Ask HN: What's your spectacular burnout story?

I eventually got bored and wanted something else to do and since I was hanging out in bars, pool popped up as an option. Other than some screwing around as a kid, I'd never played pool. So I started learning. Turns out that pool is this neat combination of physics, chess, and a dash of human psychology. The physics part is obvious, the chess part is thinking multiple moves ahead (when you get good you know all the shots you are going to take after you break), the psychology part is messing with the other person (even if they are better and they leave you no shot you can do the same to them).

So my routine became sleep in until about 10:30 or 11am, hop on my motorcycle and go over to a taco place at 11th & Folsom in San Francisco (which is where I was living at the time), get some food, wander over to the Paradise Lounge and practice.

The Paradise Lounge was a bar that opened around noon, and during the daytime was frequented by drunk taxi drivers, hookers, and various low lifes. I hung out there because they opened up the pool tables and let you play for free during the day. And for Ron.

Ron was one of the low life types. He was from Minnesota but he had been pushed out. He got in a fight with his brother and punched him in the chest and the brother died (this is not widely enough known: in young males, in a one second time period, there are about 3 milliseconds in which, if enough of a shock is caused, they will have a heart attack and usually die). So his family threw him out.

He ended getting a job at a pool hall and they let him sleep there. He learned pool there and practiced in a way that he got very good. In pool, when playing 8 ball, there is this thing called "8 ball choke". The 8 ball is the one you shoot last and lots of people freeze up on that shot and mess up easy shots. So Ron took all the 8 balls from all the regular tables and practiced on a snooker table (snooker tables are much larger and have smaller pockets for smaller balls. If you can make shots on a snooker table with regular balls you are extremely accurate). So he got good and no 8 ball choke for him.

By the time I met him he was something of a legend in that bar. As I came to be part of the regular crew everyone watched me play Ron. Well, watched Ron beat me. He could beat me left handed, he could beat me one handed, he could beat me one handed with his left hand, he could beat me in napkin pool (before each shot he would put a cocktail napkin on the table and if the cue ball wasn't on the napkin after his shot then it was his turn).

I kept coming back for more and I was getting better. I'd play Ron from about noon until they closed the tables and I started playing the "bridge and tunnel" people who came in to party in the evening. I dunno if this is a universal thing but in America it's tradition that if you win the game the next opponent pays for the next game. It's called "holding the table" and if you are good then you can play all night for free. I was slowly becoming that good. So long as Ron wasn't there.

Me being the nerd that I am, it's 6 months in, and I own my own cue. Which is a stupid and sort of a douche move, if you are holding anything other than a bar cue it screams "I think I'm better than you" so every pool hall hustler wants to beat you; many did. But less and less as time went on.

Somewhere around 6-7 months into this the unthinkable happened. I beat Ron fair and square. The bar full of taxi drivers and hookers and other random folk, all of whom had watched me go from completely crappy to beating Ron, burst into applause. To give you some idea of how much of a mess I was at the time, I felt like a million bucks. This bar full of people had accepted me and were rooting for me. At the time, it felt fantastic. Later I was like "WTF? You care what a bunch of losers think?" Yep, at the time I did. At the time, they were my crowd. Weird in retrospect.

Remember that I was originally chasing girls? I'd long since given up, I was never good at that until just before I met my wife. And I was becoming frustrated with playing at the Paradise Lounge in the evening because each time a new set of girls walked in you could feel them scanning the bar, checking out the guys, you could almost hear them going "nope, nope, maybe, nope ...". I always got the nopes and it would throw me off my game from time to time.

So I started branching out. Played in lots of different pool halls, joined a league, etc. One night the nope got to me so I packed up and left. It was early and the way I went home was down Market street, through the Castro, over to Noe Valley. There was a place on Market I liked to eat, that's why the weird route. As I was going down Castro street there was a bar open with a pool table. I knew this was the gay district but I thought why the hell not? No girls to throw me off my game.

Into the bar I go. Put my quarters on the table, get a beer, wait my turn. Turned out to be one of the coolest experiences of my life. The gay guys have pretty refined gaydar, or I'm just too damn ugly, because they were completely uninterested in me. It was like I was a fly on the wall watching.

The atmosphere in there was really cool, it was kind of like that playfulness you had as a little kid in a sandbox, playing with trucks and other little kids that were playing with trucks. It felt almost innocent. Except with a heavy dose of sexuality. It's hard to explain, but I was jealous of the gay guys. They get to do stuff that if I did that to a girl in a bar I'd get slapped and/or get sent to jail for assault. I could be in the middle of game, my opponent would be leaning over to make a shot, some other dude walks up, reaches between his legs, and cups his junk. The player would look back at the dude and it would be one of two reactions: "Uh, no thanks dude, I want to finish this game" or "Larry, nice to meet ya, but I gotta go, can you find someone to finish the game?" No drama, it was yes or no, the guy who came onto the dude would be cool and walk away if that was the message. You could never do that to a girl and get away with it, at least I couldn't.

So even though the gay guys have a tough life, what with the stigma, AIDS, etc, they get to play with each other in a way straight dudes could only dream about. Like I said, I was jealous.

I played at that gay bar for a few weeks or a month, it was fun, but eventually I missed the girls even if I was Mr Nope. So back to the Paradise I go and guess what? This smoking hot mexican girl plays pool with me, she wasn't very good but she was a lot better than average, so it was fun, and I drew out that game until we were both on the 8 ball. Went out with a length of the table bank shot (I had a habit of doing those when I was a lot better than the other person. A little douchey but it gave them a chance because I missed those about maybe 30% of the time). She whistled and gave me her phone number and told me to call her. I think that's maybe the only time a girl did that.

I didn't call her, I was too chicken. A couple of weeks later she's there again, walks right up to me, looks up at me and says "How come you didn't call?". "Oh, I didn't think you really wanted me to call you". "You call me, you hear?" So I did, we ended up dating for a couple of years. She was pretty crazy but man, so hot, as in the bar gets quiet and every dude is looking at her when she walks in, like that hot. So fun but it eventually ended, she had no drive and I needed to be with someone with some drive.

I eventually went back to work, Sun let me do whatever I wanted, I ended up working for Paul Borrill. Did lmbench and some networking stuff. Paul asked me if I wanted to go give a talk at Hot Interconnects on ethernet vs ATM. Hell yes I did! I hated ATM, thought it was stupid, I was pushing for 100Mbit ethernet, Paul knew all that and he knew I'd badmouth ATM, which I think he wanted but he was far too politically astute to say that out loud. So off I went to the conference, gave my rant (because that's what it was) about how Sun's $4000 (their cost at the time I believe) ATM card was never going to be as cheap as the $50 ethernet card I had bought at Fry's on my way to the talk. The room went dead silent, I think because everyone was going "but my boss says I have to work on ATM". Finally, some Indian guy in the back started clapping and then the room exploded. So I think they agreed and history has shown all us to be right on that one. And it helped get me out of my burnout funk.

Fun times, sort of, but I don't recommend getting so burned out that it takes a year of pool to pull you back. But a huge thank you to Ken Okin for letting me take that time and to Paul Borrill for nudging me back into work.

Sorry for the wall of text :)

Edit: typos mostly, and a thank you to Paul.