(sorry if this shouldn't be posted here, or I should have just posted this as a comment on my original thread)
Hey, so I made a rant post 3 days ago, after losing $60 from my $160 BR, that I had spent the month grinding up from 2NLz. I lost mostly from 6+, but also some from 2/5NLz, and am running around $30 under EV still. I was honestly contemplating quitting poker, which would be a huge decision considering I wanted to spend this year becoming a winning player at 50NL (end of year goal). What made me want to continue playing was watching a Russian player called innerpsycho in a compilation of bad beats at 500/1000/2000NL, because it made me realise that if I want to pursue poker, i'm going to have soul crushing defeats, and If I can't handle it at 5NL, how on earth would I handle it at higher stakes? So, I decided to just accept it and grind out some volume, so I played somewhere around 20k hands over the weekend, 11 hours on saturday, and have managed to grind up my BR to the highest it has been. I really love poker, I love studying it, I love the math behind it, and I really want to be able to make a living from it, so I will continue to play through bad beats and running under EV, because it's just an unavoidable part of playing (unless you sell shares of yourself I guess)...
Furthermore, I think that in terms of $/h, 5NLz probably isn't worth it if you consider the downswings, however it is absolutely crucial and necessary if you ever want to reach higher stakes of poker. I'm glad I had this downswing, because now I will have to grind a lot of games to reach a BR to play 10NLz with, learn to cope with this downswings, and force myself to play a large volume, which if I can't do, then there's no point in me playing because I wouldn't be enjoying it. But yeah, I will continue grinding, I'll leave a graph of my 5NLz stats, and if anyone cares, I have a weekly update thread on success and challenges, which is mainly to keep myself motivated and force myself to reflect on my progress each week, but you can read if you'd like.
stats overall on stars cash games: https://gyazo.com/bc3d43577f0f434073d2611e461c9658
stats overall on stars 5NLz: https://gyazo.com/3600f61f3b37b4038fcc597152b8a3f9