CARDRUNNERS

Hey all:

Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving break.  I took 3 days off at the end of last week to be with my family.  It was really nice as my Grandpa came to town, as did my aunt + uncle, and a number of cousins.  We sat around, drank a ton of wine, ate lots of good food, and sang our little hearts out.  It was really cute :)  That's what my family does when we get together...we sing!

Things were not too eventful until Saturday night when I had my 5-year High School reunion.  Okay, I'm old...yea.  It was really nice, but also, well, so weird.

There were of course the people I never really had any interest talking to, and still didn't.  There were some kids who were unbelievably immature five years ago and are now kind, hard working, and successful (there's no justice in the world).  There were a bunch of people who I wanted to see, but never showed up.  And then there were the people I was always friends with who are doing really interesting stuff.  One of them, an MIT grad, just launched a website called Jobstick.com which is founded on a mathematical algorithm which he wrote that pairs law firms with perfect candidates in the same manner that Match.com or eHarmony suggests mates.  Seems pretty cool.

But what makes it all weirder is that I went to a small school.  My graduating class was 79.  And the elementary school, middle school, and high school were all connected so that I've known everyone since 3rd grade.  And now, with very few exceptions, I see them once every five years?  I've noticed the same thing hapenning with my friends from college.  Many moved away and I've already started losing touch.  Others live in New York, but I'm too lazy to make any effort to hang out with them.  I don't think most college students realize how good they have it, living in dorms or on campus, and close to everyone at all times.  It just makes life so enjoyable.  Now, most of my nights are spent alone, or with my girlfriend.  I still have friends, but I'm no where near as popular as I used to be.  It's depressing, but also a function of working from home and working long hours.  I don't feel like going out at night as frequently as I used to.  Maybe I'm just getting old.

Well, as this is certainly a sad post, I'm going to cut it short.  It's just hard to believe that 10 years of my life are now summed up in a three hour gathering once every five years.  Is this really what it all boils down?  It seems really unfulfilling.

Love,

Ezra 

Towards the end of my junior year of high school, I became convinced I wanted to go to a business focused college. I had had a couple good experiences with Junior Achievement and then won a scholarship to Pennsylvania Free Enterprise Week. I was all gung ho that business and entreupreneurship was it. When I selected my colleges to apply to, they all had to have decent business schools. I ruled out some good liberal arts schools because they didn't offer a good business major. When the results came back, Bucknell University, one of my favorites that I had visited, accepted me as a student, but rejected me in their business school. I was very disappointed, but ultimately chose Bucknell because I figured I could transfer into the program later and it was a smaller school than some of the other schools I got into.

I'm very glad that I ended up at a liberal arts school. Ultimately, it turned out I relished the opportunity to take classes in many areas of the college. I eventually selected the loosest major at the college, International Relations, because It was so flexible. By graduation, I ended up with philosophy and psychology minors, while taking french classes. The International Relations major was just being formed at Bucknell, a combination of political science, economics, world politics, and geography without strict guidelines in place. It allowed me to pursue my lifelong interest in African Studies. While it prepared me for no particular career, it exposed me to so much. It taught me critical thinking and respect for many different beliefs. It gave me the foundation to approach the world as I found it apon graduation. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I was well prepared to process what I would eventually encounter. It piqued my interest in traveling, which I did in subsequent years.

In retrospect, I was immensely appreciative that Bucknell didn't accept me into their business program. Today, I'm deeply immersed in everything business. I owned my own small business, an art gallery, for 12 years before CardRunners. Now I manage a thriving online business. Seven days a week, I handle the various issues that all small businesses face. The skills that I count on the most are those that I gained as a result of my liberal arts background. My expanded world view gives me the best perspective to evaluate and eventually decide what choice to make. While business school can teach you many aspects to the theory of business that will help you advance and prosper, world experience and intuition ultimately prevail for the successful entreupreneur.

Trevor and I are helping train the new admin, Caroline, this week.  She is getting settled with Taylor and Andrew in the Chicago office.   When I look back, some of my most enjoyable moments have been training people at CardRunners.  I have always enjoyed getting to know them, sharing information, and explaining things to each of the new employees.  From a psychological perspective, it feels good to impart knowledge of any kind to a willing subject. 

I think it harkens back to the days when I was a teacher and tutor.  After I graduated from college, I was unsure of what I wanted to do.  My younger sister had been in a ground breaking alternative educational classroom setting and the teachers were very supportive of outsiders contributing.  They allowed me to volunteer in the classroom (7th grade) the next year after I graduated.  They were very understanding and supportive of my career uncertainty.  The next semester, I took a few night classes to complete a post graduate teaching certificate for high school social studies.  Fortunately many credits transferred in from undergraduate degree.  I ended up spending the entire year working with these incredible alternative teachers and doing my student teaching there.  For some reason, I was set on teaching at my old high school, reputed as one of the best public schools in the state.  There were no openings in the Social Studies department so I worked a year as an associate teacher at the high school in an attempt to get an in.  I was never interested in being a substitute so I didn't go that route or settle for a school setting that didn't have top quality standards.

