I really don't get the thought that stealing from a large corporation is somehow less bad than stealing from an individual. I guess it derives from the idea that stealing $1000 from millions of people is only cents they are missing where stealing $1000 from one person means that one person is way worse off because of your actions.

I won't detour your thread, just realized it was sitting on a bookshelf 6 feet from where I was sitting...



interesting stuff, indeed. I read you can cultivate your own, I'd just as well leave that to the professionals. I had some issues with my cauliflower last summer, probably don't need to start tinkering with hallucinogens.

Nice story ben....

The last week has been very strange. My girlfriends drinking started to become too much for me. I told her I was done with her because I couldn't be around the heavy drinking every time I see her. She decided to quit and has been on the wagon for a week or so now. I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much though.

So sobriety has been in the front of my mind and I started to question why I am sober. The thoughts got rolling and soon it turned into a freight train plowing it's way through my thoughts. So after over 2 years without a drink I ****ed up. It wasn't just some slip in the moment. I had to row to shore, hitchhike to town, then walk to the store to buy the booze. I could have stopped myself anywhere along the line but I just couldn't do it. I bought a bottle of whiskey and got drunk. I went back to the island and I realised what I had done. I felt like a piece of ****.

The good news is that I don't have to do that again. I'm still not sure what came over me. I suspect though that it was my messed up head trying to find a way to make it work with my gf. Figuring that she wouldn't be able to stay sober so I might as well join her in misery together, but it could be more than that I'm not sure. I just know I messed up and I can't do that again.

On the brighter side I got to go lobstering yesterday and made some extra cash. I'm going again tomorrow too. It sucks because I know I can have this site if I want it, and make really good money, but I wouldn't be able to focus on poker like I want to. Right now money is tight because I'm still playing fairly low stakes and I have to give up half of my profit, but I know if I stick with poker I will achieve success.

I haven't been putting in much volume in the last week. I just can't motivate myself to grind for more than an hour or two at a time. I think I just have been so stressed out that I can't focus. Like right now I am getting ancy just writing this blog, having a hard time focusing. I don't know if it's the isolation or the financial worries, maybe problems with my girl, I just don't know but I feel kind of lost right now. I just know that I need to stick to sobriety otherwise I will self destruct.

Glad to hear you didn't turn one bad decision into many that certainly happens to quite a few folks who "go back out" as they say. Last night I had quite a few thoughts about drinking creep into my mind made the final table of a $10 10kG NL on bovada and going deep in MTT's always seems to radically alter my mood. Out in 8th for $200, 1st was 2k
Going to the strip club, bar or package store certainly seemed like an attractive option especially since I could in theory keep it to myself. The reality is probably I'd feel overwhelmed by the decision the next day and either continue drinking in an escalating fashion or break down and confess to someone and pray that it stops.
I don't want to be separated from humanity anymore because of my drinking, it's a huge waste. Maybe this episode will help you and the GF turn a corner and support each other in abstaining from alcohol.

I'm not really active in AA at the moment but much of what I've learned from my time there comes to the front of my mind when thoughts of drinking arise and so far (6 months) it has been enough to keep me from that first drink.

Enjoyed the song, really liked the line at 1:15 "Liven up honey, it ain't that bad" keep that in mind IG!

wow interesting story man!

Good luck with everything you do

So, alot has been going on in my life since the last update. I am going to try to keep this short though.

I am no longer an island hermit. My GF and I got an apartment together on the mainland. Because I have 0 savings I decided I need to work a real job to pay rent and take care of things. I went lobstering for a few days as a fill in and I got offered a full time spot like I knew I would. I decided to take the site for many reasons. I should be able to make about $40K by January 1st so that means that I can save money for traveling this winter and my own BR so that I won't need to be staked. I will do my best to save 20K for BR and life roll and traveling. I am still working out the details of my stake agreement with one of the coaches at my stable. Hopefully I can keep my stake for another month or two and then I should have some money to finance myself. The 20K I hope to save doesn't include any money I can make grinding, so If I do this right I can build a BR in the next 6 months or so and still have a pile of money for a safety net. I have always been absolutely terrible at saving money, but I have never had anything I cared about like poker before in my life to save for so I feel confident that I can do what I need to do. I don't play much live poker, but sitting in front of a computer in isolation is not good for my mental health so I would like to have a separate live BR so that I can play live a few nights a week to keep things mixed up a little.

Last time I updated I was having trouble with the whole drinking thing. Over 2 years of sobriety and I found the need to drink. I keep flip flopping if I should be sober or not. I know that I shouldn't drink, but that little voice in my head keeps saying it's ok. My GF is drinking again now too after a week or two without it. She tried to hide it at first but then I found out and I guess it just seems like the only way to make us work. I think I have learned alot about discipline from poker (though I have alot more to learn in this area) and I think if I set myself some strict guidelines for drinking I may be able to maintain some kind of happiness without going overboard. There are lots of people in this world that had a drinking problem at one point and then outgrew it right?

So I haven't really done any real work in the last 6 months. A day here or there on a boat I guess but mostly just poker, so I am way out of shape. I am alot skinnier than I am used to because I lost most of my muscle from sitting in a computer chair. I decided to take my health seriously and I have been pounding the food to me. Even in the best shape of my life I am kind of a skinny lanky guy (who is still stronger and faster than most fyi) but I am going to try to gain weight. This next week I am going to get a gym membership and start lifting. I have never really been into lifting, actually I have always hated it, but I am sick of being skinny. If I get into a good routine then I will hopefully continue that when I give full time poker another go this winter. Sitting on the island all the time made me realize how important physical health is when playing poker.

