Hello, long time reader first time poster, sorry if I am not posting in the proper thread.
I'll get to the point, I am a live cash game player, the first three years I was playing 1/2 games and have a full time job but played on weekends. I maintained a bankroll of 4000$ and would spend the money I went over that 4000$ because I wasn't making much at work because it was a start up. But in 1/2 I cashed for an average of 300$ for a 10 hour session. I took a shot and entered in a 1100$ wpt event and came in 14th and cashed for 14,200$ and started playing 2/5 and have built my roll up to around 25,000$ in the last 6 months of playing and average about 600$ a session. I am starting to take it a lot more serious I study the game around 20 hours a week and play 10 hours a week, I know it's not much but I work a lot.. I am trying to build up a big enough roll and play for a living and plan to move to 5/10 when my roll reaches around 60,000$. Then start taking longer and longer trips to Vegas and eventually sell my equity in my business back to the other owners because I am just not happy doing this and know that poker is a hard way to go but I can't think of anything I would love to do more then play this game for a living. Does this seem like an unrealistic expectation or is there anything that anyone who has done this would change? I feel like I am a good player but also know I still have much more to learn. Thank you for any input, good or bad. Oh and the business I am in is doing pretty well now but doesn't seem to be able to grow much more, I am making pretty good money and still live a home.

It's one thing to play as a hobby on the weekends, a whole different ballgame to play for a living 5 days - 60 hrs a week or whatever. Some of the most miserable people I know are professional live grinders. With that being said I wouldn't even consider going pro until I was playing (crushing) 5/10 nl at a minimum.

How much of that has to do with mental game issues/poor mental health and spending so much time in a casino?

Depending on how your business is structured, have you thought about taking leave for a few months and doing a trial run as a grinder? I did that for day trading and it was a really valuable experience, and ended up going back to work.

Thankyou for everyone's input, the business is structured so I can take a month off at a time without it suffering and still receive a small dividend, that is the plan at the moment, that once I have a roll to move to 5/10 to start taking time off and playing 5/10 and if I continue to have the same results, (I expect them
to suffer a little bit) that I take more and more time off and slowly transition into playing full time and sell my shares. Does the strength of player really increase that much going from 2/5 - 5/10? Also what is the definition of crushing? Like at an average of 600$ profit a session, am I crushing 2/5?

you go by hourly rate or bb per hour, and not by "sessions". Unless u have logged a lot of hours, u will really not know until then "crusher" wise. By a lot of hours, I mean over 1000 hours. Any less than 500 does show the variance. U could be only a super upswing, and have not experience a downswing, which everyone will go through eventually. A crusher att 2/5 would be around 45/50 hourly. 35/hourly means really solid/winning player

As much as I love poker, I know I would not like to do it full time. Just as a professional hobby, if that makes sense. I work weekdays, and usually play weekends around 24 hours on the weekend to help supplement my income, which helps out a lot. I have played 3 days in row, and it drains my brain. I don't think I can do it 5 days a week at the minimum. Where do u play? What is your style of play as well?

Yeah I probably should have added my hourly in the first place, I was making 25/hr at 1/2 over 1300 hours I have played longer then that but 1300 is all I have records of and haven't found the skill level in players has increased very much between 1/2 and 2/5.i have an hourly of 60$ an hour roughly at 2/5 so far but have only played 240 hours so far at 2/5. I play in Niagara but am from Toronto so I have to drive a bit.

If your win rate is one sb per hand at a full table, does that qualify as crushing the game? Just curious, you know. I'm using Poker Genius now to try to make myself at least competitive in live 1-3 ring games and my average is about one sb/h. At full table, the average is about 35 hands/hr.

Its a grind