- 19.01.2017, 16:40
- +4
- This post has been edited 4 time(s), it was last edited by Thulium: 03.05.2017 18:57.
Updated Results
Introduction
Entrepreneur, poker player and traveler. Just another individual in his mid twenties traveling from country to country playing poker for a living while slowly (numbingly slow) building his e-commerce empire (village).
How Did I End up Here?
Like many before me, what attracted me to poker wasn't the promise of fame or fortune, neither which has ever truly appealed to me. Instead, it was the need for complete autonomy, largely driven by moderate social anxiety. Yet despite my shyness I didn't hesitate (much) when a couple of fellow poker players I had never met in person suggested we pack our things to setup shop on the other side of the world. And so we did... only a short period after having just graduated from high school I was sitting on a plane (the longest and most painful flight of my life) with two other poker players, almost complete strangers.
An Exotic Life
We had big plans with high expectations. We were going to grind like maniacs, study as if we were possessed and work the gym like beasts knowing that greatness was all but guaranteed, or so we thought at least. Unfortunately, as people often do, we underestimated how difficult it would be to walk that narrow path known as "productivity". In fact, we underestimated it so much that after only two weeks we completely abandoned the road and began walking, nay, running, in the opposite direction. We ended up living the lives of hedonists to an extent which could almost be classified as borderline degenerate (depending on who you ask of course).
It seemed as if each night there was a new party or event going on and it was almost impossible to steer away once we had been captivated by the intoxicating (in a literal sense) party atmosphere we were surrounded in, especially while indulging in the most addictive drugs of all, women. A year passed this way, party after party, and event after event until I woke up one morning, feeling particularly embarrassed reminiscing about the charades of the previous night.
Reality finally caught up with me and it was a sobering moment. I had barely been grinding, I had made zero progress with my game and I wasn't working out at all. A year of decadent living had also left a hole (more like a meteorite crater) in my bankroll and I began to genuinely worry about where I was actually heading from here. A feeling of worry that quickly compounded with the blurry memories (some slightly disturbing) of my nights out, making me feel all the worse for it. So it should come as no surprise when I finally decided it was time for a new chapter in my life.
Leaving my friends behind (we're still in touch), I packed my shit and got the fuck out of Asia. My time in Asia had been anything but productive, at least from a financial point of view. That said, despite whatever regrets our past tends to push upon us I'm still grateful for that time in my life. Because, not only did it help me grow up in many ways more than one, it also revealed a number of insecurities and other issues I hadn't been aware of before, giving me the chance to deal with them, and for the most part overcome. In the end, I guess that's just part of life and growing up... However, I suspect that some environments are more conducive to this end than others.
Rite of Passage
At first I returned to Europe, I settled for a small apartment in the coast of Bulgaria. In the beginning I was barely scraping by, my time in Asia had left me relatively poor and my poker game was worse off than ever while the games were quickly getting tougher. Needless to say, it was a time of struggle, but also a time of growth, a time which would eventually lay the foundation for who I was to become (or at least for who I am today).
A dwindling bankroll ensured my motivation remained fairly high, however, as I wasn't particularly good at poker while also being terribly inept at handling the long and cruel breakeven stretches I was anything but a happy and productive person at the time. I often contemplated giving up, projecting my recent but depressing results into the future, hopelessly thinking that things would never turn around.
Despite the difficulty I remained the course and continued to push through. Years went by, and so did the countries I had been living in. By the age of 23, I had lived in more than six different countries located on three separate continents. Progress was slow, painfully so, fortunately as evasive as it seemed at the time, I eventually reached the point where I was no longer feeling financially insecure. I dare even say that I made enough progress to become complacent.
Which brings us to the next hurdle, complacency. Desperation was no longer fueling the fire that kept me going and my progress became static, which is a problem, because as you progress, if each progression isn't progressively more progressive (yeah...) it becomes easy to lose interest and look elsewhere for stimulation, and so I did. Instead of grinding I started to date more and to spend more time watching movies and socializing with friends, which I dare say made me both happy and depressed at the same time.
It is easy to rationalize my behavior, saying that "what is the point of life if not to make memories worth remembering?". Perhaps you're right, I'm sure I told myself similar things, but then again, perhaps it is nothing but the bias of the 'remembering self', to equate happiness with elusive memories chemically attached to flashes of momentary joy in favor of denser and longer lasting states of happiness brought upon by feeling accomplished or competent at something. Who knows, there is also the theory of the unmoving baseline, so perhaps what we do is irrelevant in the end because our level of happiness will always return to its genetically pre-determined baseline. Nevertheless, my direction has been set.
Now What?
I'm far from done with poker and if I could have my way, then 2017 is to become my best year yet. That said, I no longer devote all of my time towards poker, I have for over a year now been building an e-commerce business I have based out in Hong Kong, deludedly hoping to one day make it big like many others out there. Deluded because I have never worked hard enough to deserve such a thing (neither in poker nor my business), I'm undisciplined and scattered in all directions, yet if poker has taught me anything it would be that discipline is nothing but an illusion (as is free will; no mention of fucking quantum mechanics) and that momentum is the single most important factor in isolation when it comes to achieving ones goals. This is me, claiming that through strategic molding of my environment I'm going to not just play poker while devoting a substantial amount of time towards my business this year, but that I'm going to put in more hours at the tables this year than I have any year before when my sole focus was just poker.
