So for whatever reason after 5 seconds of audio using the web cam in camtasia studio it stops recording. So no more video logs until I solve this issue.

Until then, its back to writing, yay!?

Anyway, I have been redefining each part of my life since January this year. My latest project was giving away around 80% of my clothes and then buying new ones that I actually like and fit well. It was pretty interesting learning about everything that is associated with dressing nice, not fashion. Lots of learning experiences and lots of frustration trying to buy nice fitting clothes for someone whos quite slim but somewhat athletic, definitely a minority in the US as far as I can tell.

I am also planning a trip to both Vancouver and Thailand, which should be fun. I need to make sure that I am not spending a ton of money though, still lots of thinking to be done there and about my finances in general.

Getting my finances where I want them to be is my next project I think. I have a retirement fund set up but nothing crazy and not a lot of thought put into it. I have something which is good for my age at 24 but now that I am actually acculumating wealth I need to be a bit more purposeful. I have also never used a credit card and that will be changing after doing some reading about how I can leverage them since I would never keepa balance on it.

Any suggestions on which ones are best for travel, like for frequent flier miles and other travel related things?

"Lets see I am late to the whole New Years resolution but I do have some pretty lofty goals that I will accomplish this year.

Lets start with the fun stuff...

Personal goals

Nissan GTR, by August 2012
Figure out my ideal romantic relationship for this stage of my life

Community Goals

Continue to volunteer in various organizations
Become incredibly involved in Cancer Connection of Northwest Ohio


Health/Fitness Goals

170 pounds mostly muscle, 7-11% body fat
Optimal sleeping and eating schedule and habits
Meditation/Stretching every day
Start Boxing

Cardrunners

12 video series per year, once per month
24 quickies per year, 2 per month
Blogging at least once a week if not day

Playing

25k hands per month
10bb/100 winrate
move up to 1/2 once I move

Coaching

60 hours per month
Increase hourly to 75 once my playing hourly is 75 dollars per hour
Continue to critique my methods and professionalism
Develop customer satfisifaction surveys
Develop fact finder for potential clients

Business

Create LLC for tax purposes

I will add more probably but the bulk of my goals. Gl to everyone who has goals this year."

Today will be writing since its pretty hard to do this in a video format. I will be revising pretty much all my goals, amazing how much a person can change in 4 months.

As mentioned earlier, the nissan GTR is not a goal at all anymore. I realized I actually hate driving for the most part unless its for purely adrenaline but I will be buying something new relatively soon, my old honda accord from 2002 is quite old.

The next goal about my ideal relationship is somewhat the same but different as well. Since I am so happy with my current life, I don't feel the need to define my ideal relationship, definitions are not something that I need anymore especially when it comes to love, I will just love.

Ironically I still volunteer but only in a few organizations, most of my volunteering was a by product of me being starved for love so I would try to help as many peopl as I could even if I did not enjoy it that much. I am a member of Rotoract which has been awesome so far and its my most involved group at the moment.

My health goals are relatively the same except I am finally at peace with how my body currently looks at 150 pounds about 10% body fat, I want to be slightly larger but I am quite happy right now as well. I am still continually improving my sleeping and eating habits but I also don't let myself be discouraged if I decide to adhere from my casual routine of my current diet and going to bed around 12:30-1 and getting up at 9 on the weekdays. I decided to give up on boxing for now, instead I think I will start to swim again as I read on the best way to exercise and not get bored.

Cardrunners will be about in line but at the moment I will just make videos according to how I feel and of course enough so that Alex won't kill me. That said though, I feel great and my current series with Verneer has been great and definitely has not been a grind at all, thank you Pawel for the help in motivation.

Playing is about the same as well, getting it around 20-30k hands per month depending on the month. I don't try to force volume and with the current news of PS
Coaching has changed derastically as I have become involved in a staking site called shark staking. At this point I only plan on coaching so many students and I am not sure of the hours yet. I am very excited though to be part of shark staking so far and I want to continue to provide excellent service to them. I did increase my price which I am still unsure if that price is fair based on my abilities. Its hard to say at this point.

As a last note, I really don't have goals at the moment I am doing mostly what I feel is right in my heart as strange as that sounds. I do have some general goals but I have no attachment to them whether I fufill them or not. The biggest one is to continue to change negativity into passion for others.

Today is going to be a bit deeper than usual and somewhat controversial

As I become a stronger person, almost all my beliefs that I once thought are becoming shattered. We are taught or at least I was taught that if you do not work X hours a week or do not do something "productive" every day you are a lazy piece of shit. Same thing with college, if you don't go to college then you will never become successful. This is all absurd now that I realize what true success means.

Do not get me wrong I don't think that either of these things are a bad thing but I think our society places our values in all the wrong places or at least our priorities are very much flipped.

Few people truly enjoy their jobs, think of everyone that you know relatively well, how often do they complain about their job or how much they hate work sometimes? Why do people choose professions and just things in their life that they just do not enjoy?

It puzzles me that we choose occupations which is going to be a signficant amount of time of how life that do not give them happiness. It is like fighting a losing battle, you work at least 9 hours a day, most likely eat 2 hours, sleep at most 8 hours, and then several hours of home work, mowing the lawn, laundry, dishes, taking care of the house. We maybe take 2 or 3 hours everyday for our own happiness. This seems like madness to me and how people don't lose their minds is beyond me.

