And the winner is ...

Sleep. I was pretty ready to call it a night last night at around 10 last night, but didn't want to break my streak of staying out till at least 3, so I went out against my body's better judgement. I feel pretty confident writing off the entire night, similar to what banks are doing with the NINJA loans they've been giving out over the last couple of years (on a separate note, I'm pretty angry about not having gotten one of those loans. Pawn shops aren't being so friendly these days). You can usually tell it's going to be a pretty rough night when you order your first drink and the bartender responds with, "Damn, dude, you look pretty tired." Hey man, that's why there's coke in the rum.

I spent a good chunk of daylight time out in Brooklyn yesterday, moseying around park slope, boerum hill, and brooklyn heights. I realized two things pretty quickly; one) i don't really want to live there because it's at most 10-15% cheaper than manhattan and two) it's a really nice area and i can see why people want to live there. The area screams "neighborhood" and "chillax", even more so than the upper west side.

About 8 years ago I learned a really valuable lesson from a sit-com which I've been trying to apply just very generally recently. I think it's from the fresh prince of bel-air and it goes something like this:

"There's two types of people in the world, people that watch things happen and people that make things happen. Which type do you want to be?"

Incidentally I had this flipped around on me while playing pool downtown last night, when a totally random girl I hadn't even looked at the whole night literally pulled me out of the game so we could make out. Needless to say, the other girls in her bachelorette party were none too happy.

Irresponsible

The last two weeks I've moved from a manic whirlwind of productivity into an anything goes, fun at any cost mode. I'm actually pretty sure I've overspent last year by now and I've still got a day to go. The only remotely productive thing I did this entire week was roll my weekend workout from 2 sessions into one (same distances, just no break).

Everything else has definitely had a tinge of reckless (remember that move from the Kingdom under Fire X-box game? You press a button and this giant tribal ogre jumps in and starts going ape-shit). Doubling down on my natural gas short until every day was producing thousands in profits/losses. Drinking on an empty stomach to excess. Doing that instead of working really hard to finish models. A care-free attitude towards girls that works so well Im very much excited to go out to bars these days and meet everyone I can (it's nice to connect with friends of friends, but it's a great rush to meet someone totally new). Laughing when I see a friend play the field and lead girls in circles. The stamina for being out is way up; out until 4 a.m. two nights in a row and I wake up early anyway so I can workout before I try and make it three.

Valentine's Day Eve

This year the Valentine's day weekend spending got moved up one day - into a blur of countless overpriced drinks, pep talks, hookah pulls, barely audible conversations, dancing, and a schizophrenic DJ playing the most random songs ever. This morning was definitely one of those WTF just happened mornings. Especially after I noticed that my almost brand-new camera had gotten totally bitch slapped by the oversized hipbone of the one fat girl at a lounge full of gorgeous women. That wasn't a grenade, it was full-out carpet bombing.

Being single I've definitely become more observant, and despite the fact that I fell asleep on the cab ride over and back, a couple of things definitely stuck out:

1) A belly dancer with a belly bigger than my head, and not because she was pregnant. Which would still be weird either way.
2) A girl (we'll call her Kate) who, besides being short, worked in finance and hated it! She'd rather be waitressing. Kate some people are just too smart for their own good, but you do get to live by yourself because of it.
3) Girls at work greet everyone by kissing, which incidentally is how they do it it Buenos Aires as well. No puedo creer lo que mis ojos me dicen.
4) CNBC pajama gram commercial is strangely kind of a turn-on these days. The reason I say strange is because this commercial has been playing for the entire year and a half since I started watching the channel regularly (around V-day it gets played 50 times a day) and I always thought it was hokey.

For a good cause

It was bound to happen, I finally missed one of the workouts in my two-fer schedule (the after work run). A few drinks with good company will always come first for me.

I'm not exactly worried about this becoming a slippery slope (as one of my co-workers joked), but swimming in the morning after drinking isn't going to be the most fun in the world. Actually my main concern is that since I've started working out it's actually harder for me to sleep, because the physical exhaustion no longer overwhelms the beehive of activity that seems to be all up in my mental grill. Last night I kept waking up during a slideshow dream, in which I pictured moments from my day, people from the past, and motion captures of me doing menial daily chores.

