We find a replacement for Nick very quickly, a guy still in high school named Sam. He was a wonderful talent on drums and while we were excited about “upgrading” from a proficiency standpoint, we were also bummed out that we lost a friend in Nick. Sam was from a good family, lived in a very nice gated neighborhood, and in general had nothing really in common with us. Still he was a nice guy and he was able to secure us a place to play in front of actual people for the first time.

The last group Sam was in was an indie band called Sweet Street. I don’t remember why he said he was let go but maybe it was a personality clash. They were great and were already playing many shows in the area at the time. Anyway the lead guitarist wanted to put on a party/show at his house for his birthday. He had an empty pool for us to perform in and a ton of people coming. This was it. Our first live show.

I read the physical copy and agree strongly with your assessment. If there's any book to read the physical copy with it and not the digital, this is the one.

Almost all of the time I feel as though I'm two different people. I remember reading the story Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as a child and becoming enamored with the tale. Here I am two decades later quite literally living it. I do believe in my heart that everyone deserves unconditional love, yet I can't seem to give love without condition. I can't seem to even love myself without having alcohol in my system. I can't let go of my attachments to the external. I can't go an hour without having a selfish thought, I can't live in the present even though I know the things that pull me away are the very things that make me feel like garbage at the end of the day. No moment is ever enough, I can never get to the place where I'm satisfied.

I've been blessed with so much support, so much love, so much abundance and yet it's not enough. The idea of reincarnation scares the paint out of me. I can't imagine going through another incarnation if this cushy one is hard enough. I feel like a fraud, like a phony, like someone who believed in faking it until they made it except the only problem is I never made it. I have flashes where I can look into someone's eyes and see how wondrous they really are, where I can look at my surroundings and have my jaw drop with the beauty that comes with nature. I can exhibit patience, restraint, and pure love. But never for very long. Life is difficult and I'm not sure we take it seriously enough when we're on the other side of the veil.

I haven't went back through this thread post by post from the beginning egoically in months. I'm still almost positive I've never mentioned that my 3 year old boy has been diagnosed with autism. The classes we've been enrolled in have helped a lot even though they've been virtual and nowhere near as intensive as they would've been thanks to Covid. I don't understand it much (autism that is) but I do believe he's only "lightly" on the spectrum if I can be so crass. He had a lot of difficulty speaking for a long time but he seems to be coming around, although still very far behind my sister's son who is 1 full year younger than him. He is extremely eccentric in his behaviour and is much more hands on to take care of than other kids I've seen his age.

I love my son as much as I can love anyone but I feel tremendous guilt to have someone in front of me who requires so much attention and care and I still spend most days wondering what my purpose is on this planet. I lay down some nights knowing deep inside of me that I'm playing my life the completely wrong way. I can't help it. The next day starts and I'm back in the throes of things.

I've been trying my best to become the best poker player I can be as that's the only real thing I can justify putting time into right now. In a few months my son will be going to real face to face school for 4 hours a day during the week and I'm going to pivot my YouTube channel in a different direction. Over 100 videos made and 16 subscribers to show for it, most of them coming from an audiobook I did which I'm pretty sure is illegal but whatever. It's Johnathan Livingston Seagull, one of my favorites. I had an impulse to put it up and it only took about an hour to do.

Anyway back to poker and man it is tough in the online scene. I bought PokerSnowie and played 10K hands against it while getting around 10.5 on the error rate. For those who haven't used the program they say that the best high stakes players score around 7 so there's a lot to clean up in my game. Actually I messed up in saying that because I bought Simple GTO Trainer a few weeks beforehand (haha before "hand", get it? It's a poker reference...You know what, YOU DON'T APPRECIATE ME AND THE GOLD I BRING YOU!) Okay that last bit in parantheses might just be me projecting my own personal stuff into this post.

It's a good product but what I don't like about it is when you make a mistake, it doesn't tell you why. What I mean is all it will do is tell you that your decision with THAT particular hand is incorrect but not show you the full range of hands. I had no idea Pio now had Pio 2 which contained a GTO trainer, which would've saved me the small $150 or whatever I burned on Simple GTO Trainer. After buying Pio 2 with no research, I was blindsided that I actually have to run game trees for each situation which makes total sense. I guess I just assumed they would've already done that like with GTO trainer. For those in the same boat as me I found a very awesome app called Postflop+ GTO Poker Trainer on iPhone. Do I know that the trees are accurate? Heck no, but after messing around with it during the infinite down-time of being a live poker player, I was able to get my Snowie error rate down to the very low 9's. They are definitely on to something with that one. Anyone who owns part of that app be sure to kick some money my way for sending half a reader to you.

