Who am I?

It's hard to see on this road...

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 02:35:27 GMT

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.

Happiness

Sun, 16 Sep 2007 20:53:55 GMT

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.

Feeling like a grown-up now

Sun, 09 Sep 2007 21:39:31 GMT

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.

Well, life here is different

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 16:55:54 GMT

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.

Summer break's over, and life is good

Sat, 18 Aug 2007 03:39:25 GMT

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.

I popped my automobile cherry

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 23:08:25 GMT

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.

Poor way of measuring self-worth

Sun, 05 Aug 2007 14:09:01 GMT

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.

Crap, it's August already

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 03:51:03 GMT

I had my best month again for poker, finishing up $7K for July. I won't actually be discussing poker much on here anymore, because I've opened up a poker blog. I'm sure the few people who actually read this blog won't mind since they don't exactly play poker. ;)
My poker blog: http://whitewash1.blogspot.com/

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It is scary to think that I have been home for more than 3 months already. The summer has gone by fairly quickly, even if things have been pretty slow lately. I've been doing one of three things lately: playing poker, taking care of Molly, or working. I can't complain since I'm the one making the choice to not go out as often as I probably should be. With poker going so well, I haven't been thinking about too much other than it.

Molly is getting big quickly. She's still less than 20 pounds right now, but she's already noticably bigger than when we got her. I really like her a lot, and that helps make the 45 minute drive to my dad's house not seem as annoying. I've been watching her for 2-3 days a week, but that will obviously end once I leave for school later this month.

The "girl of the week" at Cold Stone (joke) for me right now is Laura, an 18 year old girl who has 9 siblings. She is from a crazy Catholic family, and because of that she has an extremely innocent upbringing. We actually have some similar intellectual interests (discussing religion, politics, our culture, music, etc) and I think we mesh really well in spite of our lifestyle differences. We got lunch together the other day and she helped me go clothes shopping. It's amazing how innocent she is - she has never been kissed before. She is 18 and has never been kissed. You wouldn't expect that, because she is a cute girl. Anyway, we have admitted our attraction to each other, but I'm not sure if it will go anywhere since we both leave for school this month. Maybe if she's lucky, she'll get her first kiss before then. ;)

She's so beautiful...

Wed, 25 Jul 2007 18:37:04 GMT

My new laptop finally arrived on Monday. She's incredibly beautiful. It is a longer laptop than most because of the 17" widescreen monitor. It's faster than most desktops. However, I won't be getting a lot of use out of it for now, since I am bringing my desktop to college. I'll get a lot of use out of it next summer. For now, it just helps give me the opportunity to help watch Molly at my dad's during the day, and be able to log hours in playing poker while I'm there. Here are some pictures:

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Work is like high school. The events I discussed a few entries ago have gotten around Cold Stone, and "Maria" has flipped out about it. Even the owner has gotten involved, which is ridiculous because nothing happened at work and she should not be getting involved in the personal lives of employees. I guess this is what happens when you have a dozen 16-21 year olds working together who all know each other. I won't miss stupid drama, but I will still miss all of the friends I've made at work by this point. I don't think there is anyone at work that I do not get along with overall.

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I've recently started contemplating going into coaching for poker. There are a decent number of 18-25 years olds on the internet that really want to improve their poker game, so personal coaching has started to sprout up in 2007. I will probably wait a month or two so I can build my poker resume up some more, but once I have that, I can charge $30/hr for personal coaching. It is a smaller hourly rate than I make from playing, but there is zero variance and I enjoy discussing poker as much as playing it. Talking to other serious poker players lately has helped me become articulate when discussing poker, so I feel confident that I would make a good coach.

I'm not on track to log as many hands this month as I wanted to (and will probably lose my hand # bet), but I am doing very well from the profit perspective. As long as I don't go on a losing streak to end the month, I should have a new best month ever when July ends. Once July is over, I am going to start creating a set of goals for what I want to accomplish in poker for the rest of the year. It's an immeasurable goal, but I want to be the best poker player in Pittsburgh.

I need teh monies now

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 18:45:45 GMT

I realized that I am going to be spending a crapload of money over the rest of the year on various things... some things necessary, some not so much.

-Laptop ($2000)
-A TV for my dorm ($300 roughly)
-Mini fridge ($200)
-Camcorder ($500-600)
-New iPod ($230)
-Saving up for Vegas next summer ($3000 roughly)

Yesterday I had half a dozen friends over for the World Series of Poker final table broadcast. I prepared food and everything for my guests, which made me feel a bit like Betty Crocker. It was a good chance to catch up with some friends from high school. Now that it's over, though, I really need to get my butt into gear for the rest of the summer. I still have several activities I had planned on before I go back to school, and I need to put a lot more hours in playing poker.

One more thing - I need to start using my excellent persuasion skills with my mom so she lets me bring my Impala to school. Not having a car makes me feel like I am stuck in Pittsburgh for the entire semester, when I often just want to be able to get away from the campus once in a while. Plus having a car on our urban campus is kinda baller, and any extra points with the ladies are helpful.

Being young, or something

Sun, 15 Jul 2007 17:14:37 GMT

My dad has had Molly for a week now, and it has gone well (aside from growing pains with house training her). Molly is a great dog; she is very social but doesn't drive people crazy with too much energy (which often leads to destruction in puppyhood).

