Who am I?

I just broke up with my girlfriend Allison, who I only dated for 2-3 months but had a very serious and emotional relationship with.

I had problems with Allison before I really fell in love with her in December. She was an inconsistent girlfriend. The first time she said "I love you" to me was at a point when she had been treating me horribly for the previous week or two. I didn't see our relationship going far until Christmas break, when we spent a lot of time together and she was an awesome to be with. She was so affectionate and I could see from her body language and the way she smiled at me that she really did love me. I loved her back.

Then when we got back to school, things shifted again. We would still have moments where I'd rather be just laying around with her than doing anything else in the world, but there were also moments of anger and sadness for me. Allison puts her school and sorority on such a high pedestal that I would often get neglected, or I would have to deal with Allison's large emotional swings from those two things. We would have to plan hanging out days ahead of time, and even then she would often back out with different excuses. I just didn't feel happy, and decided that things would not change as long as Allison is in college... so I made a tough decision to break up with her.

It particularly hurts to have to break up with Allison because we basically planned the rest of our lives together. We both want to start a family early and looked at it as a life goal that helped hold us together. I felt a lot of comfort in having an idea of where my life was heading. I basically had planned on asking Allison to marry me next year if we were still happily together. Allison took the break-up roughly, she seemed pretty furious. I can't blame her too much since I broke up with her in a pretty abrupt fashion. I just hope she understands why I did it.

I'm really scared right now. I feel like the obvious route for me to take professionally is to play poker right now and after I graduate next year. I make way more playing poker than I would grinding any 9-to-5 job. This means, though, that I have no idea where I want to live after college. Poker is a pretty lonely profession because there isn't a social network (like a company) that helps give you basic contact with a group of people. So basically I may be financially comfortable at the time of graduation, but I will have no idea where I want to live and I will have to try extra hard to have a stimulating social life.

I have some soul-searching to do.

We had a party at my college apartment last night, which I feel went very well. About 40 people showed up over the course of the night. It was my first time ever throwing a party, so it actually felt strange to be drinking and dancing with dozens of friends right in my own house. I had a lot of fun, it was a great opportunity to see many college friends that it's difficult to catch up with otherwise. I definitely look forward to holding parties in the future.

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I've been thinking lately about what makes people happy... how humans are built biologically to live. I believe that in the modern age, technology and society in general have steered humans away from basic fundamentals of how we are "supposed" to live. We are still built biologically for a lifestyle that is not reflected in 21st century America.

It is impossible to make a list of the things people need to be happy, but I think that these include most of the basic criteria:

Physical Needs
-Regularly getting light exercise (both cardio and lifting for men)
-Good diet: smaller, frequent healthy meals with good sources of carbs and protein
-Getting regular hours of sleep (7-8 hours a night, during times the sun is down)
-Getting and seeing lots of sunlight
-Doing things in nature: having activities outdoors

Psychological Needs
-Having a regular social circle to tend to, including attributes such as commitment and trust
-Regularly setting goals and accomplishing them, both short-term and long-term
-Performing work: Having some type of regular work that gives a sense of accomplishment within a group

How much do you feel that you consistently get all of these aspects in your life? I'm sure there is a strong correlation between how much the above describes your regular life, and how overall content you feel with your life currently. I'm sure I'm missing some aspects that deserve a spot on this list, so let me know what else you feel should be on here.

After the car crash I had last month, the Impala was in the shop for a while. I actually decided to buy the car from my mom. I was the only one that drove it, but it was under her name and she wouldn't allow me to bring the car to school. We worked out a deal where I purchased it from her, so I officially own a car now. This year I've taken on a lot of financial responsibility for myself, it feels like this is the transition year where I am becoming more on my own than under my parents' wings.

I went home this weekend to pick up the car. It was nice to have a 48 hour break from the city. It seems like whenever I'm home, the weather is beautiful. Of course once I drove back out here, it was sticky outside and pouring rain.

I'm only like 36 hours into living at college, and it already feels like a drastic change. Some of the differences from home life...

Pros:
-So easy to socialize. Im friends with all of my roommates, and they have their friends over. If my roommates get invited to a party, we're all invited. I need to make little initiative to socialize. Being at home, any friends were so far away that I'd go days without hanging out with anyone outside of work.
-The women are in large quantity. Even if 4 of my 5 roommates are in a relationship right now, there are still plenty of opportunities to meet women. Takes a little more effort than just normal socializing, but still pretty easy.