I tutored middle school and elementary school aged students, on the side.  I found that I really enjoyed one on one teaching most of all.  I have always most valued individual interactions in all social settings.  This may even have something to do with my difficulty with multi-tabling poker online or why I didn't want to have a lot of kids.  I feel easily stretched and distracted if pulled in multiple directions.  With one person to focus on, I give my all to optimize the interaction.  I ended up working in a start up business and met Mrs. Zimba there, which changed my life and direction.  That is probably the origin of enjoying the training aspects of employees during my years running the gallery and working at CardRunners.

I've been noticing lately that I've just been way too stressed out. I think this has to do with a lot of things, mainly poker and law school. Law school is designed to be stressful. They assign a ton of work, and then use the Socratic method in class which basically means they randomly call on people and drill you about the readings. I've never been a big participator in class, so this was a little bit of a different feeling for me, but I'm getting used to it, and am no longer embarrassed when I just don't know the answer to a question. I'd much rather just say I don't know the answer then waste 10 minutes of class time BS'ing like a lot of students do. I also think that this semester's schedule for me has been particularly rough. Last semseter I had 9am's once a week, this semester I have them 4 times a week. It's a brutal difference since I commute about an hour each way to and from class.

I've thought about moving into Brooklyn, but just don't think I'd be happy with the decision. I live in a really good size one bedroom apartment in a really quaint town in New Jersey. I get to have a car, and living away from school allows me to get away from law school when I need to. I also spend about 500 in maintenence costs instead of about 1600 in rent alone if I were to live in a place half the size in Brooklyn. The down side is the commuting during rush hour on the way into school. I usually get out in time to beat the rush hour home, so that's not too bad. I think I've finally gotten into a good groove though. My laptop is all fixed and I can use it on the bus in the morning to hash out notes and review things.
So hopefully the stress from the first few weeks of the semester will die down soon.

It's odd that when one aspect of your life acts up, other parts are likewise affected. For me, poker has been so swingy as of late, mostly because i've been forcing myself to play way more than I should be. I play basically whenever I have a free hour, simply because I'm not sure when my next free hour will be. I think this is a really terrible approach to the game. My time management over the past month or so has really been subpar. I also think that setting goals has a lot to do with it. I try to force myself to win, and this is a really poor attitude to take. Recently I've been feeling like I need to rush to move up the levels, when in fact what I'd really like is to post a few green months in a row.

So today, I've approached things differently. I got a decent night's sleep, got up went to school, reviewed during the commute, nailed a few questions in class, prepared my wednesday reading, went to my second class, came home, wrote 2 cover letters on the busride home, relaxed, napped, ate some food, watched some tv, ran some errands, all without thinking about playing a hand of poker...and it felt great. I'm going to do some reading now, and then maybe i'll put in a session. I also think that my development as a player has really come to a screeching halt because I"ve been playing far too many tables. I'm going to limit myself to 4 tables from here on out so I can really analyze table dynamics. Hopefully the results will show from this new approach to things...

It's about 3:30 in the morning. Tonight was pretty bizarre on all fronts, so I'll rehash it since i'm pretty bored.

Ezra is back in the city and wanted to meet up, so he and shira came out to meet up with me and my contingent of law school people. I was really happy to not only see Ezra but to finaly meet Shira as well, since that monk hadnt been in NY for a while and Shira was in Israel while I was in Vegas. The two of them met me at my law school buddy's place, and as soon as they walk in Ezra has a "hey i know you moment" with my buddy's roommate. Apparently they went to school together and actually spent a semester abroad in Florence together. small world. After hanging for a bit, we headed to another friend's apartment which was just overloaded with law school people. I can definitely understand why the two of them needed to bounce after a while of hanging around. It was really great seeing them though.

With ezmogee gone, we all headed over to this bar floyd's since BLS (Brooklyn Law) was having some sort of shindig there. Well it was packed....to the brim. We got in and met up with some law school people and shot the shit for a while, before deciding it was really just too crowded. So a group of us headed over to our local bar and just chilled for a while.

One of my really solid friend's is out of town and his girlfriend actually wasn't feeling to well, so I walked her home and am currently sitting in her apartment making sure she makes it through the night alright. I'm kinda bored but have internet and my laptop so all is alright in my world.

Also to add to all of this randomness I ran into one of my best friend's from elementary school on the street as I was walking around brooklyn heights and he joined up with us.

It's been a long one...

Love peace understanding.

-Mike