Donzo Donuts

Coming back from my run on the west side pedestrian highway, I noticed that the Dunkin Donuts on the corner of 9th ave and 41st street, a veritable landmark, was closed. Things never stop changing around here. There's now a barber shop a few doors away offering "men haircut 12$". There's been at least 3 stores in that front over the last couple of months.

One thing that hasn't changed is that the neighborhood is still grungy. I came home yesterday after work and was in and out of the apt, ferrying laundry back and forth. The same bum sitting on my doorstep asked me 3 times whether or not I had any change. He looked drunk, but not that drunk.

I've seriously considered moving out to Broolyn to save some money, since with my current fixed expenses, I don't really save any money each month out of my monthly paycheck. After spending some time on craigslist though, it looks like most of the savings come from having roommates. I enjoy living by myself, but a grand a month seems like a worthy cause.

A Bridge Too Near

I've been exceptionally focused lately. I imagine this is what it's like to be on aderall. Or speed.

At the end of my to-do list, except for a few sundry items that have to wait for a couple of months anyway, there isn't a feeling of accomplishment or even grim satisfaction. Instead, there's a palpable feeling of emptiness.

I skipped out on a trip to AC on the maiden voyage of the train as I'm waiting for a big natural gas trade to settle. All of this makes me want a cheeseburger, but that doesn't quite fit into my diet/exercise plan, and if nothing else I'm disciplined. Guess I'm out of luck.

Everything in life is a bet

I'm known to be a gambler by my friends, and more often than not I manage to drag friends into doing things that are totally irresponsible, especially with money. Besides the rush you get from just being in it, it can pay off ridiculous returns when you're right. The payoffs are usually big enough where you don't even have to be right half the time to come out ahead.

Even then, people have called me "reckless", "foolish", "an idiot", "ghetto" (??), etc. I admit to being a risk-taker, but then everything in life is essentially a bet governed by some esoteric probability. I'm a gambler where I think I understand the probabilities, which is usually in sports or the market or energy commodities. We're all betting on something when we step out of the door in the morning, even if we all bet on different things. It's not just your career, it's your personal life, your health, your happiness, whatever. Games like poker, sportsbetting, and the market are probably some of the easiest things to get a handle on, probability-wise.

I'm reminded of a story that I heard about a statistics professor, who one day walked into his classroom and asked the following question: if you could make a bet in which the good outcome was everything you had ever dreamed of immediately becoming a reality and the bad outcome was instant, painless death, how much of a chance of success would you have to have to take the bet?

The professor's take: on good days I'm about 99.9%, on bad days more like 90%.

Bar None

Tonight was company night out at the official company after work bar - Whiskey Trader. Whiskey Trader is a midtown bar that caters to the young professional crowd - early to mid-20 somethings working in finance and a type of girl I like to call the slightly washed up sorority girl. You can find these girls at the gym too, slightly pudgy and sporting their greek gear, wearing visors and sunglasses during the summer and earmuffs and uggs during the winter, their faces puffy and red from the treadmill. They're usually friendly enough and it's by no means hogging if you and a wingman decide to push in for a friendly chat, but despite the lack of a grenade in the mix you won't feel like you've accomplished much if you do end up with one of these girls.

Tonight brought two surprises, the place was sausage fest central for the night (partially made up for by it being free popcorn night), and two, a girl I work with without any prompting asking me about the recent shift in my life (I guess she's a big facebook fan?). I got a free drink out of it and realized that I might have a closer connection with work people than I would have guessed.

I went to the comfort zone

There's some cliche out there that says that you grow fastest out of your comfort zone. Now I'm all for evolution, change, and genetically engineered super-soldiers with nerves of steel, but when you exit the smooth, slightly curving red-tinged passageways of the comfort zone, sometimes it feels like you're being dumped out of a twisting, opaque water slide into a splashdown pool with your plastic ride blocking your line of sight. Takes a while to get your bearings.

I'm sure everyone has a different response after that. For some, after the initial shock and awe, the survival instinct kicks in. Adrenaline flows and no matter how much you were possibly asleep or removed or out of touch with reality, you quickly being to morph into that super-soldier.

One of the things that has to be gained back as you reclaim your mojo is stuff to look forward to. It may be something totally different from when you first entered the slide, but it becomes a reference point and a compass, which are things all commandos need, at least in movies. For example, two things I look forward to are leaping into the pool in the morning, in the lane marked "slow", and blowing past all the wannabes who fight the water like it's their mortal enemy. And then the overpriced smoothie from upstairs after that.