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Last night was an interesting night, to say the least. I invited two girls over to party at my house since my parents were down the shore. For the sake of anonymity, I'll call them Stacey and Maria. I am mildly attracted to Maria, and quite attracted to Stacey. I made out with Maria when I was drunk earlier in the week, and apparently she has gotten emotionally attached to me since then. When they came over last night, I was more flirtatious with Stacey because I'm simply more interested in her. Maria slowly isolated herself from us, and late in the night I overheard her crying to Stacey because she was upset I'm not as interested in her as she imagined. It made the night a little awkward, but here's the thing - Maria acting this way made any intimate interaction with Stacey seem "wrong". And labeling it wrong just made it more intense. I had a fiery night with Stacey. I don’t know if/how last night's developments will affect my interaction with Stacey, Maria and our shared friends, but I hope a dramatic mess doesn’t ensue.

(Note: I contemplated whether it'd be wrong to post this, but I decided I shouldn't feel guilty publishing it since no one reading this blog is in the same social circle.)

I really need to go catch up on sleep now.

Hitting the home stretch of summer break already

Sun, 08 Jul 2007 23:16:44 GMT

I had my second trip to Atlantic City this week. I moved up to 2/5 NL, which is higher than I had ever played previously. Standard buy-in for the game is $500. I had planned to play roughly 15 hours total for the trip, but only ended up playing 10 because I was tired. I ended +$696 in 10 hours, which is a very good result. It is too small of a sample size to say anything, but I felt like the competition overall was weak and the 2/5 games are very profitable. I felt nervous sitting with that much money at first, but adapted quickly. A big part of succeeding in poker is not looking at the money for its value outside of poker - but rather just look at it as a number in the game. If you are facing a $300 bet by your opponent, you can't look at it like it's a new television. All you can do is try to deduce what your opponent has, and make the best decision based on that information.

I’m looking to put a lot of hours in playing online poker for the next week. Otherwise, just hoping I don't get scheduled for a lot of hours at Cold Stone because I'm tired of a "real" job right now. ;)

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We picked Molly up on Saturday morning. I really like her a lot because she is a calm dog that is unlikely to destroy things or be unpleasant to others, yet she is still outgoing and has a colorful personality. My dad has shown impatience towards her getting house trained already, but I've told him to stick with it. For the next 5 weeks or so that I'm still home for the summer, I'll probably be helping watch Molly 2 or 3 days a week.

Since the biggest deterrent for me spending time at my dad's is no online poker, I decided to jump the gun and buy a new laptop for myself today. I had planned to buy one toward the end of the year, but I figured that I will get a lot of use out of it for the remainder of the summer. Having a new laptop will allow me to comfortably play poker at my dad's house while I watch Molly. May sound like a weird reason to buy a laptop right now... but when poker accounts for the mass majority of my income, having a fast and efficient computer I feel comfortable playing online poker with is extremely vital to me. The laptop unfortunately won't arrive here for another 1.5-2 weeks, but I'm really looking forward to it.

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One last thing - I've started thinking lately about my roommate situation for this upcoming semester. I will be living with 5 other guys in a 6 bedroom apartment. I am friends with all of them, but I am nervous about how 6 guys together will work out. Everyone contributing to rent on time, the bathrooms and kitchen not getting completely unbearable, etc. It was a gamble to go with this option, but hopefully it will work out. One thing that will be nice is we will probably through parties a bit, so I won't even need to leave my apartment to meet women now. ;)

Best month yet; new member of the fam

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 05:12:12 GMT

I had my best month ever in online poker, and poker altogether. I made about $3400 online - which sounds great, but I actually only put about 55 hours in for the entire month. I made a couple 3 digit bets with some fellow poker players online for July, which will give me extra incentive to play way more this month than I ever have before. I feel confident about my poker game right now. If I use good table selection, and don't tilt much, I see making $5K+ as a very attainable goal for July.

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Outside of poker and work, not a whole lot has gone on in my life. I've barely seen any friends back in Ridley, and spent zero time with any college friends. I've always had a hard time keeping friends, and a big part of that is I definitely follow the saying "out of sight, out of mind". It's kind of funny that I can get so attached to women, but I can let go of friends pretty easily. Anyway, I would like to actually have a more well-rounded summer, so here is a list for myself of things I would like to accomplish before I go back to Pitt in mid-August:

-Go to a shooting range and fire a gun for the first time
-Get horseback riding lessons
-Go sky diving (maybe)
-Visit Atlantic City 3-4 more times
-Start playing some rounds of golf
-Attend a few Phillies games

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After years of deliberation, my dad is finally getting a dog. We found a Yellow Labrador breeder right by my house, and they had about 8 puppies that are all extremely cute. My dad picked out the laid-back female, which I think is a good choice for him since he lives in a small townhouse. Females usually end up being smaller than males, and a less wired dog is better for a small house that only has 1 person regularly living in it. We get to pick her up next weekend, which I am excited to help take care of her. After some playful arguing about the name, we decided to go with the name Molly for her. Hopefully my mom will loosen up about the idea of letting Molly stay at her house, because I'd love to have Molly be at our house, where she can have a big yard to roam and 2 dogs in Max and Jasmine to play with. I'll wrap this up with some pictures of Molly and the puppies I took last week:

Friend me to read

Thu, 02 Nov 2006 00:51:39 GMT

If you're reading this, you probably aren't my LJ friend. I've been writing new entries the past 2 weeks, and plan to continuing writing as long as I have emotions that it feels good to express in writing. Most of the entries aren't set public, and won't be.

Shoot me a friend request if you want to read. I'll accept if I feel like I can trust you to read about my private life, and not feel self-conscious about it.