I bought this Playstation 2 from a local guy. He sells them for cheap and then mods them so you can play burned games. I couldn’t find new games here if I wanted to so I said screw it and bought the package, and about 30 games.
I played the thing a ton when I got home with it and for the first few weeks. At some point I felt guilty about sitting in front of a TV playing games. I also can’t really relax when I play games anymore.
When I was a kid I could spend hours every day playing something. I didn’t care the system or anything I just wanted to play. At some point playing games became such an obsession that I started writing about them. At 14 my work got picked up by online magazines and websites. Soon I was receiving free games every week, free T-shirts, and other perks. I was so into it.
I miss just playing a game for the fun of playing a game. Now if there’s not a profit attached to it I get bored pretty quickly. Yeah, I’ll blast somebody on an FPS for an hour or two, but I miss the fascination with mere play.
It feels better to me to study anything. If it’s interesting to me I can write about it, and it seems when more blogs are coming out more offers and coaching requests just come in. It’s a good life where I’m paid to study what I love, and talk about what I love. I’m paid well. I’m happy. I’m stabilizing.
I dream of stability. Buying a home or some permanent residence. Fixing my legal problems once and for all. Becoming a citizen of Costa Rica. Fix the multiple missing teeth I still have. Getting back into the fighting shape I get into once a year and then just blow off again.
My foothold is getting deep. I’m more stable than I’ve ever been.
At what point though have you lost the wanderlust of your beginner’s mind? At what point have you underused your right brain in favor of your left?
I used to be good at poker because I loved solving games for free. Now I’m too anxious to even solve other games for fun. It’s not good to always focus on one subject. One needs to move away from it, get some distance, and approach it with new eyes.
That is not an option for me anymore. This is how I eat. It is my profession and my passion, but at some point the work load can mechanize you. It’s important to get away from your work once in a while and try to see it with new eyes.
I present my ideas to top-ranked players who I trust. I discuss my studies with up-and-comers. I record sessions and review them. I watch others play. I read hand history after hand history. I do PocketFives Training videos because if I spew bullshit in a public format I know someone will call me on it.
If my methods can be understood and respected by some of the best in the game I can’t be insane right?
Yet with a heavy work load you can delve into another area.
I love my job but its safe. This is what I’m good at. I’m not working on another form of poker that baffles me. I’m not working in anything besides poker.
Artists who leave everything to go to Paris and Los Angeles are usually blowhard jackasses but many of them are super respectable. That takes balls to show up in the big city and go “I’m going to make it as an artist.” That’s a format that rewards few and challenges all.
I don’t feel like you have to be much of a poker player to earn a decent salary. Hell, some of the guys on the all-time money earned list are awful players.
I will play and think about poker till the day I die, but at some point I will need to force myself to breathe. The money’s good now, but its not good when you’ve lost the love of playing games just for the sake of playing games.
I always write what goes through my head then read it again the next day. It’s amazing how a night’s sleep can make you see a problem differently.
With how long I’ve been in poker it’s going to take many days of thinking about something else to get one night’s sleep.
My Plugs: Check out my vids at Pocketfives Training, contact me for lessons at assassinatocoaching@gmail.com, see other stuff I write with my friends at www.pokerheadrush.com, and follow my Twitter at TheAssassinato