Wednesday 30 April 2008

Taking a Break

I'm currently taking a break from playing poker full time. I've started working with my brother a couple of days a week because I was pretty fucking sick of the lifestyle I had developed. I was a bit of a mess to be honest. Playing through the night, sleeping all day, letting poker rule my life, letting the stress of a losing session or two get to me, drinking too much, being lazy, not spending enough time with my wife and kids, blah blah blah. You know the score.

In order to get some normality back I decided to return to my trade (painting and decorating fwiw) which I haven't done for about 7 years. This has gone surprisingly well. I used to hate it but there's something satisfying about manual labour when you've spent so long sitting on your fat arse. Making this change has given me a bit of structure and it's had a positive effect as far as poker is concerned. I don't really give a fuck about winning or losing and poker doesn't stress me out at all. I'm also sleeping a lot better which probably helps. This has all contributed to a pretty amazing week at the tables so long may it continue.

I've certainly not abandoned poker as a career and it'll still make up the vast majority of my income every month.

At the end of the day I had to do something. I think I could have ended up a gibbering mess if I didn't sort myself out.

GL

2 comments:

Amatay said...

I can relate to that post big time m8

millar said...

poker is fucking hard mate. i struggle with the psychological aspects of it and take bad sessions to heart. i didn't before i played for a living so fuck it. better playing a couple of hours a night and not caring about it.

i always thought of it as an easy way out of the ratrace but in reality it fucked me up in like 4 months. i felt totally cut off from the rest of the world and shit.

i'm a much better player now than i was though.

i'll probably do it again but i'm much much more aware of the pitfalls. i made a fucking shitload of mistakes and thought the poker lark would be easy.

the weird part is that i'm making more money and i'm more motivated now than when all i had to do was play poker.

shoot me an email if you want. deckmillar@yahoo.com