1.19.10

What's this? Writing the day at the end of the day it happened? He must have been happy or something.

I am. But you'll have to read the rest of the day before you find out why. ;)

Seeing as I spent all day yesterday doing absolutely nothing, I woke up earlier than my alarm. Now this doesn't mean that I got up, just that I was awake. I don't get out of bed until the very last minute. Especially when it's raining, like it was today.

I got to work on time, and there was absolutely no traffic. Is MLK Day a big drinking day I didn't know about and everyone was hungover? Tuesdays at work (really my Mondays) are usually the busy day of the week. Cranking out checks and inputting invoices. However, organizing everything the way I did on Friday made things run so efficient I didn't know what to do with all the extra free time I had. Luckily, the rain and finding leaks in the store kept my attention for a while. Oh, and this tornado thing passing through SoCal.

I also had a random thought and wrote it down to publish tonight: Regarding the complaint I mentioned about no movies or books showing the struggles of the late twenties slash post-college, pre-career time of people's lives. On top of trying to figure out what I'm going to do with my life, it seems that this is also a time when you really learn who your family is. Maybe it's just me, but I seem to be learning things, noticing things, and tieing up pieces about my family and realizing WHO they really are as people as opposed to parents. Things that I either didn't notice, didn't care to notice, or didn't know seem to be surfacing. It's very interesting. Almost as if I see them as "other adults" as opposed to "mom and dad" which is totally weird and oddly liberating. I don't need to go into more detail about my family, but I did want to throw this out there in case anyone else is experiencing this too.

I left work and wondered what I was going to do with the rest of my night, since my normal Tuesday night volleyball was off due to the rain. I debated between two options: coming home and writing, and going to the casino.

The writing option was something that struck me midday, while having a facebook conversation with a friend. I love to write, even though I hardly give this blog any attention to detail, and considering I don't really do it that often. I don't know the difference between an adverb and an adjective - seriously, I look those words up every time and still don't remembeber which is which - and I don't know the "proper" ways to structure a sentence. Even with all of this, I still love doing it and from what I hear, a lot of people don't mind reading what I write, and some even like it. Now I don't know if this is due to the actual "writing" part of it or if it's the fact that they like to see other people's struggles, failures and triumphs or if it's something else entirely, as I just get "I like/love/enjoy reading your blog." Regardless of this, I love writing and feel like I have a story to tell.

So, for a brief moment, I thought about writing a screenplay. Not at all with any wild dream of it somehow finding it's way to some film festival, but rather something to be acted out for simple fun and enjoyment. Maybe even a dinner theater party. This is all the thought I gave to this option.

Option two, the casino, was tempting to me for many reasons. If you dig back into my blog about seven months ago, you'll read about the WHOLE reason kylerevans.blogspot.com even exists; the casino. Since then, I've only gone to the casino once. For those of you that know me, you'll know how hard this is for me. In fact, I just shook my head in bewilderment at the thought of that.

I decided to go to the casino. This time with a different attitude than I've ever had. An adult attitude. Instead of playing the normal table games, I wanted to play a tournament. I've never busted out of a tournament without at least making my money back, so I decided to give it a chance. In fact, in my mind there was absolutely no way I could leave the tournament a loser. These single tables are too easy. It was a $135 buy-in and I played smart and ended up taking third. I won $190. I could have played more aggressively, but I really wasn't getting any good hands. In fact, I could have not even shown up, and still taken at least third. Seriously. I guess I preyed on other people's impatience, when they used to prey on mine.

When I used to go, I'd try and force hands and end up leaving the casino down at least $200 and fuming. This time I used patience and the knowledge and skills I know I have. I generally don't lose unless I'm playing like an impatient moron.

After the tournament was over, I decided to go and play some table games and test out my endurance on patience. I sat and played for a solid two hours. I only lost my patience once, when I called with a K-9 suited, because it was the third time in a row I had it and thought I'd get lucky. After losing the hand I realized that one can't THINK they'll get lucky. You do or you don't. I got back on track and played what I thought was great poker.

This is where two things happened that haven't ever happened with me before. I left early and with more money than I brought in! I have left the casino a winner before, but only after long hours, winning BIG and running or being forced to leave as I was with other people. I've never sat and played for a few hours and left up less than $100. I used to have the mentality that it was better to risk losing $40 in hopes of winning over $100 and coming home a loser than to leave with "only winning" like $60. Today it was like I had a four hour job after work and got paid about $15/hour. That's A-OK with me. Oh and I had dinner.

This may seem very strange to some other people, but to me, it showed me that I could control my actions and reactions 100% better than I could seven months ago. Could I actually be growing up? We shall see!

Time to go watch American Idol and go to bed. Until tomorrow, there's day 19 of 365.