2009 So Far; Insomnia

I got to NYC on New Year's Day around 6PM, dropped my stuff off at my dad's place, went down to Artichoke Pizza on E. 14th and got a Sicilian Pie, took it back home and munched away. Artichoke does a thoroughly acceptable facsimile/tribute to Domenico Demarco's original.

My friend Brad, a former classmate of my brother Jesse (who was visiting Portland, Ore. at the time) and public school teacher in Brooklyn, picked me up a little while later and, with two other friends from their Stuyvesant graduating class, Liam and Greg, we drove to a bowling alley in Jersey City. We played three games, gambling for low stakes, and Brad managed to hit some insane 4-7-10 or 6-7-10 split along the way.

This three-hour stretch of time comprised an amount of social activity roughly equal to a year for me in LA.

I met Brad at DiFara's the next day, Jan. 2nd, and for the first time in my 10+ year history of showing up in Midwood, I left empty-handed with no pizza. It was a holiday and all, but I've never seen the place so thickly packed, four-deep loaded with all kinds of hipsters and locals. Like anyone with a brain, I'm willing to wait for an hour or two in the worst case scenario, but on this day I estimated it would have taken almost that long to even make eye contact with Dom or Maggie. We went to some crappy sandwhich shop in Bensonhurt instead, and I wound up scoring another pie from Artichoke that night.

My whole family was out of town, which was unique and not necessarily a bad thing. I caught up with several friends and acquaintances in the few days before going to the Bahamas to play the Pokerstars Carribean Adventure, a $10,000 poker tournament.

I was determined to play well and go deep, and it was a good tournament to do that since a large percentage of the field is subconsciously itching to bust out and get drunk and frolic in the Caribbean. I did play well for a while before supremely blowing it with about 170 players left for a minimum cash of $12,500.

I came back to NYC the next day, my family was back and I caught up with them, and I met my mother's new boyfriend. I ate more pizza (including, finally, a DiFara's pie), saw more people. Then I went to Biloxi, MS for another $10,000 poker tournament, which I busted on day one, and from there came back to an empty apartment in Santa Monica (my girlfriend left for another two-month stint in Alaska shortly after I went to NY).

Acting on my NYC therapist's advice, I found a psychopharmacologist in LA, paid him $540 for a 90-minute consultation, and he prescribed me Wellbutrin. I've been self-medicating, probably inefficiently, for a long time now, and trying this new regimen might be a positive step, but as my friend reminded me the best way to avoid disappointment is to maintain low expectations.

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Also, I guess I don't have much fun "blogging," and I've been tempted to nuke this page a couple times in the past few months. I do like having a convenient space on the internet to construct my thoughts and publish them, but only on random occasions, and I have trouble maintaining the diaristic nature that seems to be required from the medium. If it weren't for waking up in the middle of the night, reading an angry comment from a reader about my lack of output, and my concern that his message would cause further insomnia, this space might remain empty for months more on end.