"Get up. We're going to talk about Standard."

Words I won't soon forget.

Toronto

Just before GP: Toronto, I got dumped. It was strange, for the first time in 4 years I didn't have anyone who I talked to daily. I almost didn't go to Toronto, because I knew that I wasn't in fighting form, but I eventually decided to go and just try to have fun. I ended up with a horrific pool, where my best card was either Strata Scythe or Barrage Ogre, depending on how you looked at it. After my 2 byes, I went 1-3 drop, and I never felt like I was really in any of the games. Even the match I won was just due to my opponent's poor draws and playing.

But the trip wasn't a completely failure. I did have fun, and sometime on Friday I decided not to return to NYC right away. I asked Gerry Thompson what his post-GP plans were, as he was one of the few people who knew about my breakup. He said he was going back to Indy with Gabe Walls for a while and that I should come along. Gabe asked me why I didn't want to go home, I told him, and he agreed to take me back to Indy and let me stay there – no other questions asked. This would be the first in a series of acts of unconditional kindness that people would show me over the next month.

On Sunday night, we packed up the Escalade and headed for Indy. After some border crossing shenanigans that I'll never forget (but aren't fit for publication), a bunch of work on my laptop, MODO drafts in the hotel, more work, charging my laptop at a Long John Silver's, and then more work, we finally made it to Indy in one piece. During the trip, I decided that I would fly to Atlanta from Indy to visit family, and Gerry decided that he was going to come with me. Once we were in Atlanta, the plan was to find someone to drive to Charlotte with for the Star City Open.

"A frien' is someone who'll do somethin' nice fer you for no goddamn reason. A frien' looks out fer you..."

Indianapolis

The original plan was to leave Tuesday morning, but once 3am (Tuesday) rolled around and we were all still wide awake and hadn't booked tickets yet, it seemed only reasonable to extend our stay in Indy to Wednesday.

Tuesday was rough for me. It was the worst day I've had since my breakup. I couldn't stop thinking about it, which was the last thing I wanted to be doing. Eventually Gerry woke up, and could tell that I was in bad shape. He walked over to me and said "Get up. We're going to talk about Standard" and so we went outside and that's exactly what we did. I don't remember specifics, but I know that I felt better after our talk. For the rest of the day, whenever I started to drift off, Gerry would force me to think and talk about Magic, and I would feel better. He took care of me, in his own way, and at that time it was exactly what I needed.

"They sheltered me, gave me refuge, kept me sane. Warmth and friendship and two fingers to the demons at the door."

Atlanta

Atlanta was great, once we got there. I guess Airtran is just the worst airline in history, because our flight left something like 7 hours after the scheduled departure time. My favorite part of the day was when the person in the seat behind me, after getting on the plane for the 3^rd time, asked no one in particular; "are we delayed because of the weather here or there?" Obviously, it was perfectly clear skies at the Indy airport, so I had to try pretty hard not to laugh too audibly.

Atlanta was mono visiting family, so, moving on.

"On the subject of traveling, I've found there are two schools. One believes the destination is the point: Get to where you are going to, and see what needs seeing to. Bollocks. The other school of traveler tends to relish getting lost in the journey itself...that mad adrenaline rush brought on by all the wrong turns and unexpected discoveries along the way. If you haven't guessed, I subscribe to the latter. After all, what is a life...if not a trip?"

Charlotte

We left Atlanta on Friday night to met up with Calosso and Nick Spagnolo in Charlotte. It was pretty late when we got in, so we basically just put our decks together and went to sleep. Oh, who am I kidding? We ordered Domino's too, OBV.

I played UB Mimic Vat, because that's what Gerry told me to play. I was actually feeling pretty good going into the tournament, with my pilgrimage mostly distracting me from my life back in NY.

I started out 4-0, beating some unfavorable matchups, and playing pretty tight as far as I could tell. The deck was strong and I was playing well, I felt like the tournament was mine to lose. Then I got the text. The details aren't important, what is important is that I tilted – bad. Gerry came up to me after the round and asked me what was wrong. He did what he could, but I knew that I didn't care about the tournament anymore. I lost the next round in a feature match to Dan Jordan, where I know I misplayed my Preordain, and probably made other mistakes that I didn't even notice. I think I won the next one, I honestly couldn't tell you how, and then I lost back to back. I don't remember what I lost to.