I could keep typing but I am going to stop rather abruptly because I would rather enter in this blog more often with shorter posts than less often with longer posts.

doesn't seem like you're making optimal choices, but I'm just a random person on the Internet and people have to make their own paths.

re-read everything you've written about your gf and drinking, then read what you just wrote (her drinking "seems like the only way to make us work") and...well, good luck I guess. I don't see why getting a full time job, saving for the first time ever and having another go with her have to happen together and I think you're making decisions with your heart and not your head (did you really just throw out that you're going to set "some strict guidelines" to drinking and everything should be fine?) but who's gonna talk you out of it at this point?

promising to go to the gym, to re-dedicate yourself to a girl, to aim to have $20k in savings in short order after being "absolutely terrible at saving money", building a poker bankroll.....what could possibly go wrong?

people that decide to live on a small, remote island as cheaply as possible probably aren't the types to be able to control drinking around a constantly-drinking, volatile gf, stack up piles of money without impulse spending, work a full time, physically demanding job and while dedicating themselves to going to a gym for the first time ever several times weekly...call me skeptical, guess you can prove me wrong.

Yeah, there's a lot of sense in what wiper said. Drinking (against your commitment to dry out) to make your relationship work is almost certainly a sign that the relationship is wrong, not your sobriety.

Either way, GL. Lobstering pays pretty well then?

I am rooting for you. You can make things work. It is tough and no one knows that better than yourself, how tough that can be with your personality.

On the positive:
You didn't drink for 2 years
You understand, that drinking is not making anything more fun
You managed to keep out of trouble in prison
You are able to articulate your feelings

So I believe, that you can make things work.

Care to write more about your GF? I mean what connects you?

Drinking is definitely a problem. Especially if you feel that you have to drink to make things work. I would not say immediately no to the relationship, but until now you wrote not much about why or how it should work.

I am female. I had a phase in my life about 6 months, when I partied really hard and drunk also a lot. But then somehow it got really boring. Like you said I just outgrew it. Now I drink may be once every two or three months, alk just doesn't pull me.

But then if there is an addiction to alk in place, it changes the game. May be talk with your mom. I mean you mentioned somewhere that she also went through AA, so she knows what is that all about.

he works his fingers to the bone so he could own his Downeaster "Alexa", and go where the ocean is deep. There are giants out there in the canyons, and a good captain can't fall asleep. He's got bills to pay and drunk girlfriends who need clothes. He knows there's lobster out there. but where? God only knows.

he was a bayman like his father was before. Can't make a living as a bayman anymore. There ain't much future for a man who works the sea. But there ain't no island left for islanders like he.

Wow; great blog. Best of luck with managing the drinking. I am pulling for you!

ya ya yaaaaaah-ooooo

cool thread, have you ever thought about pursuing a captain's license by any chance and fishing commercially? Sorry if you've addressed this before, still catching up. Really awesome first post.

Thanks wiper, you make some really good points. I have alot to think about. For as many things as I want to do for myself, saving for poker is my number one priority. I have a plan to give every other check I get to my mother to put in her safe for me. I should be able to save 20K this way by Jan 1st.

The gym and stuff might go out the window, I don't know. The gf might not work out. If I start falling back into old habits with drinking I have people in my life that won't hesitate to let me know I need to smarten up. If I start to lose control at all I will go back to total abstinence.

I would like to type more but I am at a friends house. I will respond to you Lapka when I have some privacy and time.

Putting $20k in your mom's safe seems -EV unless you can't open a bank account for some reason.

probably the same reason he's been living off the grid in a concrete block shed paranoid his neighbors are spying on him with binoculars.

Yeah a bank account is out of the question

how comes? Because of the felony? I mean it is pretty tough completely without a bank account. Although I think having/paying cash is long term better for your own pocket and for every account you are gonna to pay somehow.

Incorrect. Many savings accounts are free. Thr banks will gladly store your money for free, and insure it too, in order to lend out your money to others. He would gain interest with money in the bank; so its it better long term from a fiscal perspective. However, it's his money and he can do with it as he pleases. I am not trying to tell him otherwise; rather, just explaining why your rationale wasn't sound.

^^ Bank is ALWAYS making money of you. Otherwise it would just not exist. If we take this example with no fee saving accounts. It pay something between 0.5 and 2%, what is below the inflation rate. That means that at the end you will have less money than what you did put in. On the other side bank lends money to 10%. That means for example if you have a friend, who wants to borrow some money from the bank, and you have now an excess then you both would be a lot better off to have a deal between you and bypass the bank. Trust and risk issues and such comes into play here. I have loaned 10 k to a friend now and we are splitting the difference in %.

And banks clearly also deliver service. I mean I have several CD accounts and normal banking account and a depot.

What my point is, that it makes sense to be aware of the "There is no free lunch" rule in banking.

With OP, I would like to know why a bank account is out of question for him. I doubt that it is his free choice at that point.

May be joined power of the internet can suggest a solution for him.

I have some tax issues that I would like to keep private that make it so that I can't open a bank account. I know that my money is completely safe in my mothers safe, possibly safer than a bank account because she knows what I am trying to do and won't just fork the money over to me any time I feel like spending. This was I know I won't be tempted to spend it until I am ready to give full time poker another go.

Sorry for thr derail OP.

lapka, your inflation example doesn't make sense in relation to your first post where you said having/paying cash is better because for every account you are going to pay somehow.

Quick math. Free bank account + $1,000 deposit plus 2% interest = $1,020

No bank account + $1,000 in a shoe box = $1,000

Both scenarios depreciate at the same rate. You obv want the interest from the bank. I know banks make money off loans; I mentioned that they will happily take your money so they can loan it out to others.

some more quick math:

$25,000 in court/legal fees + untraceable lobster population = lockbox

this