I'll post some very very unimpressive screenshot graphs of my online poker experience so far.

Well I'm too dense to figure out how to post my screenshots.

How can I help someone?

Ram Dass says something I'm very loosely paraprhrasing here but it still made a huge impact on me. "When I give money or food to the beggar, I get to feel good about myself, but in the end I'm perpetuating the idea of separtism. I'm ME helping HIM. That helps in the short term, but not in the long." Paraphrasing could very well be the nicest way of saying I took away the wrong part of what was being given to take away. Nevertheless, I took that into me.

I like talking to you. I'm thankful you're even here to listen. You're doing me a service without even realzing so. Maybe we all do services to others without ever knowing it. Does that part matter? I'm too ignorant and tied up into the external to tell you the difference. What I know is I'm thankful you took the time to read my little story, even if I haven't found the motivation to finish what you first came for.

Sometimes I feel guilty in that I'm not the person my wife thought I was when she attached herself to me. That's right, my girl, my love, was right in between all of this band drama. I wouldn't even know of her existence if it wasn't for the band. Another thought for the whole concept of chasing something only to find something better? I love the esoteric feel of this thread I've created close to a year ago. But I also would hate to lead you astray the way I've been seemingly lead astray. Maybe there is no end, no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow if I can be so "vommitinly" cliche.

I met Joss through my now ex-stepbrother Chris. God when you type it all it out it really seems like I'm worlds apart from someone spirtitually mainstream such as Eckart Tolle. My life has been such a play, such a drama, I fear I'm only at the beginning and you dear readers are centuries ahead of me. I'm posting more than usual in that I'm in front of a desktop whereas 100% of the posts before todays have been made through my phone before this.

Like most posts I've made here, you'll have to navigate the timeline, it's only funner that way for me (and for you as well if you're honest with yourself).

Probably 2 months before the big Sam pool party show, which again was our VERY first live showing. I sat in the passenger side of Chris' silver grey Dodge truck. I had no idea as to what awaited me. After all, we met a good handful of girls. Of course it's been thrown out in popular culture that it's easy to meet women when you're involved in a band (hell it's the reason I even ever learned how to play the guitar) IT'S JUST AS EASY AS MEDIA MAKES IT SEEM!

Lilting past my own belief of that a girl could only ever love me if I was a part of something bigger, the propaganda forced down our throats is 200% correct in this field.

I of course expect nothing, I have my own piece on the line. Do I have any feelings for her (the aforementioned "piece") other than that we play together at night when I'm up for it? Absolutely not. Is this beyond selfish? Of course. I'm used to a certain kind of lifestyle after all. Wait maybe I'm not?

Now we're (the reader) drawing back even further?! Why can't we just get on with the story?? I want to know how Joss became MOTHERFLUFFING Joss!! The wife of the autistic boy! The girl that the "Hero" keeps struggling with!

So again we're in high school, we're without Meaghan. But it's not that easy is it? No we still have to go to classes, we still have to see her getting carresed during brunch/lunch in the EXACT SAME way WE used to carress her. Maybe you can relate, maybe not.

I go out with literally no one senior year other than when I try to patch things up with Meaghan. I can pick out one moment where I'm trashed on the weekend and call her at 2 in the morning (I totally could've had her back if I knew wtf was really going on) and proudly saying I'm still a virgin. See that was my big brain play at finding out if her new bf has tagged her (as if that meant anything anyway?). She politely said "Good for you."

I ran this Meaghan storyline through my head for multiple years, I quite literally thought my life was over. Now over 10 years later and a shade bit wiser, somewhat wish life was as simple as I first thought it was.

I remember close to the end of senior year I had developed a not so small crush on this small somewhat thicker blonder girl that was a year behind me. My friend that was a girl named Lisa helped me find out she wanted nothing to do with me. Not in a rude way, she just was not attracted to vague white boys like me. I truly feel bad in the way I played the whole Lisa friendship looking back on it. Lisa actually was the other "mutual" friend sitting with Meaghan that gave me an "in" to begin with. Lisa and I had a MySpace friendship (maybe a bit too far back to the average reader?.) When we met in real life, there wasn't an attraction for me but she still played super cool. Pre-Meaghan I distinctly remember texting her in the back of Chris' silver dodge. We were on the way to a nearby town's party. I'm sorry if I didn't make it clear, but even though we lived in California, it wasn't like the OC. Again maybe a dated reference. But we lived in farm towns, we might as well as lived in Nebraska. I mean gaht dang, even my own parents are as RED as they come. I joke to Joss that we live in California but it's the reddest part you could think of.

To get to the point we had many neighboring towns that were 15-20mins away that we could hit to drink at. Between you and I, I always was hoping someone would notice us as a band despite having no music online or any live shows under our belt.

