Field of Dreams?

I watched the aforementioned movie yesterday, right before the Braves opened their season to a butt whooping to the Marlins, and I noticed some similarities between Ray Kinsella and myself. He plows up several acres of corn to build a baseball field and after he's done lies on the field with his wife and muses, "I have just created something completely illogical." Later, when convincing Terrance Mann to go to a Red Sox game with him, Kinsella says that despite his seemingly crazy notions, he is the sanest person he knows.

I'm one of the sanest people I know as well. I stayed close to home for college, got a steady job in state, bought a house because it's good to put down roots and a better value for the money than apartment living. I get up, go to work every morning, come home or go play poker and enjoy my evening, go to sleep and repeat. It's as sane as it gets.

So why am I going to do something "illogical" like quitting my job and running across the country to play poker, a game I haven't been able to win at in the last two months? Andy Beal noted in his latest letter to the Corporation, the group of poker players headed by Doyle Brunson that he is challenging to another heads-up match, that it's like the question about why people climb mountains or parachute from airplanes: “Anyone capable of even asking such a question could never possibly understand the answer.” What does it mean that I both ask the question and can't answer it?

As I seek an answer to my question, the more I think the year off is not as much about poker as it is about seeking the purpose of my own life and re-discovering the things that are most important. I'm not a scientist, but I'm going to propose a hypothesis of what I will find in the next year. I'll find during my search for poker glory that the humdrum nature of everyday life isn't so bad -- that the things that sometimes drive us batty are the things that keep us going and happy to wake up the next day and begin again. I may have more freedom to go where I want and do whatever I want, but I'll miss the structured environment that keeps me disciplined and responsible. I'll miss the camaraderie of friends and co-workers, mowing my lawn on a Saturday afternoon, sunsets over the river. I'll realize that life is passing me by and I never knew it. Or maybe I'll just win the World Series of Poker.