Cons:
-It's so noisy. My roommate Matt and I are already battling for music supremacy on our floor. When people are over, it is hard to concentrate on anything (which is a problem when I'm trying to grind out hours playing poker). Home life was so much more peaceful.
-It's so dirty. I can already see our house getting dirty because people just don't care about taking care of it. Trash cans overflowing, bits of food on the carpet in the living room, nothing put away in the kitchen. I actually wanted to hire a cleaning service to come to our house twice a month, but no one wants to cough up the money.
-The women are often not what I'm looking for. Too many Pitt girls (at least the ones I surround myself with), just like other college girls, just get enjoyment out of getting drunk several times every week and hooking up with as many guys as possible. It would be the pot calling the kettle black if I complained just about that, since I've done the same. However, I do want to find an actual romantic interest this fall. Seeing my roommates coupled up, plus all the girls around, it can be easy to feel lonely (even when I have a girl over the previous night).
-The food can never be up to par compared to at home. Even though I won't be eating greasy university food this fall, it's still hard to buy all the groceries that would be available at home.

I finished my last day working at Cold Stone on Wednesday. It was bittersweet, if only because I had a somewhat awkward ending with 2-3 of the girls I worked with. Regardless, I enjoyed my experience working at Cold Stone as a summer job. I met a lot of interesting people; a typical work week was only about 15 hours a week; the work itself wasn't difficult, and was at times enjoyable. It was actually the perfect summer job for my situation, and I'd recommend it to any extroverted 16-21 year old looking for an easy, fun part-time job (assuming the money isn't important).

I do not want to work as an employee for a company with scheduled hours ever again. I want to look back at my life 25 years from now, and say Cold Stone was the only "traditional" job I ever worked. I see all my peers putting so much effort into getting into the best school, then trying to build up the best resume they can, just so that they can be one of thousands of others competing for the same 50K/year salary. I don't understand how so many intelligent and hard-working people my age have difficulty thinking outside of the box. We've been ingrained with this idea that the way to eventually have a successful career is to take the same academic path as everyone else.

I know that I'll be networking with a lot of intelligent people who do think outside of the box over the next couple years. I have befriended a lot of guys in the poker community who will one day be very successful outside of poker. There will be plenty of opportunities for me to lead a very enjoyable life, where I can make very good money doing something I love. Whether it's opening a business, going into some sector of real estate, finding a form of investments that I do well with, or whatever it is... I will be able to make something happen. I don't need an eye-popping resume showing my 3.8 GPA, five college organizations, and seven internships.

In the mean time, I love my life right now. I'll finish out my last two years of college and give an effort for certain, but I will not worry about getting myself in position for the traditional job market. I'm getting my degree for pride, and to keep a promise to my parents. I'll continue to play poker on the side as long as I feel it suits me well. Poker is an intellectual and emotional challenge, and always provides something that I can strive to get better at (no matter how good I get). It brings in good money for me lately, which provides very good financial stability for me.

Now is time to move onto the next stage of my life - time to move in with 5 other college guys. Should be an interesting time. Here's to making the most of it.

Soooo I got in my first car accident yesterday afternoon, and it wasn't anything to brag about. I was driving down a windy narrow road, trying to play with the GPS in my car. The front right tire of my car went off the pavement, where it drops a few inches. I lost control of the car for a second, and when I pulled the car back onto the road, the tire completely blew up and came off. My car then proceeded to use its momentum to go up the hill, dragging the rim and bending it in half in the process. I was stuck at the scene of the accident for an hour (in 97 degree, humid weather) for an hour before we finally got my car towed.



Beat: I was on my way to spend the afternoon with Laura, and I obviously had to cancel. (She has actually been kinda giving me the cold shoulder since then.)
Beat: This is going to cost me anywhere from $500 to well over 1K to repair the car.
Brag: I could have been charged with reckless driving if a cop showed up before I was towed, but I managed to miss that since no cops are ever around here.
Variance: I'm stuck in my house for probably the next 48 hours. I don't know if I'll be able to go to work this weekend, so I may miss my chance to say goodbye to all of my co-workers.
Brag: I'm up $1150 so far today, and since I can't leave the house, I'll end up logging a lot more hours playing.

I came to the realization that I use girls as a self-esteem boost. Those of you who know me in real life were probably already aware. I have used the fact that several girls at Cold Stone this summer showed interest in me as a way to feel better about myself. I now realize I've done this for a while now. I measure my self-worth by how well I am able to attract women. If no girls like me, I have no confidence in myself. If I have multiple girls with crushes on me, it makes me feel on top of the world. It's a really bad reflection on how at the core, I have little/no self-esteem. I have to cling on to whatever makes me feel better. I brag to my friends about any involvement I have with a girl, even if it was something minor. Pretty sad.

Also, I don't know what to think about this - whenever I feel down (which luckily hasn't been often lately), I often think about Kelsie. I don't know why. I don't know if it's because I associate feelings of sadness and loneliness with the bad experiences I had in later stages with Kelsie, or if it's because being with Kelsie is what gave me so much comfort. While Kelsie did make me feel better about myself, it wasn't like every other girl Im involved with. I didn't brag about stupid stuff to my friends about me and Kelsie. What we had was for the two of us.

I looked over her old xanga entries from when we were together this morning. I miss those days.