Tag: struggle

So close, yet so far away…

This trend of quoting music lyrics is starting to get out of control. Oh well. But this one describes a lot of my past brushes with deeper happiness or meaning in life.

These aren’t those moments that necessarily meant the most, but just examples that quickly come to mind.

Soon after I graduated from college: becoming established in a closer network of friends (which doesn’t happen too often). A situation that would have helped keep my depression a little more at bay. But one of the guys would always look to pick a fight every time we went out, and I just could not enjoy always wondering if every night was going to turn into possibly getting arrested for no good reason. Before long, I started to distance myself from them.

After I moved to California: met someone who I had great chemistry with. But I was still emotionally distanced, and the fact that she made things all about me (obviously some people would love that, but I need balance), combined with how my loner mentality had become more permanently established by then, led to me not pursuing anything more with her.

About five years ago: breaking out into bad 90s R&B singing along with the jukebox with a good friend of my good friend’s boyfriend at a bar (who I’d just met). As a pasty white boy, it is very rare to meet someone who knows that music like I do. After maybe an hour of knowing each other, she and I were already planning how we wanted to go to this concert soon. There was just one problem though: she was batshit crazy. I just couldn’t follow through. Even as little as I value my life sometimes, being turned into a lampshade didn’t sound good.

Three years ago: this time I DID end up at a concert I wanted. But the person with me was a total mismatch for being there. There was someone I briefly dated prior who should have gone with me. Even though I couldn’t see anything serious happening with her, it would have been just right for that particular night.

And once again, those are just a few examples off the top of my head.

This is what most of my years have been like: just on the edge of some meaningful happiness here and there, but coming up just short of it happening. Very close to being just right, but not quite enough. Whether it be friends, significant others, or simply enjoying the best things in life.

Sometimes it’s been my fault, sometimes others’ fault, and sometimes it was no one’s fault. But to this day, the theme has never changed:

So close, yet so far away.

Success of the past

I miss that feeling.

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:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8XD_5kLR2U

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.