Ye Gods, I Suck...

I manage to stay pretty busy on a nearly constant basis, but the last few weeks have been crazy, even for me. Mucho freelance work, house buying, day jobs, more freelance work, quality time with the wife and rat, messing around with artsy-fartsy stuff, and some more freelance work keeps a monkey busy. Plus the requisite amount of degenerate pokering and what-not thrown in, for good measure. All of which leaves little time for the poor, neglected totally gay online diary...

I tell myself I do a pretty good job of balancing all of the above, and for the most part it's true. I've gotten pretty skilled at juggling, constantly staying in motion, not letting the spinning plate ever fall to the floor.

I wonder, though, if the escalating game of chicken that I'm playing has some unpleasant ultimate end, as far as continually taking on projects and not being content with the status quo. Or, more simply, when do you say, you know, that's too much. Even if it's technically feasible, via much expenditure of energy.

I managed to get in about four solid hours of pokering tonight, finishing up with a bit over $2,000 in profits, after going on a pretty crazy heater. I can't even imagine what it would have been like to have a night like that two years ago, yet here I sit, pretty much completely and utterly unfazed. Worse than that, if I had to pluck one feeling out, it'd be something pretty close to "I should be grinding out more hands instead of drinking beer and typing this."

It's just odd to pause and recognize the fact that I'm driven in the same way as many of the executive types that I love to mock at work, just in different venues. All this obsessive grinding and plotting and extracting EV reallly isn't much different than obsessively analyzing and reacting to what your boss's perceived desire is, in order to distinguish yourself from your peers, get promoted, get a raise, get a corner office, blah blah blah. In the end it's all just greedy calculation designed to ensure that your pile of toys is as large as it can possibly be.

Part of the problem, methinks, is that I'm just not sure anymore that being driven in that way is ultimately an asset. It probably is (and I most definitely hope it is), but it's the sort of thing that can go either way. It's not hard to step over the line and be chasing the chase, setting yourself up with diminishing returns as far as any satisfaction you get out of things that used to be pleasurable. Especially if you keep playing for the sake of playing, grinding away just to get hours in, because it's what you're supposed to be doing. And again, maybe that's just the way things are, in the end, for certain endeavors. Not the worst thing in the world, by any stretch.

And I'm really not complaining. Really. It's just odd, to find yourself at a point that would have been more than enough in the very recent past, yet there you sit, largely unsatisfied, wanting more.

Stupid greedy monkeys.