Vegas or bust?

I've thought about things a lot lately. Graduating from college for a second time will make a fellow ponder his future. Some things aren't in doubt. Like I'm going to marry Amy Harper. I'm going to have children. You know, those big things.

But when it comes to employment, my future is very much in doubt. The safe thing to do would be to mass email my resume to every available employer within 200 miles, find a decent job and take it. Isn't that what I was running away from when I left my newspaper job two years ago?

One thing I've come to realize, even though I tried to suppress it during this past year, is that I love poker. I don't obsess over the game like the fanatics who spend all day on the message boards, 5-table online games and effectively eat, sleep and drink poker. But I do love it. Winning money playing a game you love is intoxicating. Making money writing about it is gravy on top of that.

I've gotten involved with this new Rounder magazine, which is published just up the road in Birmingham. It's a guppy in the shark tank of poker magazines, but it is improving and I think it has good momentum going for it since it was first published in January. Plus, it has a centerfold every month, and we know how horny poker players love good-looking women. That makes it stand out.

I don't see any living I make in the next few years not including much of the income coming from poker in both of the above methods. The game is just ingrained in me and it keeps me out of a tie every day. I'm looking into real estate really hard, speficially buying and reselling foreclosures, but until then it's pretty much poker.

I hadn't planned to go to Vegas this summer, unless I could win a seat into the main event. My feeble efforts proved fruitless in that regard, so now it's left to me to seek a writing job out there. Perhaps I can convince Rounder that they need some eyes and ears in Vegas. I hope so. Reading about the WSOP and listenting to some podcasts has given me the itch again, and that's an itch that's hard not to scratch.