Pretty sure he meant committing himself to a mental hospital. Maybe not a terrible idea?

I am trying to help you. And I don't think Planet Fitness + "Text-Message Therapy" are the only two times you tried to improve your life but chose the weakest strategy. I say anyone here would tell you that's not the right way.
Number three is staking your financial future on the gambling industry.

Following 67o's advice here is best. Clearly you have the aptitude to be a good dealer, to make $10 to $15/hr playing 1/2 on the side, and to just hold a steady job down in general but there seems to be some sort of mental block preventing you from accomplishing these things. Please seek help from a trained professional and I expect your quality of life will improve because of it.

Every time I think about my mental block I have a very hard time finding words that describe it

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I hope you don't have any dogs at home. I'm sure you'd kick them at every opportunity.

The OP wrote this to help others, to let them know the downside to playing over one's means. He is humble, truthful to the point of pain and all you can do is rag on him? I sure hope no one has the misfortune of sharing your life or your bed with you. That would be way too close. Grow a heart.

here... let me help you.

YOU ARE NOT SPECIAL!

Now... knowing that in order to function in a modern society you need to be retrofitted into the consumer base, you must realize you need capital to participate. Getting capital comes in one form only for 99.9999% of people... WORK. whether that is working to establish a company, or as a worker in an established company... GET TO WORK.

Many of us are not 100% poker players... full timers. I tried that for more than 5 years and I found it very distorting to my personal views on life and being integrated into society. My preference is for being a part timer and working full time, and in that way I am plugged into the modern machine and I have a feeling of integration while still having one foot in the poker world...

This didn't age well.

Let me ask you a question OP..If you had been successful at poker , would you have felt regret for all the financial pain you caused others?

Of course not..Quit sobbing..take your beat down and move on..Did you think life would be easy?

Yes I expected life to be easy. I remember as a boy in the 70s watching a TV show where a guy laid on a lounge chair. Women were waving leaves over him to keep him cool, others were feeding him grapes and others were giving him a massage.

From that day on I figured that's what life would be.

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I applaud you for your naked honesty. Don't let all the railing armchair psychologists and know-it-alls wear you down. One foot in front of the other.

It took a lot of guts to go for your dreams. It didn't kill you, you can still make your dreams come true. Maybe someone on here can offer you a cheap room if you get another chance at employment in Vegas. You deserve a second chance at your dreams, everyone does. Good luck going forward.

Holy f*cking sh*t, the people in this thread are so f*cking mean...Yet they'd never say any of this in person. They're almost certainly miserable themselves and are looking for threads like these to try and make people feel the same way they do. I'm noticing a trend in this site...

If you can't even describe your mental block that's more reason to go to therapy, a good therapist will uncover these things. It could be something that happened a really long time ago that had a huge negative impact on your life that you don't even realize.

For example, I thought the way I was raised was normal, but it was very extremely physically and emotionally abusive...I thought I had a negative voice in my head, communication issues, etc because I was just weird and a bad person, but it was really because of something I never fully understood.

I'm not trying to make this thread about me, but I'm trying to illustrate how I had serious issues with some basic things and more or less thought "it is what it is," but it wasn't, and when I understood them and worked through them everything got better.

I know I'm beating a dead horse, but seriously, I know if you take therapy seriously through a good therapist you are going to see crazy positive changes in your life and it'll be like you're an entirely new person.

I’m praying people bashing OP in this thread don’t dedicate most there career to a profession that becomes basically obsolete and end up needing to try to make a career change late in life. Guy was a newspaper editor and got screwed when printed press died out.

With machine learning that's like everybody.

this is the truth. the next 10-15 years your likely going to see lots of mainstream jobs begin to become obsolete due to technology. I'm anticipating this to affect both blue and white collar jobs -- but moreso white collar. (e.g. accountants, information technology, HR, legal, etc). It means both fewer jobs as well as a job shift as a new equilibrium is attained

How did you randomly end up in TX during COVID 2020 ?

he went there looking for work

No question this is true. I think the issue is that OP had made a string of poor choices after that unfortunate job loss and seems unwilling, or perhaps unable, to take steps necessary to improve his lot. This may have something to do with his mental state...idk

I do hope he is able to figure it out and get himself in a better place

Yeah if I was an unemployed poker dealer needing work and mobile it’s probably where I’d go as well.

+1

If op was watching television in the 70's like me, then he's lucky like like me too. He's in his mind fifties and is looking forward to an early retirement! No thirty years of grinding like you poor yungins��. That's all behind us now.
Op, hope you can expect a decent social security check and hope you can hang on until those few years remaining.

I wish I could say it was a job loss. I was "single" and offered a chance to accept a buyout and allow a friend with a family and young son who eventually went to prep school and Harvard keep his job. He had just moved north from Florida.

Looking back this was a poor decision.

And yes I do think my mental state now is a big issue.

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Hey OP,

At least you took your shot. I think the toughest part of the poker lifestyle is the swings. Maybe in the future you will try again at some point. I think the best strategy is to easy into it (Just my opinion).

Op didn't fail in my opinion. Someone touched on it. Poker has large swings.
I think most people don't appreciate and understand this. You need thousands of hours to verify that you're a winning player, but you need a huge bankroll to realize your potential. It's rather simple. Lot's of good poker players, maybe not necessarily world beaters like Tom Dwan, but good enough to have been able to make a living, have failed because they ran into a losing streak and they didn't have the bankroll to survive it.
For example, look at someone like Eli Elezra. He may not be considered world class, but he's a household name in the poker world. If Elezra hadn't already made millions from his business ventures, he would have busted out of poker decades ago. But now he's a WSOP hall of fame candidate.
And this thing about making 50 bucks into millions is a myth. Sure, you could do it 15 years ago when poker was easy. But still, a lot of these stories we've been told are misleading. Even the famous story about Chip Reese is rather bs. Sure, he stopped over in Vegas on his way to Stanford and never left. But what they don't tell you is he won 200 k in a tournament. Not to take anything away from him. But he didn't grind that money from playing cash games. He got lucky. Similar with Helmuth and DNegs and many others. You have to be good, but you also have to be lucky.

I think the bigger point I was trying to make, but ran out of paper, was that although we should give OP encouragement and positive feedback, he's destined to fail again if he gives it another shot. His bankroll in all likelihood will be too small. If he's good enough, and has just enough funds, he can run it up and succeed. But the chance of him running into another bad streak and going broke again are just as high. You have to recognize that as a fact. Otherwise losing your roll again can be soul crushing.