Lesson 3: Play Your Cards Right

Right off the bat, I knew I couldn’t get the 5.0 GPA I was aiming for in 10^th Grade. Apparently in my circumstance, an “A” and Pre-AP Chemistry did not coexist in the same universe. School was…well, repetitive. At this point in my life, I’ve never really aspired to be anything. To me, everything followed a cyclical trend:

1. Wake up
2. Hit Snooze button
3. Wake up again
4. Breakfast
5. Go to school
6. Lunch
7. Finish school
8. Walk home
9. Do homework
10. Dinner
11. Do more homework
12. Sneak in Counter-Strike time with a twitchy hand on Alt and Tab
13. Shower
14. Sleep
15. Rinse and Repeat

(Somewhere along the line there was SAT/PSAT preparation too)

Anyways, this cycle continued all the way till the end of my Junior year. Almost two years of autonomous nonsense.

Actually, to be honest, I wanted to be a Professional Counter-Strike player…there I said it. I had some crazy mad headshotting skill back then!

Now I’m about to go into a pretty embarrassing portion of my life. I’m pretty sure that I’ll regret this in the future, but it’s one of those mistakes imperfect people, like myself, make.

There once was a great evil that would deplete all the money I’ve saved up as a child. It is a force to be reckoned with. An addiction. A drug. It also doesn’t help when a card store is just down the street…

That’s right. Yu-Gi-Oh! Cards!

I remember on one occasion, this kid wanted to take a look at my cards during lunch. Being the naïve person that I was, I let him hold my silver card-protected deck in all its glory. He suddenly started walking away with my cards. I frantically rushed after him as he headed up three flights of stairs. Next thing I know, we were together in the restroom. The kid was holding my cards hostage over the toilet, and I finally figured out punk kids existed. I was staring right at one. At this point, I believe my mouth was set to repeat, saying “Please don’t” a million times. Luckily, my negotiation skills weren’t too terrible (especially while on my knees while being slightly annoying) that I came out of that situation without any of my precious babies falling to their watery doom.

Trading cards are probably the worst possible investment anyone could every make. Yet, I fell for it. I don’t remember whether it was the emotion when flipping a “trap card” or scoring an ultra-rare “Blue-Eyes Toon Dragon” card from a booster pack. But whatever it was, it was fueling my addiction, and stole all my birthday money. So much for startup capital…

I could’ve used that money to buy a video card, and improve my CS skill, setting me on the path to become a professional gamer. Or…

I could’ve used that money to pick up a book, perhaps the book was Rich Dad Poor Dad, setting me on the path of an entrepreneur much earlier in my life. Or…

I could’ve dated a girl, lose all my money from our dates, setting me on the path to not date women for a very long time…since they usually have very low ROIs.

Life tends to give you a special hand of cards, it’s up to you to play them right.

So I was flying through life playing the wrong cards…literally. What was my solution to the problem? Will I ever get back on the right track? Will the Yu-Gi-Oh! Cards meet their watery doom? To be continued in the next lesson…

Goals at the time: Flush? Y/N

Tags: Lessons //