Lisa sent me a heartfelt text confessing her feelings for me. Me, knowing I was destined to be a big shot, no question in that what my destiny was, brushed her aside the same way you would a fruit fly that dances between you and your bag of sourdough bread you pan fry with a couple of eggs for breakfast.

"Sorry, I don't feel the same way. But can you ask your friend "XYZ" blah, blah, blah." Oh yes! Of course! No problem! You know I'd do anything for you!

Again, heavily paraphrasing, but still. What a cool customer.

There's something to be said when someone reacts so nonchantly, so elegantly. That it takes you years? That it takes you a decade plus? To realize how mature they are, how confident they are?

I haven't brought this up as it's my story and I get to share what I post. But I want to share it. I think it's only fair to post the whole true story unlike my first idea of only posting what looks somehwat likeable to my character.

Again I never have another serious girl while in high school. I end up having to go to secondary school to graduate (no chance for me to finish on stage bc of all the abscenses my mother allowed). She had her own love story going on of course. Married to my best friend Chris' dad. Little did she know she was about to be drained of the savings she's worked so hard to put together.

I move into a 3 bedroom apartment my mother origianlly leased and gave to Chris, me, and our other friend Dustin. Of course I rushed into this, I had like at most 2 solid full time months of beating the 90 Man KO's on Full Tilt for a little less than $20/hr. (I really wish I knew then what I know now.) I can remember paying my buddies/roomates $1 for food I didn't own. I'd pay Dustin $1 for the bologna he bought and Chris $1 for the bread and american cheese. We had a paper we migrated from Chris' house to begin with.

See I wasn't a great pool player, but I knew I was better than anyone else that came around the house. We had what was known as the ""Debt Wall".

It's "today" again and I'm brushing my teeth. I know I should take care of my mouth more ofen but I just can't seem to find the motivation to do it.

My wife FaceTime's 90 mins before this. She went on a 3 day trip to visit her older sister in Nevada with our son. Immidiately she asks what I've been drinking. When you've been with someone for a while it feel impossible to hide anything from them. Not that you ever would, but that loss of freedom feels like it adds up over a while. Maybe that's just me.

I tell her we walked to the corner store to buy a small bottle of Tito's.

Sometimes I wish I'd die unexpectedly and my wife somehow stumbles upon this thread and understands me more. I think that's all we really want. We just want someone to understand us, to understand our story. But how could anyone? They have their own story to try to make other people understand.

I'm sure it's all in my head but sometimes I think my wife enjoys when I give into the pressures of the world. Do you know anyone that seems to like you more when you're down? Do you know anyone that seems to like you less when you're up? It's not their fault.

Chris would play pool against me early on but he was very smart in that he lacked not only the natural talent on the pool table but also the dedication. After 20k hands breakeven combined against the 5NL/25NL Zone crowd on Ignition I wish I had the same discretion.

I made a grip against Chris' older brother Glenn's friends Richard and Pablo specifically. Despite them being out of school and me only being a junior when we met, we hit it off, even with me pounding them on the pool table. I really do wish I would've taken their "seal of approval" a little more seriously. It's so hard to get people older than you to "like you", that's probably just my own toxic preconceptions that were handed down to me.

Hey thanks for commenting in my thread because now I've found your thread! I've read every post and it's a great read so far. Keep up the good work. Good luck with everything, your family, your band, and poker. I'm hoping the end of your poker career just means the end of doing it for a living rather than the end of playing entirely.



Click the multi-quote button on all the posts you want to quote then hit post reply or click quote on the last post you want to quote.

A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle is also a good read.

I don't like tipping either but I'd feel like a POS if I tipped any less. I think more important than tipping is being nice to the dealers and the staff. Treat them like human beings and not automatons.

When the Commerce was giving away tickets to the drawing for the 10k WPT seat when you made a full house with both hole cards one of the runners would often give me two tickets instead of one. And the dealers and runners would give me a heads up when there was an action player at a different table. I never solicited or asked for any of that I was just nice and friendly and fairly generous when it came to tipping. I always tipped $1 at least when the runners brought me chips and sometimes I'd tip a $5 chip. And I tried to tip at least $1 whenever I won a hand and more if the pot was larger.

Your writing is good keep up the good work.

Lol I think this happened to me too. I slammed my thumb into a car door when I was like 4 or 5 years old. That's a mistake you make only once in life.

Good luck in whatever endeavor you choose to pursue, but hopefully you don't quit poker permanently.

Yeah I've noticed that when someone at the table tips extremely generously that most people start tipping 2-3x their usual amounts. It's infectious.

