A few months back, a cat down the road fell off a balcony and died (10 floors up)

I was trying to figure out how to introduce my kitten to my balcony (5 floors up). I was afraid since he had literally never been higher than ground floor that he wouldn't realize we were so high up and would do something stupid since kittens in general are kind of clumsy. Unfortunately I ended up being allergic to him and had to find him a new home. But yea, I was worried about having my balcony doors open and whatnot, especially as the birds love my palm trees and I could have seen the kitten being super dumb and just springing over the balcony to try to snatch a bird.

GLGL on the grind

Way too many replies when all I did was being careful relax peeps

isn't it totally standard to put a net around your balcony when you have a cat? also hooray for cathair allergies (that's why the p* has to be shaved, rite?)

yea we have nets on the windows that we regularly open but we go on th ebalcony a lot and he doesnt approve so thats the only way he gets to join outside too

Hola

Skipped one session because my arm was going crazy with a mix of pain and itch

Played today and got absolutely rekt again. Guess April is just going to be one of those months which is obv somewhat expected after three months of extreme heat. Going to make sure I focus on getting my study volume in to make sure I play every session as confidently as possible. Will write out some proper goals tomorrow

It’s funny, had one week without writing down any goals and o legit didn’t cook at all didn’t grind almost at all and lacked in the exercise / workout department too. Turns out shouting out my goals/intentions into the universe is useful, Negreanu had a point

Hope you all have had luck on your side, peace

Goals for next week

[ ] play three sessions (going for late Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday but don’t wanna set a too lofty goal as forcing myself to grind is usually a bad idea)

[ ] shoulder exercise daily

[ ] sort out my finances and start getting ready paperwork (failed this last quarter and now have another 3 month deadline to finish what I started last summer)

[ ] cook most of the meals I eat (3 things outside or less)

[ ] review 7.5hours total

gl bro! hope the heat comes back

Is this your dominant arm? Did you give yourself "The Stranger"?

Read this book when I was a teenager, I think it was about some minor league pitcher trying to crack the majors. I honestly don't really remember the title/plot, all I remember is the detailed section about him staying in ****ty motels, alone, and giving himself the stranger.

I'm now subbed to this thread, so stay tuned for more contributions like that one.

Way to hit him with the tag team going hard like AC Slater

No idea what the stranger is but sounds like some jerking off shenanigans lol

It’s my left arm and I m right handed but I use both arms to grind because of hotkeys so in that regard doesn’t quite matter which it is

Hope you did better than me last night

Never used hot keys, sounds complicated. Hope you feel better, altho seeing less of you at the tables would make my life easier.

Haha swear to god still no idea what you guys mean

Somehow despite playing the same games and often same times I don’t see u much apart from 888 :/ maybe it’s cuz I don’t know your party or French sns haha but on stars specifically we cross paths quite rarely

That’s one way to take a compliment ae

Best of luck today if u re playing, I had a day 2 in the most ridic tournament ever today

It’s called phase 1 into phase 2 on party poker so naturally making phase 2 means u take your chips potentially the blinds get rolled back and you play with a pool of players who also made day 2 for a total combined prize pool right? Lol no

You do take your chips but instead of you being in the last 12% and being almost in the money you see that there s 800 people left and 120 cash for what essentially is 28x the buyin you paid. Also people get to buy in for 530. So basically you played a satty to a 530 labeled as something it entirely isn’t. Got me super tilted but didn’t last long enough to matter. Pretty ridiculous use of a long established term on online poker to draw people into playing what essentially is a carry chips forward satellite. Owell has two beers so prob old man drunk ranting innit

Peace

yea so ****ty they are doing this all the time (allowing reg in final phase for 10x buyins of phase one but also 10 starting stacks of phase one/100bb) + this time they have also rentry to final phase

get well soon

I also was pretty angry they labled this tourney like that. actually seemed consciously misleading. fired multiple 55 phase1s and certainly wouldnt have done if they just named it as a satellite to a 530 which it effectively was.

anyway hope your arm gets better and gl

Oioi

Basically since the last update I fell into a mental hole. That in itself is mildly annoying as it usually means I lack motivation to do anything of substance for about one to two weeks. What made it worse is that it was series on every site I enjoy playing on so the glory hunter in me (lol apparently even I have this syndrome) made me tilt even more which reduced my motivation even more which in turn made everything tilt me even more etcetcetc. Took me until Thursday to realize that I m having another one of those episodes and resumed taking the vitamins that helped me get through the last couple instances of this and decided to take off until Sunday. Feeling much better now and had a massage today to get back to basically normal.

Kinda lame that these things are basically the reason that I most likely will miss my yearly volume target by 33% (goal is at 144 sessions, I m currently at 31 played and 15 skipped after 28% of the year) but it is what it is. Since forcing myself to play during times like these is stupid all I can do is recognize times like these sooner and do my best to get out of them faster.

