San Jeronimo, Costa Rica
Shitting Abroad:
I used to scoff at people who told me “I have to be at home to use the bathroom that way.”
I thought, “what a fucking American invention. Somebody, somewhere, is praying for clean water, which isn’t catching disease from cow shit, and in the states we can’t defecate unless we’re comfortably on our linoleum thrones at home.”
Then I got home today. And I took my first real shit in weeks.
I feel cleansed. I feel reborn.
New Commitment To Blogging Positive Material ($100.00 a day for every day I don’t blog):
I’ve made the deal with Jack Welch that until I wrap up at next year’s World Series I will contribute one thing to this website per day. If a day goes by where I don’t write something, post one link, post one picture, something…I will give a $100.00 to charity.
Also, I do not feel the need for transitions. I can provide more content if I simply head every section and jump to every place my mind seeks to go. It was more difficult to write from the idea of “here’s what happened during my day (often boring content here)” and then “here’s what it made me think of.” Often I didn’t want to explain how every thought came to be. I had more fun just writing any thought.
This is my more relaxed writing. I’m done playing poker as my sole venture in life. I have been and will continue to be doing a lot of creative writing privately, which hopefully one day I will publish. There, in that form of writing, I have to provide transitions and write for an audience.
My goals with blog writing have always been to just straighten out what I’m thinking. There are eight trains of thought crashing in my mind at any one moment. Writing forces me to straighten out my ideas into one objective. It’s my line check.
I can read what I’m thinking. That’s powerful.
What’s not been powerful is my need to write. I was a writer before poker, and really I think I’ve been slacking on just practicing writing every day, getting my thoughts on paper. My anti-psychotics make me far less vindictive and angry. I feel like I have a lot less to get off my chest than before.
I also was dismayed at how repetitive I felt like every blog would turn out, but that was more due to my lack of energy and execution than a lack of material.
It’s also more difficult to write when you can call your family and they’re all doing well and want to talk. You can also go to your girlfriend’s house and have a home cooked meal and relax with them for a bit. That and I’ve taken to just laying around and reading more books, finding other author’s edited and refined novels far more interesting than the repetitive blather I was writing for a while.
It was far easier to write when I was alone with my thoughts in various apartments around the world.
Twitter, Gmail, Facebook and Youtube are also the death of productivity at the computer.
It’s so hard not to hit the “open new tab” button.
New Direction:
I have been at a loss for what to write for the last couple months. I struggled with my old format, of writing about what I did that day and then going off on random things. I also had less free time. When I did get some time to myself it seemed lame to rehash what I was Twittering about anyway. It also just seemed I’d start writing about my day and I’d forget about all that I originally wanted to write. There was a general lack of direction. My old blog was based on venting about all the crap going through my head, as I was grinding my way up.
I think that’s what attracted many people to my old blog. Many people were writing about the scores. Not as many were writing about what really was going through their heads. I tried my best to put it all out there. My insecurities, my fits of overconfidence, my errors, my almost unsettling need to win, my foreign trysts, my chemical imbalances, the chemicals I injected to tilt the balance in my favor, and so on, and so on.
Living sober, having a steady girlfriend, getting properly medicated, and feeling more relaxed with my place in the world…I kind of ran out of things to write in my old script.
I started reading through all of Jack Welch’s stuff. Really, you guys are lucky, just given how this site is Jack’s baby. He has so many things to say that open up your mind to how you’re working, how you’re playing, and how you’re living.
I realized I didn’t like my lackluster approach to blogging lately. I wanted to set a goal with blogging…and set other goals. I noticed a lot of people online had a lot of success with achieving their goals by blogging about their journey each day. I guess I’ve done that, in a roundabout fashion for years, but this year’s WSOP made me really want to refine my goals and work that much harder.
So I want to do a more focused blog, about what goals I want to achieve, and what my plans of attack are going to be to do that. When I am stretched for time I think it would be a good practice just for me to set goals for the next day, and reflect on how well I achieved my goals for the day before.
Doing it in a public format, I imagine my drive to achieve my goals will go up, because I don’t want to be that guy who publicly states what he wants to do and then doesn’t do it.
It forces me to be a little different, to quit being so comfortable. I’ve always set goals for myself privately, and achieved many of them, but lately…I don’t know if it’s financial security or what but I’ve just felt myself getting somber.
Then I don’t even have financial security anymore, and I’m still too relaxed.
I need to fire myself up. I will use this blog to do just that.
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