The Costa Rican Change

San Jeronimo, Costa Rica

My brain is going to melt.

My Spanish teacher is my girlfriend's father's girlfriend. I told her I have incredible problems with languages. My attention span is incredibly bad. I have a hard time sitting down and just learning. I can sit and play poker for hours and hours because there's constant decisions that lead to financial reward. Without that financial stimulus I often find myself wandering. I piss off all my tutors, my girlfriend, my friends, and my family because I'm frequently in another world.

Learning Spanish isn't something I can put off anymore. It's just embarrassing to have been here for a year and some months and to still be stumbling through the very basics.

I struggled and hated the class for the first few weeks and took any slight excuse to skip it. Finally I told my teacher I'm going to learn the same way I learned a lot of things - marching back and forth in my house and muttering to myself. When I really need to get a point I yell over and over again what it is.

As you can imagine this scares most tutors I've hired. My Portuguese teacher gave up years ago. I just bailed on the first Spanish classes I took here. I sucked in my Japanese classes in high school because in a big classroom setting where I was required to keep quiet meant I drifted off for 99% of the class.

This teacher encourages it. She shouts things at me while I'm in my state. The second she sees me wandering off (read: every 45 seconds) she yells at me to repeat something again. I end up machine gun rattling off phrases over and over again.

I feel like I finally understand how all the smart kids in my language classes felt. I'm picking up things so fast. I can understand so many conversations around me. Sure, it's broken, and I still suck at speaking, but I just recognize enough words I can piece together the sentence. When people come to work on my house now I can get through so much more of the conversation. I can communicate much better when I go out to get things done in town. People love to help me speak Spanish because it's obvious I'm trying. I get through the first sentences okay. I start struggling and people are so willing to help here because you're trying. It's nice to have some distinction away from the idiot gringo who shows up here knowing nothing.

Life here's been good. I've just been adjusting to having the super grind be over. In a way I miss it. I felt like I got back to myself when I was busto. I had to examine what really made me happy. It challenged me again. Before I could blow off a 100 buy-ins at cash because I was rolled. I didn't have to have the fire. I went completely bust being a stoned dumb ass and never willing to cut a horse in makeup. I got lethargic and addicted. I had no hobbies outside of poker, and I had the roll where it didn't matter if I won or lost...so I lost for six months straight. My carelessness and apathy was my undoing.

Getting back to basics and getting sober allowed me to see I really did enjoy this game. I just hadn't taken the time to study in a while. Learning new ways to take loser gamblers' money always filled me with such a joy, and I'd ceased studying. I'd also had no life to build for. I was so depressed before because of...well, exposing myself to a depressant all day every day for years.

Now my life is just figuring out how to be a poker player with no hang ups. Before I always felt on the edge. My personal life was taking so much out of me financially or emotionally. I mean I just laid around all day smoking and complicating my life with shit women. When that wasn't enough drama I'd go drink and say/do something stupid. Then I got bored with that so I started picking fights and backing everyone without putting the work in.

Life is just stable now. I wake up every day now and go, "gotta grind or I won't eat." Then I look around. I feel a little let down, I'm not going to lie. I like everything intense.

Now like today I wake up after eight hours of sleep. I feel good in my mountain house, secure. It's spacious and perfect for my needs. I debate taking a bus to the gym. I book some tickets to LAPC. I try to send money to my family Western Union but there's a problem. I decide I'll go to the gym tomorrow when maybe my girlfriend can come with me, and she can kick my ass when it comes to my ab work outs. I call my Spanish teacher and ask if she's available. I go rambling through it, learn a host of new useful sentences. I remind myself to use them more often and not be afraid to look stupid. I read Doyle Brunson's book for 20 minutes. I decide I'm thoroughly inspired to write, but realize I'm tired of writing in my book. I haven't blogged in a while. So I turn on trance so loud while my walls shake and start writing here. In an hour or so I'll go talk to a Western Union agent. Maybe see a movie with my girlfriend. Come home and write in the book. Send a mass email to all my players for this new venture. Actually remember to send videos to Jerry for Pwnage. Play cash on those bizarre networks and hopefully not get my ass handed to me by the software.

Some days I'll schedule four lessons right in a row. I'll study with my students, and take pride in the fact in four hours I can make enough for a bunch of my costs. I'm keeping my overhead low as possible. Gotta save up money for taxes, savings, whatever comes.

Yesterday was similarly slow. I was sick so my Spanish teacher came and just left. I taught some guys in the backing fund I'm invested in for an hour. I wrote 2,000 words in my book. I booted up the 300r and a bunch of other tournaments. I played spewy as hell for some reason. I finished final two tables of the 30r. I read for a while. I slept.

