Saturday night a group of us were walking to catch the T to meet up for a birthday bar crawl in Faneuil Hall downtown Boston when I noticed black writing on the side of what looked like a white garage wall. The writing looked like the lettering of a Times Union heading and read "Be The Change You Want To See." At the time, I didn't think much of it as I had to catch up with the group. The night passed with no thought of it; not until I left Mohegan Sun 24 hours later.
After a couple drinks and a couple hundred dollars gone in painful poker fashion (dwindling for 4 hours then getting it in preflop with pocket kings to be snap called by pocket aces) I had a long two hour drive back home. I'm not upset with how I played or the fact that I had lost a couple hundred dollars; that's nothing in the scheme of life. What I was upset about was the lack of prep I've been doing in multiple facets of my life. What came back to me on the ride home was what exactly "Be The Change You Want To See" meant to me and how I would want to answer that question "[because] at the end of the day, there's only one person looking back at you in the mirror, and that's one person you don't want to cheat." This summer felt like I was truly being me and hitting my potential. All I was doing was self motivated studying, working out and being active with the people around me. Since then, I feel like I've been cheating myself in the smaller things of life.
Programming
Football
Growing up I enjoyed playing pickup football however I was never allowed to play unless I got straight A's. Needless to say it never happened. Once I hit college I went gung-ho for lifting, training and walking onto UMass Football. After a season with a semi-pro team I made it as a walk on tryout for UMass. The rough part, I was deemed ineligible due to my semi-pro coaching staff and the grey area between semi-pro and pro. So instead of doing daily practices at McQuirk with the UMass team, I'd do my own workouts nearly daily to keep me in shape for both semi-pro and intramural. This photo I would have to consider my high point in the college career of football. Last eligible undergraduate game I could play in we were in the championship and won 47-27 after trailing at the half 27-26. A couple months later I didn't even finish my season last year with the Storm (semi-pro). Explain to me how somebody can go from eating, sleeping, breathing football to 6 months later not even finishing a season? I can't explain it either and on the ride home I couldn't help but think that we're only fortunate enough to play for so long, may as well capitalize on it. I had been going to the gym consistently since early January but of these past three weeks I've skipped two full weeks of workouts. The change I want to see is one where I go to the gym a minimum of 4 days a week and can get back into the tryout shape I was in for UMass. Plus it would be nice to get all the tone back that I had when I was 19/20. This will be the biggest self test I can put on myself since it is easy to give into the fatigue from work and other mandatory errands. Engineering
Yes, I do this 40+ hours a week so I can imagine the question coming to mind. "What could you possibly want to improve upon here?" Well simply, I'm not talking about in work engineering; the atmosphere there naturally has a "do better every time you do something a second time" improvement feel. This topic is referring to my lump of a drive train motorcycle that's been sitting in the backyard here for 3 years now. I do have goals for it, just the hard part has been finding time and the budget to do what I want to it. Ideally I'm going to replace the shifting linkage and the gaskets then retrofit a buggy frame and go-kart-esq controls it. Nothing like a back yard beater for when I'm bored on a Saturday BBQ.
Aside from the beater bike, I've been trying to find a niche for something on the public market that I could develop and produce some prototypes of in my backyard or in a local machine shop. It would be nice to get my name on a patent or two (maybe even have the next $5 invention that everybody wants/needs). For this I just have to keep my mind and eyes open, you never know when you'll stumble upon something that alters the direction of your life. I want to see 4 hours a month spent into either research and development of something brand new, or 4 hours a month spent fixing up the motorcycle engine or designing the specifics of the buggy.
Poker
Well this just came full circle. In this case it's not a bad thing to end up where I started since a positive absorption of the experiences of the path taken has occurred. Its easy for a poker player to stew over a loss or a bad beat at the poker table, but only the greatest players (and thinkers) ask themselves "what went wrong and how do I make sure it doesn't happen again?" In this instance, I'm not regretting my play but rather the fact that I've watched 0 hours of poker advice or televised content. I used to have a residential housing job where I sat at a desk for 9 hours a week doing nothing. During those 9 hours I watched YouTube uploads of the World Series of Poker, High Stakes Poker and any other televised free content of poker. It was to the point where if I came across the show on actual TV I could list what was going to happen in the hand once the cards were dealt. I'm talking I could list the river card and suit then what the players were going to bet (and I could see why). I didn't watch it for entertainment, I was truly trying to get inside their minds. My roommate at the time told me to get a hobby, that was my hobby. Since Black Friday (April 15th, 2011) where they shut down online poker, I hadn't watched any content on YouTube, ESPN or CardRunners. Off the top of my head I can't even list who has won the past two Main Events. Seeing first hand the difference between studying via CardRunners (a GREAT source of poker tutorials) and grinding out thousands of hands vs taking the game as a time burner I wonder why I let my competitive nature slip my grasps. "You gotta think of it as war." Towards the end of my drive when everything else had gone through my head I realized it was a preparatory issue. It's like football, you can't expect not to run for 2 months and then be the fastest, most endured person on the field. The change I want to see in poker is that I spend about 4 hours a week either playing lower limit local games or watching TV footage/CardRunners clips or something of the nature to get inside the minds of some people who play poker for a living. Once I feel that my preparation has put me back to a higher thinking and playing level than I am at now and I have set aside enough money aside to bankroll 1/2 I will then jump back into casino action. Poker is a hobby, but a hobby is supposed to be fun and let's face it: if you're losing money, it's not fun.
Finale
For those that stuck with the entire post there's a few observations that I've made while writing that I feel are worth taking away from this. If you think about it, whenever you read a textbook or take a test for a class, all you're doing is learning or reciting information that was formerly inside somebody's mind. Society was built on absorbing some pre-existing foundation of knowledge with some innovations here and there. Whenever you learned how to use an iPhone or iPod, you were simply getting inside the mind of Steve Jobs. Then there's the app developers who add to the device by first getting inside the mind of Jobs then building upon it. Get inside the minds of the greatest people of the trade you enjoy and figure out why they excel while others try to play keep up.
On the ride back just outside of Hartford and into Springfield I noticed dozens of billboards and other various advertisements. I almost felt as if I was in the movie Minority Report (video clip) being blasted by corporate America. It's easy in today's society to tune out everything that we aren't on a mission to see or do since everywhere we turn our attention to we're likely to have an advertisement thrown at us. However, if I had just not looked around to absorb the surroundings in Boston, I would never have taken the time to read the graffiti. Take the time to absorb details and let them sink into your conscience thoughts; you never know what you might find, or more importantly what you might learn.
It's easy for people to think of a bazillion ideas that could be thrown at a problem to solve it. There are also some people who are just the grunt workers that do some of these ideas. However the most successful people in life are those who are thinkers and doers. These are the people that see a niche or a void in anything, solve the problem and then build a team to tackle it.
In today's competitive society if you're not always on your toes somebody will run you over whether metaphorically(poker/programming) or physically(football/crosswalks) and not think twice about it. Take the time to prepare, practice, learn and figure out a way to be the leader of the pack. Even if times get tough, keep to your guns, self discipline and determination to formulate a way to change for the better. "Look up, get up, and don't ever give up" because that Change You Want To See is in front of your eyes every day it's just a matter of seizing the opportunity.
