(warning - pretty emo blog. read at your own risk)

The past few months have marked my first real attempt at treating poker as a fulltime job. While I've always played a decent amount of poker, in the past I had high school, then college, then some time when I was living with my then-gf and still not quite making poker a fulltime thing. This summer in Vegas I took a much more businesslike approach than I had in previous Vegas summers, playing 12-15 tourneys or so plus grinding live cash almost every day that I wasn't playing tourneys. After a break in August while I was trying to plan my next move, I got to Vancouver September 1, played over 40k hands of high stakes cash games plus some WCOOP tourneys online in September, and in October so far I've been in Europe playing live tournaments. My feelings about playing poker fulltime have been pretty mixed. To break it down a bit:

-I enjoy living a healthy lifestyle. This has been pretty easy to do in Vancouver, was fairly difficult in Vegas, and has been virtually impossible in Europe since I've been living in hotels, haven't been able to buy groceries or cook, the gyms I've found haven't been great, and the food offered at restaurants tends to contain quite a few more white carbs than I'm used to. Plus many of the tournaments have played til 3am and beyond so it's been impossible to get into any kind of good sleep schedule. For the past few days I've gone to bed at 5am and woke up at 1pm. I know some people who are fine with this kind of routine but I really can't stand it and am excited for a return to normalcy on this front in Vancouver.

-I feel like I've been lacking balance a bit too. For the past 5 years I spent lots of time interacting with college students and I really enjoyed that. Now almost all of my friends that I'm spending time with regularly are poker players. I really like the friends I've made but it's just a big adjustment from what I'm used to. Also, I know 'poker players' is a broad category and quite a big overgeneralization; really it may be more that I've just been living in places where I don't know anyone all that well. That happened in college too obviously but then we were all going through the same challenges regarding getting used to the college lifestyle and rigorous classes. I guess in some ways poker players go through a lot of the same challenges too, but:

-I have mixed emotions on the game itself right now. Poker for me has always been about the challenge, the learning process, and the competitive aspect. My most rewarding moments in poker have been when I felt that I reached a new level in a certain game, especially during my first year of playing poker but also when I learned PLO and then mixed games. I'm certainly not perfect by any stretch but I feel like at this point the improvements I can make to my game aren't huge. I've always joined playing heads up because it involves much more adaptation to counter the opponent's strategy, but I've been playing less of that lately, not by choice. After playing a bunch of live tournaments over the past few weeks, I can say that the travelling the circuit lifestyle is definitely not for me both because of lifestyle factors and because I just don't enjoy tournament poker that much. I think I can get a lot better at them actually but I feel like the endgame is a huge variancefest where even the best players can easily have losing years and after travel expenses the endeavor seems not worth it to me. It only makes sense for those who really enjoy playing live tournaments, and I just don't think it's for me. I enjoyed playing live cash games this summer, mainly because of the social aspect. I got to meet some really interesting people in the games and they were much chattier and looser than tourneys are. Plus the games themselves were shorter handed and had more than 2 cards which made them more fun to play. Online I've been enjoying playing big PLO and mixed games but I just don't know if I have the passion for it that I used to.

I may just be being emo right now, but in the wake of Steve Jobs' death some of his most famous quotes are really resonating with me. For example:

"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle."

I certainly can't see how poker playing fits this mold. I've been thinking a bunch lately about how much I value money as well. I grew up very middle-class and my parents are the types of people who make modest salaries while working extremely hard, but they have passion for their work and are very happy. As I walk around Cannes, I see wealth and excess all over, and it just doesn't feel like me. In some ways, I'm very grateful for the money I've made, as it's allowed me to pay for a college education, travel a bunch, eat some great food, and most importantly treat my friends and family to some unforgettable experiences, but in the end is money going to make me truly happy? It certainly won't by itself, and I feel like making major life choices based on money is probably not in my best interest.

This should all be taken with a grain of salt, as I'm very self aware that I'm in a weird transitional phase, both in ways listed above plus still only a few months removed from a very tough breakup. However, I feel like I've been happiest when I've been working towards challenges that I feel truly passionate about and also when I've had a real home and more stable social circles consisting of friends and family whom I've gotten to know very closely, and I just feel like all of this is lacking to some extent right now. Very interested to hear advice from those who can relate to this on any level and apologies for the emoness.

Brian