To think my life was once waking up and not knowing what country I was in. Waking up and not knowing who I was with. Opening my backpack to sift through ten different currencies stuffed in my books. Get out of this country. Get to the new one. Wake up, jog, play on some bizarre network, grind the live donkament, bust out because I was too messed up to play live poker, go drink at night.

I don't miss it. I feel so much better. It's just often I feel like I need to make my life more intense. I need to wake up and work the whole time. What's wrong with taking it slow? I got the time. I should enjoy that I have so many projects and things I want to do every day. No day is ever dull now. It's just it's not a "holy shit" adventure every day either. I'm addicted to adrenaline. I'm an addict. So calming down has been an adjust.

It's been coming along nicely. I thank God and the people who stood by me. Never thought I'd be this sober and happy. I was never happy before. I did all that stuff because I was thinking, "what's the point?" I felt I'd broken out of the matrix. I thought of the American system as an evil factory-state that let corporations run over the populace. I'd broken through because on a gambling network I could withdraw credits should I master a game. It seemed like science fiction. I was still in the matrix though, and I survived in a digital network because I couldn't understand a real one. Face-to-face interaction stressed me, which exacerbated the symptoms of my conditions.

Now I just take my meds and try to remember this is incredible. I'm relaxed. I'm enjoying this. I'm happy. There's so much to do, so much to build, and I enjoy most of it. Maybe not everything excites me to hell but then again that's not real life right?

I guess it's just an adjustment to understanding that. Not every day can I be ripped out of my skull and screwing around because it's a rush. I don't even desire it anymore but it's like my body does. My body gets tense around security. It demands more drama. We want to re-enact what we've been around I guess.

So I turn on this music loud and drink a lot of coffee and make myself get into whatever I'm doing. I hope this produces real world results. I hope I can not just be an eternal teenager in the endless summer who never does anything for anyone. I want to write for people. I want to make money for people less fortunate.

The charity initiative is off the ground too. Making plans on that. I'll have more details soon.

Writing for people is going well. I have a lot ready for that site. We think it's a nifty idea. We're approaching it as a site we all want to do but not a huge commercial adventure. We'll learn as we go along. Our website manager went on vacation so we'll be looking at launching here soon in a couple days.

The book is my greatest cause for insecurity, self-hatred, and satisfaction every day.

I decided now that I have a bunch of money together again that playing all the time wouldn't make me happy. I love to play poker but I can't do it all day anymore. I work around poker, write about poker, study poker, and play all day. That has some variety. I don't want to just play MTTs all day. I should if I want to make serious money now because I think my MTT game is sick good right now, but...whatever. I want more balance. That won't make me happy. I like being able to just go read a book whenever I want or go see my girlfriend for dinner. It's not like I'm not working all day anyway. Just in different ways.

So I approached the book. I have no idea if I will be able to even get this published. I'm trying to write a stream-of-consciousness hypersmart JJProdigy type if he got into the drug game at the same time when poker was super wide open. The beginning of the book hasn't been the most exciting to write. I take some satisfaction in slowly building the character. Making him handle a number of slower days in high school when he's just a nameless geek. I like building the subtle interactions between him and others. The problem is I've written a couple hundred pages and it hasn't gotten into the meat of the subject yet. I guess I could trim a lot, or just write a super long book.

Constantly I stare at what I've written and go "this is shit, this will never get published, I'll never get to write for other people." Really I just want to entertain people and show a scenario I've always thought would be so interesting. Just imagine a kid has actual mental problems but is a savant with poker, and he starts making the kind of money some kids make in this game, and then his friends get him dealing drugs. Imagine it spiraling out of control. Putting the setting in western Washington is so fun too. People don't know about some of the weird shit you see there.

I just feel like I'm writing an epic for myself that will take too long. Yet, what's wrong with that? I could retire now if I wanted to really. If I want to write I should just write what I want. If I can publish it, great, if not I'll always be able to read it and go "at least it's out of your head." I wrote the outline for this years ago and just always thought it'd be a fun idea. I'm incredibly insecure with my writing, like I was with poker until for years I went "wow I just keep making money and the kids who keep talking shit and making me feel bad about myself keep disappearing." I should just plunge forward and see what happens. You miss 100% of the shots you never take.

I just hope I can write for a lot of people. I really have always wanted to write a book. I don't know why. I've just always enjoyed writing since I was a kid. I hope I can go "I got stable during the first Costa Rican years. I got to where I could comfortably communicate to people." Its just books have been so impacting in my life. My favorites didn't just tell me a great story, they showed me how they thought. I don't know if I could ever contribute something worth 1% what they do but I sure as hell want to try. Those are my idols. I want to follow them. I just hope it works.