Think of how stress-free life would be if we were not worrying about when the next appointment was, how late we are to X event. All of that stress would be gone if people didn't have these crazy down to the minute schedules of exactly what they should be doing. How profitable and when I say profitable I mean to their overall happiness in life, is that actually? What if we just did whatever we wanted wiithin reason.

If its a nice day out, who is to say that we cannot take a few hours off from working or even take the day off. Think of how much more productive you would be after relaxing that day and coming back to work refreshed instead of stressed over which projects need to be done. If we don't feel like working, why can't we do something that might make us motivated again instead of forcing ourselves to work. It gets the question, what does actually profit mean?

Most people consider profit to be the amount money you make after expenses without going to exactly the accountant definition but the real question in all of this is what does money actually mean? In my opinion money is only a way of determining your life style, nothing more. It really does not equate to happiness, it would never decrease your happiness but does it really give you happiness? It may change your lifestyle to where you can have more things that make you happy but overall without knowing exactly what gives you more happiness.

More or less don't feel you should have to do something, do what you want within reason. Life is mean to be enjoyed, not work some occupation that you dislike immensely, and not to acculumate a ton of money but being miserable at the time.

Im pretty transparent with my titles but I am not very creative sometimes.

I am learning how to speak japaense and even if I don't use it I am still having a blast learning something again. Its amazing using my brain for something besides poker and nutrition, a nice change. Currently I just finished learning hiragana and am now learning some basic kanji as well as learning lots of vocabulary.

As far as poker goes its been an interesting couple of months since I played at most 12k hands the last 4 months. This month is looking to be around 25k hands depending on different things but I guess I am just not a typical grinder.

To address a earlier post I had about my goals for poker

"Things I will be working on...

3 betting IP more, defending LP steals by 3 betting
Tilt
Work Ethic
Sleeping/Eating Schedule"

My 3 betting has increased greatly but more of a product of the games than exactly me changing my game. The games are currently reg invested for the most part and instead of a 23/16/5 style I play something more like 26/20/10 now which is a lot more aggressive.

My tilt is getting better but still is not the best, I am actively working towards this, including things like not labeling players as fish or idiots, its just negativity.

Work ethic is 100% better and I feel like playing again, so that goal is done

Finally eating and sleeping is 100% better as well thanks to a lot of research on my diet and life in general. This has added lots of value to my skill set and my general happiness. It was totally worth the effort.

So with that said, 3/4 isnt too bad. The biggest thing to work on is still tilt and I am 3 betting a bit too much OOP from my blinds against steals, so need to work on flatting more and actually playing poker instead of being hyper aggressive OOP.

Ill continue to update my progress as a player and my future plans.

So another life update and definitely on the happier side of things.

The first thing I wanted to say is I have talked about my forgiving of my mom and while that is awesome. I have taken it a step further and I can have a relationship with her because her influence in my life does not define my life at all. It used to bother me, drive me insane, all kinds of negative things. Now its just part of life that my mom is that way. Its an amazing freeing feeling realizing this.

The second thing is that with the current climate of the United States for poker, I would be a fool to think I could continue my profession in the next couple of years here. Given that I have thought about this for a very long time now what is the best solution. The solution that I have come up with for now is that I want to teach english in another country. It woudl be amazing to learn about a whole new culture. I am for one quite sick of my current culture and would love to explore something entirely different. It would also provide a way for continuing to coach/make videos/play poker but with a slightly more fufilling job. How I would balance the two I am not quite sure yet but I think it would be amazing experience and a very nice way to start my transition out of the US If I want to be a poker professional and coach.

I will be blogging more about the changes in my life and thank you for reading and your supoort as always.

After just reading Kara's blog I can agree with a lot of about what she talked about.

In poker we talk about not being results oriented, not caring if we lose or win today, we know we made money in the long run. Why is it not the same for life? Why should we care what the results are in the short term with things like quotas. If we can become unattached to the results of the goals we set, we can't ever fail since we are constantly moving towards that goal.

With that said, I am rapidly coming to peace with some of the things I have talked about here. I mentioned my mom is a narcissist and how also have some traits of one. While this was hard to accept and realize that I will never get my childhood back, I have done something that I think is incredible.

I have forgiven both Vickie (my mom) and my dad. When I say forgiven I mean that I cannot put any blame on either of them. They were trying the best they could. They had no clue they were raising their son to have zero self esteem and respect for himself. I am not a victim of anything happening in my life, while I may have to give up my family for true happiness, I am not a victim. I have the power to change my life.

For the first time in a long time, I am acting authentically in many areas of my life. I act and behave only for myself. Many people tell me I seem more relaxed or just different. Its quite refreshing to be happy knowing I am putting my happiness first regardless of the situation. All I care about is making sure that I am constantly happy.

So as I continue to learn more about creating the optimal or close to optimal diet and lifestyle I have learned a ton.

Without talking about things I don't understand or can articulate well I highly recommend reading these books with an open mind.

Body by Science
Primal Blueprint
Omnivore's Dilemma

Also sleep log 2, somewhat the same but today I felt very clear in my thought process and had little "brain fog" where I can't think or focus well.

I will keep you posted on the results of using the paleo diet and other related ideas stemming from the caveman mindset.

Anyone else eating the paleo diet?