Eminem - Rap God
- Janury: est. $30,544.62 USD
- February: est. $15,990.22 USD
- March: est. $8,777.52 USD
- April: est. $9,767.75 USD
Introduction
Entrepreneur, poker player and traveler. Just another individual in his mid twenties traveling from country to country playing poker for a living while slowly (numbingly slow) building his e-commerce empire (village).
How Did I End up Here?
Like many before me, what attracted me to poker wasn't the promise of fame or fortune, neither which has ever truly appealed to me. Instead, it was the need for complete autonomy, largely driven by moderate social anxiety. Yet despite my shyness I didn't hesitate (much) when a couple of fellow poker players I had never met in person suggested we pack our things to setup shop on the other side of the world. And so we did... only a short period after having just graduated from high school I was sitting on a plane (the longest and most painful flight of my life) with two other poker players, almost complete strangers.
An Exotic Life
We had big plans with high expectations. We were going to grind like maniacs, study as if we were possessed and work the gym like beasts knowing that greatness was all but guaranteed, or so we thought at least. Unfortunately, as people often do, we underestimated how difficult it would be to walk that narrow path known as "productivity". In fact, we underestimated it so much that after only two weeks we completely abandoned the road and began walking, nay, running, in the opposite direction. We ended up living the lives of hedonists to an extent which could almost be classified as borderline degenerate (depending on who you ask of course).
It seemed as if each night there was a new party or event going on and it was almost impossible to steer away once we had been captivated by the intoxicating (in a literal sense) party atmosphere we were surrounded in, especially while indulging in the most addictive drugs of all, women. A year passed this way, party after party, and event after event until I woke up one morning, feeling particularly embarrassed reminiscing about the charades of the previous night.
Reality finally caught up with me and it was a sobering moment. I had barely been grinding, I had made zero progress with my game and I wasn't working out at all. A year of decadent living had also left a hole (more like a meteorite crater) in my bankroll and I began to genuinely worry about where I was actually heading from here. A feeling of worry that quickly compounded with the blurry memories (some slightly disturbing) of my nights out, making me feel all the worse for it. So it should come as no surprise when I finally decided it was time for a new chapter in my life.
Leaving my friends behind (we're still in touch), I packed my shit and got the fuck out of Asia. My time in Asia had been anything but productive, at least from a financial point of view. That said, despite whatever regrets our past tends to push upon us I'm still grateful for that time in my life. Because, not only did it help me grow up in many ways more than one, it also revealed a number of insecurities and other issues I hadn't been aware of before, giving me the chance to deal with them, and for the most part overcome. In the end, I guess that's just part of life and growing up... However, I suspect that some environments are more conducive to this end than others.
Rite of Passage
At first I returned to Europe, I settled for a small apartment in the coast of Bulgaria. In the beginning I was barely scraping by, my time in Asia had left me relatively poor and my poker game was worse off than ever while the games were quickly getting tougher. Needless to say, it was a time of struggle, but also a time of growth, a time which would eventually lay the foundation for who I was to become (or at least for who I am today).
A dwindling bankroll ensured my motivation remained fairly high, however, as I wasn't particularly good at poker while also being terribly inept at handling the long and cruel breakeven stretches I was anything but a happy and productive person at the time. I often contemplated giving up, projecting my recent but depressing results into the future, hopelessly thinking that things would never turn around.
Despite the difficulty I remained the course and continued to push through. Years went by, and so did the countries I had been living in. By the age of 23, I had lived in more than six different countries located on three separate continents. Progress was slow, painfully so, fortunately as evasive as it seemed at the time, I eventually reached the point where I was no longer feeling financially insecure. I dare even say that I made enough progress to become complacent.
Which brings us to the next hurdle, complacency. Desperation was no longer fueling the fire that kept me going and my progress became static, which is a problem, because as you progress, if each progression isn't progressively more progressive (yeah...) it becomes easy to lose interest and look elsewhere for stimulation, and so I did. Instead of grinding I started to date more and to spend more time watching movies and socializing with friends, which I dare say made me both happy and depressed at the same time.
It is easy to rationalize my behavior, saying that "what is the point of life if not to make memories worth remembering?". Perhaps you're right, I'm sure I told myself similar things, but then again, perhaps it is nothing but the bias of the 'remembering self', to equate happiness with elusive memories chemically attached to flashes of momentary joy in favor of denser and longer lasting states of happiness brought upon by feeling accomplished or competent at something. Who knows, there is also the theory of the unmoving baseline, so perhaps what we do is irrelevant in the end because our level of happiness will always return to its genetically pre-determined baseline. Nevertheless, my direction has been set.
Now What?
I'm far from done with poker and if I could have my way, then 2017 is to become my best year yet. That said, I no longer devote all of my time towards poker, I have for over a year now been building an e-commerce business I have based out in Hong Kong, deludedly hoping to one day make it big like many others out there. Deluded because I have never worked hard enough to deserve such a thing (neither in poker nor my business), I'm undisciplined and scattered in all directions, yet if poker has taught me anything it would be that discipline is nothing but an illusion (as is free will; no mention of fucking quantum mechanics) and that momentum is the single most important factor in isolation when it comes to achieving ones goals. This is me, claiming that through strategic molding of my environment I'm going to not just play poker while devoting a substantial amount of time towards my business this year, but that I'm going to put in more hours at the tables this year than I have any year before when my sole focus was just poker.
Eminem - Rap God