I think I experienced the same thing when I was a kid. I'd lie down to go to bed and the room would seem to warp around me. It was a strangely enjoyable sensation. I'm not sure if it's the same thing but when I come out of the movie theatre everyone looks really small for like 10 mins.

Make an account on imgur. Then New post in the top left. Click the 3 dots on the upper right corner of the new post. Get share links. Copy/paste the BBCode (forums).



Try full ring on Ignition. Should be easier to beat than zone.



To embed a youtube video put the 11 digit code that comes after = in the link in between youtube brackets. Quote my post if you want to see how it's formatted.

If you haven't read "Self-Reliance" by Ralph Waldo Emerson yet you absolutely have to read it. It is one of the most brilliant works of all time in my opinion. Especially if you're into Ram Dass and Eckhart Tolle. It's an essay and it's free to read online.

https://emersoncentral.com/texts/ess...self-reliance/

A bunch of other classic lines in there and the whole thing is just absolutely brilliant and it's not that long just an essay not a book.

Thank you Rick for all of the thoughtful replies. I hope that one day we can speak in person again.

“Feels like every chance to leave is another chance I should’ve took.”

I am driving north on the 99. I am leaving everything behind. I’ve done this so many times. How? Simply because I always end up turning around. I spend 30-45 minutes driving and fantasizing what it’d be like to essentially start a new life. Where would I go? Probably Texas as all I’ve heard about the new rooms down there is action and soft targets. But poker is strictly for money to survive and doesn’t keep my interest for very long. What would I do with the rest of my time? I dream of writing records and releasing them independently. I dream of all responsibility being washed away from me and living like a free being. I want to run away because I’m scared of this being all life has to offer for me if I stay.

I have to go back. I can’t leave my son abandoned with no father like I was left. Still I wonder if me being around is even worth anything to him if I grow more and more depressed and overwhelmed by small things over time.

I’ve cut off most of the few friendships I had while telling my wife it’s because “I’ve outgrown them.” I’ve been extremely distant with my mother and sister as well. In reality I am trying to get away from anything that pulls me back into a role. I don’t want to be myself anymore. Sometimes I even have the clarity to just watch myself in a role. I’m tired of the small self. I’m tired of listening to my insecure, jealous, angry thoughts. Yet despite this I continue to identify with both the small self and the thoughts generated by it.

Have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror for an extended period of time? After a while you’ll forget you are looking in one, especially if you are face to face and have no other point of reference. It will just look like someone is right in front of you. Focus on the eyes. Maybe you’ll see what I’ve seen, given I’m you and you’re me.

Sorry to hear you're struggling, OP; I've experienced similar and also understand what you're saying with that last bit. Have you ever read The Untethered Soul? I think you may find it helpful. Fwiw, when I first researched it I dismissed it as likely to be overly mainstream-friendly, substance-less fluff, but I gave it a chance a year later and it ended up being one of the best reads I've had over the last few years among well over 100 very good books.

It’s funny you mentioned it because a day before my last post I had just finished reading it. It’s a great book and it makes so much sense while reading but hard for me to implement in real life. I think a lot of the frustration I was feeling in my last post was because of how stark the difference my mindset was while reading that wonderful book and living real life.

There is one memory pre foster care I almost forgot to write about. This must’ve been about a year before the hotel room raid. Angie, Marcelo and I just moved into an apartment and I made a lot of friends with the neighborhood kids quickly. This particular day I was incredibly pumped because Angie promised me that we’d go to the nickel arcade later on in the afternoon. Luckily I was decent at simple math even back then, and successfully calculated that I could play 5x as long as opposed to the traditional one. Slight brag aside are nickel arcades even around anymore?

After spending the morning and early afternoon riding my bike and playing pretend with my new friends, it was time. I pushed the pedals as fast as possible and day dreamed about what I would play first. I loved Tekken as a kid not because I was competent (I would just mash buttons and hope for the best) but I loved the flashy character models/animations. I begin to cross the street. “I think I’ll try out the Panda character today. After all wasn't he the one who beat me down last time when the CPU picke-“ *CRUNCH* *BRAKE SQUEAL*

I hadn’t looked before crossing. The car backed up and drove past me laying there. I knew I had been hit but I didn’t feel anything. I couldn’t seem to get up although I didn’t have any pain.

I can’t remember what happened right after that but all of a sudden there’s EMTs around me, asking me my pain levels, telling me how brave I am etc. They load me into an ambulance and after some X-rays the doctors find that my leg is broken. I need surgery and pins put in. I was put tightly in a blanket before surgery and the nurse tells me that she wrapped me like a burrito. I like that a lot and get wheeled to surgery.

The pins eventually get taken out and I still have the scars on my left leg as a reminder.