I think I left the site, maybe? I know this sounds dramatic, but I just don't remember. I played Aluren the next day, because I figured it would be the most fun. I started out 0-2, and then won 3 in a row, before losing to the first person I faced all day with a positive record.

"Well, if you put all your energy into dodging someone for long enough, sooner or later you'll run right into them."

Nick took me out to dinner after winning the 5k and we had a long talk about life. It was nice to be at a Magic weekend and talking about something other than Magic. Although I write and travel to lots of tournaments, Magic is not my life. I have a career and a job that I work at full time. At the end of the day, my work and my friends are my highest priority. Magic is something that I really enjoy doing, but I think I burn out quicker than most – probably because of the added stress of my work life. All that said, it's always really nice for me to have non-Magic conversations during tournament weekends, if only to break up the constant stream of "fish, sack, obv, must, hud, cube, tight, loose, ship, etc."

That dinner with Nick was the first time I talked to anyone about the parts of my past relationship that I wasn't happy with. It may have even been the first time I consciously realized that there even were parts that I had been unhappy with. In what seems to be a recurring theme, Nick helped me more than he knows – in his own way.

If I learned anything from the past month, it's the importance of friends. When I was in my last relationship, I neglected a lot of things that would have made me happy, because I knew that I could just wait a few days to see Jamie and then I'd be happy anyway. I'm not ready to pass judgment on what I think of that kind of life (different strokes for different folks), but in my new situation I'm definitely doing more for myself. Friends have become more important and more valuable to me, frankly, because I need them now, and I didn't really before.

"Yeah, but friends are important . . . It's friends remind you who you are."

New York

Nick and I flew back to NYC, and I went back to work. It took me a couple days to get back to the point where I felt like I was getting anything done, but I slowly started to feel like a person again. I lost in the Finals of a Magic Online PTQ the day after I got back, and while that's always a hard loss to swallow, I was really happy to have done so well. My sealed deck wasn't that great, but I was still able to X-1 the swiss without much trouble. My draft deck was pretty solid, and I basically lost to flood and screw in the finals. Overall it was a much needed confidence booster.

Going into the weekend, the plan was to meet up with the same crew again in Boston for the SCG Open, but tragedy struck again, and I decided to do the responsible thing and stay home. It was great to see so many of my friends make Top 8 of the events, and I was definitely cheering for them on ggslive.

With Nashville as my next tournament, I didn't really play much Magic over the next couple weeks. Work kept me very busy, and what time I wasn't spending working went into visiting friends and having a birthday party. I was feeling great about life, better than I can ever remember feeling, actually. I got another one of "those texts" on my birthday, and I even got a message, but somehow neither of them really bothered me. Had I really moved on? As of now, I'm still feeling great, so maybe I have.

Next thing I know, I'm boarding my flight back to Charlotte, where I'll get a connecting flight to Nashville, and I realize something's different. I'm not scared. Now, I have a fear of flying that borders on legendary. Everyone who really knows me has heard me rant about how much I hate flying. It's one of the few things I just can't stand, and yet I seem to do it all the time. Anyway, not scared, huh? Well, I sat down and for the first time in my life, I fell asleep on the plane.

"Aye, which is how you know people are really gettin' used to somethin'--they laugh at it."

Nashville

I arrived in Nashville on Friday afternoon and headed over to the convention center. Despite only having 2 byes, I wasn't in the mood to play in any grinders, so I team drafted a few times before gathering people up to get some food before bed. In one of my drafts, Craig Wescoe drafted a mostly Blue non-metalcraft deck, and he easily 3-0'd with it, beating decks that I thought looked pretty good. I took a close look at his list and filed it away as a possible archetype for drafting on Day 2. Once the roundup was successful, which took roughly 2 hours, pizza was had (if you said "Domino's" you are correct) and sleep followed.

After breakfast at Waffle House (complete with being called "yankees"), we arrived at the convention center and before long we were registering product. The pool I ended up with was solid, but lacked a good way to end the game. I had Spikeshot Elder, Contagion Engine, and a bunch of Black and Red removal, but not even so much as a Flameborn Helion in the way of finishers. None of my color combinations other than Black/Red were viable, and my main choices were between the 3^rd and 4^th Myr, or an extra land and another defensive card. I ended up playing both Myr, which happened to be Blue to turn on my Neurok Replica, although I sided in 1-2 Wall of Tanglecord and/or a Heavy Arbalest almost every match.

