Hai guyz! I'm 40 years old and still can't figure out what to do with my life. That's right I'm talking about no career, no wife or girlfriend (on the plus side no kids), haven't been on a date in forever, my friends from when I was in my 20s got married and moved away in their late 20s / early 30s, and I found myself just hanging around in a small town in Michigan with nothing much to do. But at least I'm not broke and I like to play poker so I figured I'd rent a place in Vegas for a month. So here I am. Maybe I'll even move here, maybe I'll move somewhere else, or maybe I'll do lots of traveling for a while. If I was trying to put a positive spin on things I'd say I've got options, man! But more often I feel bored and aimless and increasingly aware that I'm getting old with nothing to show for it. /sadviolinmusic

I've been here in Vegas for a week. I've created not one but two online dating profiles (I don't think I've done anything foolish enough to make it possible but please don't trainwreck me bro). I'm not too sure about trying to play poker for a living, it's more of a hobby for me, and I haven't even played enough live poker to know whether I'm beating the rake or not. I've got computer programming skills and if I took some initiative I'm sure I could do something with that, but working a typical 9-5 type office job sounds horrible. I have ideas about getting into standup comedy but so far my ratio of thinking about it to acting on it is not good. I've been having some digestive issues lately so apparently I've got to take better care of myself, even though I thought I was already making a decent effort. I bought a juicer and my fridge is full of fresh vegetables so I hope that's going to help. Ask me questions, troll me, ignore me, whatever. Welcome to my blog.

Hi Steve. What did you do in your 20s and 30s to support yourself?

How much capital do you have? Is it all from poker?

what games do you play? do you wear a hat at the table?

Do you own a Stu Ungar card holder? Do you keep an Ace up your sleeve when playing live?

work on learning body language to communicate with chicks.

My dinner tonight is a kale carrot celery tomato blueberry strawberry ginger "smoothie" with lemon juice and half a jalapeno pepper, with enough water that it comes out beverage like. Even half a jalapeno turns out to be a lot but I'm pleasantly surprised, this doesn't taste too bad.

Very good questions and this will have to be addressed, otherwise there's going to be a pretty big gap in the backstory. The answer is that my dad gave me a lot of money (mainly in the form of a stock portfolio) which I became aware of in my early 20s, and I've never really had to work for a living. I had some jobs in my 20s but nothing recently, and it doesn't matter in this context but just for the record I did make a little money from online poker, maybe $6000 total. Anyway, as long as I don't go too crazy with my spending I'm probably not going to have to worry about money for a while.

Just low stakes NLHE (so 1-2 and 1-3 live games, and I tried 2-5 once which made me nervous). Could play higher if I wanted to, but I'd have to be confident I can beat the lower levels before I'd be able to justify moving up. I almost always wear a hat at the table, and sometimes sunglasses. Maybe I take the game too seriously and should try to have more fun with it.

No. Maybe.

Unfortunately I don't thing the women I might possibly end up dating are going to be young enough to call "chicks". So far online I've had 5 who messaged me first or want to meet me but I'm not interested in any of them for obvious reasons, and of the 10 I messaged only 2 responded and 1 was responding only to a specific question I asked (very helpfully) but had no interest in meeting me. So I think that's how it goes, whoever initiates contact is at best on the low end of the receivers range, and usually way beneath it.

Wow, i never would have guessed. I always assumed you were a little older than me, and you always struck me as a guy who had his **** together. Sick life.

Fwiw from what I read 20% reply rate is very good for those sites.

Do you think this helped you or hurt you? (not having to work to create your own money)

Anyway 40 is still quite young and none of this stuff really matters in the long run, we're all gonna end up as worm food anyway. Gl

It's impossible to know what my life would look like now if I hadn't come into the money. What I can say for sure is I didn't handle the situation well, so I don't think it was good for me. The money made it very easy for me to give up on things at the first sign of adversity, and it facilitated my already well-established tendency toward laziness. But those might have ended up being major problems for me in any case. The other thing was the negative social impact of not having a job. I've heard it's somewhat different in Europe, but at least in the US one of the first questions people ask is "What do you do?". I never had a good response to that and never felt comfortable discussing my financial situation with strangers, so I'd mutter something about "not having a job at the moment" and after a while I developed a full-blown phobia of WDYD. This didn't motivate me to actually get a job (didn't want one even though not having a job made me feel like a loser but laziness trumped that), but it did cause me to avoid the awkwardness of social situations and I became increasingly withdrawn throughout my 20s. Eventually I was turning down what few social invitations came my way. My options would have been to either get a job to fit in, or to confidently own the fact that I didn't need / didn't want a job, and see who would be willing to accept that (and then at least find something worthwhile to do with my time because sitting around doing nothing wasn't even acceptable by my own standards). So given the way I mishandled the situation, I'm pretty sure the money wasn't doing me any good.

You are one of my favorite posters when I come across you in OOT you have good timing on humores photos ect and are always an enjoyable read.

Do you have any causes that you care deeply about ? Saving animals, helping underprivileged kids, helping the homeless ect ? I was thinking if you got involved into some type of volunteer work you might meet some women of interest though that plus you'd be dong something good for the betterment of whatever you care about so your esteem might be higher which women always seem to enjoy.

