And I'm feeling kind of Sunday.

Nine big blinds. How did I get here? Should I move all in with Q7? 64 suited? Better wait...Jay Z just came on. Jay Z is such bad luck. When is the last time I won listening to Jay Z? Don't be superstitious? Being superstitious is so unlucky. I wonder if people would even get that if I made it a joke. Stop thinking about this stuff. Deal with the result! Double up! Finally, I doubled up. Ok. Battle, battle, battle. 55 people on the leader board remaining out of 7300+ and I'm in 54th. Who cares? Joe Cada won the main event 9th place out of 9. I can do this.

It was :55 minutes after the hour. It may have been 3:55 or 4:55 am. I don't remember. I looked in the mirror. My face was scruffy, eyes bloodshot, and hair disheveled.  I won an online tourney last time I wore this blue LuLu shirt and then jumped and danced around like a banshee at 11:00am because winning meant so much. Look at my eyes. Beyond the slightly bloodshot cornea caused from facing my 14th or 15th hour of Sunday poker, I just meditated for a moment on the brown color of my iris. I've never quite seen this color before. I bet it's unique just like me in this vast universe.  I snapped out of my mind wondering. Maybe 20 seconds later, I mouthed the words, "this is it." I was standing there in the mirror giving myself a pep talk. Give it your all. Don't be a hero. Follow your gut. Be gutsy. I walked back to my computer on the couch, a spot I move when it gets to crunch time.

Nearly 3 hours later, I had made a deal for my largest online score in my poker career in the tournament that I've played every Sunday since I can remember playing poker, the Sunday Million on Pokerstars. 

It was so awesome to be in the moment and appreciate this for what it was; doing exactly what I wanted to be doing and finally experiencing, reaching a goal of mine in the online poker world for 6+ years. Adrenaline pumped through my veins at crucial situations. I risked 1/3 of my chip stack on a total bluff, 5 bet shoved K7 (to poker novices both rare situations). Both times, I felt absurdly confident and nonchalant despite a pulse jamming through skin acknowledging the crucial timing of the tournament. Sometimes things line up and work out and other times, I spend hours and days grinding away at tournaments hoping to get this remarkable, unique moment.  It comes and goes in no more than 3-4 hours. Sometimes the moment vanishes abruptly with a stroke of bad fortune or timing like a 10th place finish a few weeks earlier in a tournament of 6000+ online, or a 23rd place finish at UKIPT Nottingham at the end of April.  I thought about when I was probably 58th of 58 in Berlin a few weeks earlier and my short stack took a beat and vanished while someone else went on to glory.  On Sunday, the moment didn't vanish until the feeling of accomplishment and elation of winning an absurd amount of prize money greeted the Monday morning London sunshine.