Doomed to a life of second best?

So once again I did what I do bset. Put myself in a position to win, but come up short. I finihsed SECOND in the Hoy last night and despite being the MONEY LEADER FOR THE YEAR, have yet to WIN a blogger tourney. Can you believe it?

There were 4 turning points. The first was when my TP kings ran into pocket aces and sucked out to keep me in the tourney. Noted.

The second was when there were 9 left (pays eight), I folded not one but two premium hands to standard 3xBB raises, just because they were not top 10 hands. And I folded QQ to a Ace flop when he made a bet. No fight at all. I played for the money first, then for the win. This is my MO.

The third was when I went from 8th to second simply by not comitting myself to a hand.

The fourth was entering heads-up with 29k in chips vs. 130k in chips. My strategy was to claw my way to about 40k and then double up to even the match. This took me about 30 minutes and out of frustration he pushed 44 into my AA.

And with those 4 scenarios, I am heads-up with equal stacks for all the marbles...

For about 45 minutes we danced back and forth. We both knew it was going to be a big hand that made the difference...

The escalation started when I picked up AhQh. He bet it, I raised it and he re-raised it. I really thought he could have JJ here based on his previous play with 44. But worse, I look down and I have 20k invested, which is now 25% of my stack. Based on what he pushed with to date, I have to put him on a big hand. Yet, I just cant get away and when the money goes in, I look to see KK. All that work, just to shove AQ sooooted into KK and lose the match when the Ace does not fall.

So, you could say I was lucky to be there at all.
You could look at the mega-comeback from a 3-1 chip deficit...

But you could also look at folding big hands on the bubble and getting my money in after an hour with AQs.

At least I can look at my track record and take something away that is positive... right?