Losing by Winning OR “What you gonna do with all that junk?”

Ugh. There’s nothing quite like waking up to find an overflowing crate of chatty plastic parrots, erotic board games, horribly ugly action figures and dangerous and sharp bits of industrial metal sitting square in the middle of your living room.

Except for maybe tripping over said crate and having to remember how you got it in the first place.

Friday night Megan Groves and I went down to the home of Beth Yockey and Scott Jones for a rousing night of “Junk Poker”–which can be quickly summed up as “Poker where you really, really want to lose.”

I packed up a duffel bag with a bunch of stuff that had accumulated around my apartment. You know what kind of stuff I’m talking about. Stuff like that bike-tire codpiece I wore in that really bad play 4 years ago. Or a pair of bright red boxing gloves. Or the random and mysterious bars of lead that have been sitting in my closet for as long as I can remember. You know, junk.

And let me tell you, I suck at poker. I can’t bluff to save my life. I have no idea what cards I should hold onto and I have a tendency to let my lower lip quiver madly when I’ve got a good hand. I was absolutely confident that I’d be coming home empty handed. Confident and maybe even a little bit cocky. I went down there knowing that I was going to lose.

“And the river . . .it’s a 9 of hearts!”
“GAHHH! NO! NO! Oh, come on! This isn’t funny anymore.”
“Your pot, Haddad. Take it and weep.”

By the end of the night I was a just about buried under bad books, lacy things and Hulk comics. It took two trips just to get out to the cab. I was a . . . gasp . . .winner. . . and I’d never been so miserable.

Which brings us to today’s topic:
Losing by winning.

You ever know somebody who gets everything they ever thought they wanted and it drives them absolutely nuts? I knew a guy back in college who dropped out two years early and got his dream job running the account side of an advertising agency in San Francisco. He was making piles of money with piles more responsibility and it made him fat and angry and burned out at 23.

And I’ve seen too many small business people win big contracts that they fundamentally don’t want to do and that, fundamentally, lead them down the absolute wrong path in their life.

Or, heck, folks who win the lottery just to end up broke and friendless 3 years later.

Or. . .well, you get the idea.

Sure, we all want to be winners.

But before you throw your money on the table, make sure you know what game you’re playing. And make sure it’s a game you actually want to win.

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