I've found that most sealed games in this format come down to grinds, so when I'm building I try to stay away from random 2/2's, or generally any card I would be unhappy drawing on turn 16. Obviously they can't all be winners, but I'm much happier playing a 1/4 than a 2/2. I think Turn to Slag in particular is actually just a bomb, as it's one of the few cards that deals with the majority of the game breaking bombs. I think it's generally true in sealed that you never want to cast your removal, but I think that's actually even more true now than it has been in the past.

Anyway, on to the battling. I win round 3 without much trouble, beating with some 2 and 3 power guys while my removal cleaned things up. Then I proceed to lose rounds 4 and 5 to flood/screw and "one too many bombs", respectively. With my back against the wall, I take a long walk through the convention center, accompanied by my trusty iPod. I think about the past month, and I'm just overcome with emotion. I realize how great I have it, traveling around the country and the world with these great people, getting to play this awesome game. By the time I get back to the tournament area I can't stop smiling. I breeze through the next 4 rounds, feeling more relaxed than I had in weeks. I drop Round 10 to Kazuya in a close match where things just don't quite come together for me. Still, I feel like I played very well, and I'm happy for that.

Even better, most of the people in my room also made Day 2, so I spend about an hour chatting with them about draft strategies. Mostly we talk about Ux non-metal control, and I find myself drifting off to dreams of Plated Seastrider and Soliton.

My first draft went really well. I started out mostly Blue with a splash of Arc Trail, and ended up mostly Blue with a splash of Arc Trail and a few other red goodies. I had Steel Hellkite and Volition Reins, as well as multiple Darkslick Drake, Sky Eel Schools, and Trinket Mage (with Darksteel Axe and Sylvok Lifestaff). I won the first round fairly easily and then faced two very good poison decks and just barely managed to edge them both out.

My 2^nd draft did NOT go well. I misread the table and went into RW Metalcraft pretty heavily, got some decent picks in pack 2, and then got stone nothing in pack 3. I ended up playing all 14 artifacts that I drafted, a Furnace Celebration with something like 7 sac outlets (most of which were bad), and hits like Trigon of Mending and Soliton with no blue mana and no Heavy Arbalest. To give you more perspective, I boarded in Oxidda Daredevil and Tunnel Ignus in most of my matches, and I'm 100% sure that was correct.

I won my first round against GB Dross Hopper and Moriok Reaver with green for... I don't even know. I figured that I had just gotten lucky, and would probably proceed to get smashed in the next two. So, when my opponent in the 2^nd round lead out on the play with Turn 2 Iron Myr. Turn 3 Painsmith, Painsmith. Turn 4 Painsmith, Moriok Replica. You'd think I might be in trouble. Nope, Kuldotha Rebirth saved the day and I somehow won that game at something like 3 life and 6 poison counters, roughly a million turns later.

For the final round I was paired against another NYC player, Edgar Flores. We had discussed the possibility of one of us being able to make top 16 and the other not. When the pairings went it, it was pretty clear that we both had extremely outside shots off making top 16, so we played it out. He made some errors and didn't draw particularly well in our first game, and he was visibly tilted going into game 2. As tends to happen with tilt, he made more errors in our 2^nd game and I was able to emerge undefeated with one of the worst decks I've ever drafted in any format.

Once the pairing went up I saw that I was 19^th, but I wasn't really disappointed. Sure, Top 16 would have been nice, but just like when I lost in the finals of that PTQ, the important thing to me was how well I'd played and how much fun I'd had. I feel like I'm approaching Magic and life with a confidence that I've never really known before. 13 Pro Points may be an awkward number in terms of Pro Level, but I actually find myself pretty content with it. On the way back to NYC, I realized that I've only attended 4 Grand Prix's this year, and I made money at half of them. I'm really looking forward to next year, and I can't wait to see how far I can get if I actually attend all the North American Grand Prix's.

This weekend I'm going to Richmond to try to grind into the Invitational. Either way I'll be playing Magic, and you can expect regular articles again from here out.

Until then, just one last quote,

"But that's life, innit? Ups and downs, swings and roundabouts, looking around corners for whatever turns up... You play the cards you're dealt..."

-Ben