Gonna be failing all the weekly goals pretty much unless I manage to get in another 4.5 hours of study but not gonna sweat it today and have a full day with gf family tomorrow.

Here a to a more productive second half of April, hope y’all are well

Is there anything that triggers the 'mental hole?'

Def understand getting burned out, especially when the majority of your waking hours revolve around poker -- even more so if/when your social circle is composed of other poker players. These days I'm pretty good about not beating myself up for missing volume, but it took a lonnnnng time for me to realize that giving myself breaks was an important part of my schedule/health.

It’s kind of weird cuz I don’t actually play that much in the best of times. Think if I look at net playing times when I feel good I get barely more than 35 hours weekly so it’s not exactly burn out

I think it s triggered in many different ways such as lack of sunshine, bad mood/ fights with close ones etc. honestly, it funnily enough feels like having had a three month heater my mental game went to complete **** cuz I had two losing sessions and this is all I can think of that has happened this time around.

Have been having weeks like this throughout my career and this time was the first time I allowed myself to relax on day 3 - used to take me longer to get rid of the internal pressure to grind which has been the thing keeping these periods so long in the past.

I just have this thing where I know I m literally not capable of playing more than the above hours without crashing yet I feel lazy whenever I skip a session. It’s mostly due to knowing a bunch of guys who legit don’t do anything BUT grind, putting in 45, 50 even 60 hours week after week and I guess I m kind of competitive in that way or to put it differently: since starting poker I have always felt the pressure to get to a certain amount of savings ASAP bc everybody keeps saying how poker is dying and get yours while you can etc. and tbh I am quite far from the point of being able to say I have made “enough” to where I can tune down my grind volume and reduce the pressure.

Writing this out, this is starting to feel like a pretty deep rooted issue including my parents etc haha

But ya I ve just come to the point of knowing when this type of drive is unhealthy. That, and knowing that I can make a very good living grinding at the pace and volume that I can. These two are pretty helpful.

If poker does tomorrow it would obv be pretty bleak but I don’t really see this drying up anytime soon

what vitamins/supplements r u taking??

In your spot I will think about booking session with Jared Tendler or Eliot Roe this might help you with other mental issues/blocks u have out of lack of vitamins, sunshine etc

Talked to tendier once back in 2014 but he himself said he isn’t the person to talk to when it comes to psychological issues like this.

I would consider therapy again anytime I am feeling like this for an extended period of time but this winter was the easiest in terms of getting back to feeing good I have had since 2011 so for now I ll just try and live well

I take vitamin D and B. Usually when I take them just the ritual of starting the day like that helps set the mind right after waking up.

how much savings you think you need to not feel any of that pressure?

gl with your recovery

Im live cash (low high-stakes) grinder for almost 10 years and have similar mental volume problems. I tend to feel a form a satisfaction when Im on a heater like last fall and just dont feel the hunger and eagerness to win and battle it out anymore, which can lead to not playing much at all.
2019 has been bad overall and in this case I tend to "get a bad taste" and loose motivation because of coolers, suckouts, getting blown off good hands, questionable plays etc. I guess avoiding playing on tilt in general is a good thing or when you not feeling sharp. Not playing enough feels really awful though, when you are a highly self-criticizing person like myself.
I usually manage to push myself to play on weekends when there is more action, but its not good enough by my standards.

I found a bit of motivation by playing some midstakes online again in the last couple weeks, which i havent done at all in the last 3-4 years. The different type of challenge and the feeling of slight improvement in my game has given me a slight uplift for the moment, but not sure how long it will last.
I have realized or rather reminded myself of is that it doesnt get to me as much loosing a buy-in or two online. The stakes are obv lower then what I usually play, but it definitely feels less demoralizing when you have a fighting chance, while live you're often sitting there completely card dead for an hour your best option being folding pre over and over.

In general I have tried avoiding pushing small edges over my career in live deepstack games. Hence not taking to many marginal spots, which you are more forced to do online.
Just going with the assumption that those type of games are "bad" where u are forced out of your comfort zone is prob not gonna cut it anymore for me, cause the live scene is also consistently changing and getting tougher. I wish I had the same hunger and the drive though that I used to +5-6 years ago when I came to play in a new place and a new setting.

it`s absolutely normal to lose motivation now and then. You are not a robot. Our brain just needs different stimulations from time to time. it`s not laziness, it`s not a mental issue. a year has 52 weeks, it would be abnormal -even for high-functional personalities- to reach every single Goal every single week.

someone who lives in Europe and eats vegetables, fruits and meat doesn`t need Vitamins. Although i take vitamin D myself because i am at work when the sun is shining.

good luck!

[QUOTE=cluelesss;55012247]how much savings you think you need to not feel any of that pressure? /QUOTE]

kept looking for a 2.4 Billion Euros gif but never found one (sup Money Heist for the ideas that dont know about it)

hope you feel better soon bro <3 . Maybe just need some sessions with me, I'm not some boring idiot European <3