"You won't last six months in this town." - Anonymous

If you're sensible, you take an indirect hint from the broke fuckers who spend half their lives wasting away at the blackjack table, pounding back cigarette after drink after sorrow.

"It's always like this," The stranger across the table from me says after yet another losing hand.

I was in the same boat as him, walking away from the cards with 2/3 fewer chips than I started with. Thankfully, the $60 I used to bet with all came from video poker winnings from earlier. No matter what, I told myself, I'm leaving here $20 up.

Greed got the best of me that night. Though ending the night with a profit, it was much less than it could have been. After hitting two four of a kinds on video poker, I had turned my initial $40 into $150 for $110 profit. Half an hour and two more free beers, and that dropped to $60 profit, and I cashed out. It was 4 a.m., and this is when I tried to sleep and couldn't. So I tried my luck at blackjack at 6 in the morning. On a Sunday. Though I lost winnings, I convinced the pit boss to comp me breakfast.

There are two ways to look at this situation I put myself in. Either I could have won more, got greedy and lost, or I simply won $20, free food and drinks, and a night out. All of this seems to relate back to a concept I recently read about called the anchoring effect.

You've undoubtedly experienced the anchoring effect, where your perceived value of something is set by an "anchor" value, then negotiated otherwise. This is why department stores have sales every damn day of the year: All of their "regular" prices are set unrealistically high then put "on sale" to give the appearance that it's a good deal.

But that's not the only situation the anchoring effect is found in. From the blog by David McRaney on "You Are Not So Smart:"

Is the population of Venezuela greater or fewer than 65 million?

Go ahead and guess.

Ok, another question, how many people do you think live Venezuela? [...]

In 1974, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman conducted a study asking a similar question.

They asked people to estimate how many African countries were part of the United Nations, but first they spun a wheel of fortune.

The wheel was painted with numbers from 0 to 100, but rigged to always land on 10 or 65. When the arrow stopped spinning, they asked the person in the experiment to say if they believed the percentage of countries was higher or lower than the number on the wheel.

They then asked people to estimate what they thought the actual percentage of nations was.

They found people who landed on 10 in the first half of the experiment guessed around 25 percent of Africa was part of the U.N. Those who landed on 65 said around 45 percent.

They had been locked in place by the anchoring effect.

The trick here is no one really knew what the answer was. They had to guess, yet it didn’t feel like a guess. As far as they knew, the wheel was a random number generator, but it produced something concrete to work from.

When they adjusted their estimates, they couldn’t avoid the anchor.

The populations of South American countries probably aren’t numbers you have memorized. You need some sort of cue, a point of reference.

You searched your mental assets for something of value concerning Venezuela – the flag, the language, Hugo Chavez – but the population figures aren’t in your head.

What is in your head is the figure I gave you, 65 million, and it’s right there up front influencing how you answer the second question. When you have nothing else to go on, you fixate on the information at hand.

Anchoring happens more often than we realize. So, in the example of my gambling situation, I have to consider what my anchor is, and in some cases like this one, consciously set it myself. Is my anchor, "I have more than I started with," or "I have less profit than I could have had."? One makes me slightly happy, the other makes me slightly depressed. Which anchor do you think I chose to stick with?

(Click to enlarge. Image source: Unknown)

I believe the anchoring effect can even reach beyond numbers. Ask yourself these questions: Are you happy with who you are? Why? Is there anything about your life that you want to change?

If you are ever unhappy or doubt your self-worth, consider what you're basing that opinion on. I believe people should be wary of the social anchors they expose themselves to. Societal "norms" aren't always normal. Remember that. Identify what you (and only you) want to get out of your life and set those as your anchors.

Besides, an anchor should never be above you. If it is, it's only going to crush you. (Gravity can be a bitch.)

Consider something motivational and uplifting, like the image on the right.

This is motivating simply because it helps to lower your social anchor, your expectations of life and yourself, if not just for a minute. It's unrealistic to directly compare yourself to someone living in a completely different reality, but to take a step away from your reality for a change of perspective - that's worthwhile in helping you feel better about who you are.

So, in brief, try to set your own standards/anchors to be happier with yourself. And don't get too greedy when gambling; quit while you're ahead!

Last weekend after Thanksgiving, I decided to pick at the antique cameras my family had acquired over the years and had been sitting on a bookshelf collecting dust. For the longest time, I just assumed that the film for those cameras didn't exist. But when I inspected them, lo and behold, most of them took 120. The ones that didn't could be easily modified to fit 120 or 35mm. So I went on a shoot near the airport in Las Vegas. Admittedly, these frames are far from perfect, and I seriously screwed up the Horseman pictures.

Holga:

Rusty Rollbox:

Horseman:

And here is a (crappy) picture of the antique cameras I'm starting to shoot with:

Horseman (left), Rollbox (center), and Starflex Brownie (right), which failed on this shoot for a number of reasons.

I can feel myself aging.

The same slippers go on the same feet every morning.
It's 6:30am, the only time I can wake up anymore.

I pour the same cup of coffee as yesterday and the day before.
"Hello, Coffee-mate."

What was I to do today? The sun was rising. The colorful but boring rays it cast onto the breakfast table didn't matter. The rose bushes lining my backyard, once perfected by the old woman, didn't matter. This shitty Folgers didn't matter.

"It must be nice to be old," said my young self. "Nothing to worry about. Just take medicine advertised on the so official-looking blue and red grids on TV and worry about nothing."

An early morning used to present me with a display of wonder and freshness. Now it signifies the start of a new daypart. Time for the news.

Then time for soaps. Judy, Maury, Springer - all the daytime classics - perpetuating irrelevant quarrels and failed relationships for all to reminisce over on TV Land.

Time was my only enemy. She graced my life with contrast and affection. And then fate took her away. More like a stroke, really. My life was once again single-sided. Plain, usual, day-to-day.

So maybe the heart attack phobia isn't so bad at this point. Nothing intrigues me anymore, not without her.

I down the last of the day's pills and case them with a Centrum. To my good health, pharmaceutical industry.

Shortness of breath. Upper arm, now jaw pains. Tightness.

This is it, I mumble. Good riddance.