NL cash player, where does you profit come from?

[Penguinfan]

Been trying to play $50 and $100 cash, 9-handed NL games on FTP recently and my original concept was either way off or I am simply not getting it.

My thought was you sit down and slowly grind your way up hand after hand winning a bunch of small pots adn truely grind it out. What I am finding is there is not much money either won or lost doing this.

I typically end up hovering around my original buy-in until I either double up or get stacked. Is this how it works for you guys?

Example: played last night with just two tables open and $100 at each table, after about 45 mins I had $90 and $97 then I get tripled up on the table I was sitting with $97.

Less than 5 minutes later I get stacked with KK vs AA on the other table. All in all I was up a little less than a buy-in after an hour.

Is this typical, do you make or break your session on one big pot or are grinding out a bunch of small ones?