Good luck with whatever you do I'll be enjoying your blog even if I don't post in it much.

It is, so why not move there?

I mean, if you have an income that is independent of your physical location, well, you have a pretty astounding level of freedom. Take Italy, for example. I left because the economy went to crap, which it still is. My monthly rent when I left was 300euro for a pretty sweet pad. Monthly expenses to live modestly, maybe 1000euro depending on where you live. Learn a new language, meet girls, stay away from their fathers, pick your country, and when they ask you what you do you can say anything you want.

"I'm taking a sabbatical from saving the rare white whales of Isthmus Sound from extinction."

"My government won't let me talk about the jobs I did for them."

You can do better than Vegas.

@GS: Hey man I really needed a kind word just now, so tyvm. Thinking about my life and where it's at and how it got that way is making me depressed. Maybe volunteer work would do me some good (but look how I put the focus on "me" there, amazing). It's not the kind of thing I ever really consider. But I'll look into it, for real. Right now though I feel like I need a mood reset, so instead of sitting around the condo like I've been doing all afternoon, it's time for the workout I've been putting off. It's a pretty crappy workout room but whatever, I just need to get moving, so off I go to the step machine that can only be set to a maximum of 10 minutes and makes a clicking noise every revolution because something is out of adjustment. I'll go through the workout twice so that's 20 minutes, then a shower. Man I just need to be doing something. So easy to sit here with my thoughts and get depressed.

Hey adsman just noticed your post, on my way out now but do you have any thoughts on Spain? I'd be more likely to travel there than Italy because I know some Spanish. Vegas would be a weird place for me to live. So far I've gone out to Mt. Charleston twice for hiking, which is about as non-Vegas-like as you can find around Vegas. When you're seeking out places that are as atypical as possible within the vicinity of wherever you are, maybe you're in the wrong place, lol. Unless I start really killing it at the poker table, then I'm sure Vegas would seem awesome.

I have a step machine like that mine the back light doesn't work any longer but the LCD is still functional and it's loud as hell better than nothing though. Good for you going to work out that always helps me clear my mind and release some stress.

I know it's cliche but just try to stay positive and focus on things you can be grateful for, it will turn around when things are not going right having an optimistic outlook helps too if you frame events into a positive light it makes it easier not to get down.

I am supporting you and your quest to become a life subchampion

Thank you for subchampioning my cause. So the online dating, I'm already getting frustrated but I think I haven't put enough effort into it yet to earn my current frustration level. I finally had someone I might be interested in meeting indicate they would be interested in meeting me, but when I went to contact them it turned out their profile had been deleted, so that was probably just an attempt to rope as many guys as possible into subscribing to her webcam before her account got shut down. What I'm going to do now is message 10 women on POF without being too selective and without thinking about it too much. If I click on her profile and she's not hideous and doesn't seem insane, she's getting a message from me, and that message will be the first thing that pops into my head.

I mentioned that I haven't been on a date in forever. It's actually been 9 years. Because 9 years ago I got super obsessed with someone I went on one not-even-really-a-date with and at the end of the night she said she'd like to see me again the next day, to play tennis. Which might seem pretty casual but I didn't take it that way. Someone I liked was showing me attention, and since that had become such a rare occurrence, I basically wanted to marry her asap. Then she abruptly left town and sent me an email apologizing for her sudden disappearance and oh by the way mentioning something about a cool, interesting guy she met in a bar that night. This had what must have been the desired effect and drove me out of my mind. I couldn't think about anything else. I couldn't sleep. I wanted to smash things. I think I called her a few times and she wasn't returning my calls. And then I sent her this.

So I guess that's what not to do. Can't put myself in a position to be emotionally devastated by someone who is just messing with me, but it's tricky because I have the relationship skills of a 16 year old.

Seriously overthinking what to write in these messages. Send out 10, maybe get 1 reply if I'm lucky, see what happens from there. It's not that complicated ffs.

forumserver.twoplustwo.com/34/other-other-topics/online-dating-thread-1274571/

I just sent out one where the only thing I could see we had in common was bowling, so I told her my high score in bowling. If that doesn't get me a date I don't know what will.

She likely wasn't messing with you and had some interest until you decided to go full weirdo on her. That sucks dude. Try socializing more before you jump straight into dating - it helped me some. I had to force myself to go out and make friends, until eventually I started to look forward to it.

I spent some time in Barcelona which was a great city, excellent bars and food, plenty of people watching, and live poker at the casino. I've been with a few Spanish chicks in my time and they were quite intense to say the least. I have a good mate that is a pro online player that moved to Spain and he loves it.

why not join a gym.. or do something like cross-fit?

-You will be in better shape (like you said you needed)
-you will feel better about yourself (less confidence issues)
-won't be sitting around all day
-exercise is a proven cure for depression, or helps it.. or idk, but it does something for depression
- meet people (esp if you do the cross-fit option)
-possibility of women

I like what you are doing meeting them online, it helps to get in practice just like anything else the more aware you are of what to say and what works for you online will transfer when you meet women in real life too.

Another option to this, if you are not huge on lifting weights and what not.. do a karate/ju-jitsu/mauy-thai class.. or something along those lines. You meet some pretty interesting people at those kinds of gyms.