career options that will soon be in front of me. But I’ve never really mentioned just how much I want to lean toward working on my own again.
For those who know me, that is no surprise. I’ve never been the 9 to 5 type, because that means dealing with…..well, people. And more importantly, bosses. While I’ve always gotten along well with anyone around me in an office environment, the people thing still isn’t for me.
And, well, bosses. Probably shouldn’t even get started. Do I have a problem with authority? You could say so. But it’s not because I can’t handle being told what to do; it’s because so many human beings with power don’t have the character qualities necessary to handle it well enough. And I’m not the type who can easily sit back and let poor treatment just roll off my back.
The other main reason that the real work world isn’t for me is that the strengths of my skill set are perfect for making a living on my own. Unfortunately, as anyone who’s read this blog knows, my faults can just as easily destroy that advantage. Still, it’s always felt like that balancing act is what’s meant for me. Always will be.
So, the good news lately is that I’ve made some strides toward having that freedom again. Recent weeks have been very helpful. And I actually should have done a good bit better; a great trading opportunity wasn’t nearly capitalized on enough. But, the reason for that is that this particular trade was more of a gamble worth taking (as opposed to something where I had a safer advantage). Given my current situation, I felt like I needed to play it more conservatively. Should have done that in a different way that allowed for more upside, though.
As you can see, my world is still an ever-changing mess of ebbs and flows, ups and downs.
Also still have too many of my destructive urges. I’ve battled through them (and, at times, gotten away with them) lately, but that still doesn’t make it ok. I HAVE to find a way to have consistently better discipline. Just being so-so that way won’t cut it. Especially since I have a little more to lose now than I did not too long ago.
The life doors I need to get through aren’t open yet, but now they’ve been unlocked and cracked again. And it’s up to me to take advantage of this (likely) final chance to get through them.
Because I can’t afford to fail one last time. Either financially or psychologically
Most kids grow up dreaming about their future. It may be the usual possible ones (a big house, a spouse and kids) or the one in a million goals (playing in the World Series, winning the lottery). But it’s usually something along those lines.
Not me.
During my childhood, I never really thought much about what I wanted as an adult. Sure I hoped to somehow be successful and enjoy life, but I just wasn’t the type who spent any time zeroing in on exactly what I wanted. This led to me applying to the wrong “target” university at the wrong time, and then to changing majors after my first semester at the large university that I did go to.
At that point I had some more concrete direction for the first time, but there was still plenty to learn. About 10 years after that, I left to go after my first life “dream”. And, well, look back to my “California Dreamin” entry to see the unfortunate result of that.
So…..where has that left things since on the dream front for about the last dozen years? In a very strange place. And one that’s hard to explain. While most people (even as adults) still yearn for nice things, power, a loving spouse, children, and so on…….those are the last thing on my mind.
What is there for someone in my situation to fondly wish for?
A total lack of responsibility. Combined with a complete escape from living much life. Sitting alone in a modest hotel room day after day. No work and few (if any) people to stay in touch with.
Only leaving during the day when it’s necessary to get food or run an urgent errand. Only leaving during the night to take a walk when it’s warm outside and there are no sounds but the cars passing by and the ticking of stoplights changing. A life that mostly shuts down your senses.
Because living in a mirage of escape is much easier than living in the real world.
Earlier today, things were alright for awhile (er, yesterday, considering it’s 4:15 AM now). Logged some extra info for my probable upcoming endeavors. Decided to talk to the manager here tomorrow about whether or not we’re all going to break protocol and just have me keep my apartment for an extra month or two while the world is stopped. Got some good dinner.
Then, the news came out about the US staying shut down until at least the end of April. Talked to my mom and learned some new info from a good friend. Didn’t take long for things to change.
For the first time since I can remember, I actually felt lost. Figuratively. Even with all of my issues, I usually feel calm and informed about future possibilities (regardless of how good or bad they might be). But this time, the uncertainty of not just my, but especially everyone’s, future has taken my mind on an uncomfortable path. Because despite all my demons and current life difficulties, I always feel like I have a rational baseline for myself and the world around me. So this is not something I’m used to.
As some of you know, there are so many parts of life that I literally have lost. Those constant reminders keep me down enough, so I really don’t need the figurative version to join in too.
So much negativity. And I detest sounding this way, because I don’t like spreading that mood to other people or coming off so whiny about it.
But at this moment, I am feeling less hope than I ever have. About myself and the rest of society. For both current and future times. And I imagine that some will think cliches like “as everything seems bleakest, that’s when it’ll turn around when you least expect it”. The thing is though, I just have a sense of irreversible doom upcoming instead. Not anything earth-shattering all at once, but still a fairly steep decline.
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