New Plan

Long losing streaks are serious business. If allowed to go unchecked a bad run can take you right out of the game until suddenly you're thinking "Uh oh I need a freaking job again."

Well that's not allowed to happen obviously and to forestall this and get everything back on the right track I am hereby conducting a Life Over-Haul.

For starters I am going to start taking my spiritual practice more seriously. What practice is that you may ask? It's actually exactly whatever I feel like practicing, only I'm going to do MORE of it, specifically incorporating some vissapana meditation, which I will hereby refer to as "Bhavana" which is a more correct term. The word meditation has actually been twisted all over the place over the last 25 centuries and it's lead to quite a few mental roadblocks (for me at least). According to What The Buddha Taught the true meaning of Bhavana is more like "mental development" which, as it suggests, is actually work, not some Alan Watts-esque practice of blissed out free love fantasizing. I love Alan Watts and really appreciate much of his work, but in trying to sell meditation to a Western audience he has given us some really bad impressions about what meditation actually is, and whether that's his fault or my fault, I've never been able to integrate the practice into my life even though it sounds clearly beneficial for me. The books I'm reading now are really going to help me make some positive changes and I'm really excited to see what happens.

There are two other books I can highly reccomend though I have not finished them yet:

Mindfulness in Plain English

Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness

I'm feeling like this work is becoming increasingly crucial to my ability to. . . live, I guess. My roughly 5-6 week losing "streak" has been taking a real toll on me and that toll is revealed by increasing frustration and bitterness at, and away from, the poker table. That is not healthy for my life, bankroll, girlfriend. . . anything.

It wouldn't be a bad rule of thumb if you never ever played poker if you weren't perfectly happy and content inside. Competitive hunger is OK, but ultimately, on some level, you should be having fun. Not just for your games sake, but also for your own personal mental health.

I have been going crazy. Fortunately, I am not a stranger to crazy, so I am able to hang with the vagaries of this job in the long term, but it does behoove me to work to fix up my thinking so that I can operate from as clean and lucid a place as I can.

Some other changes-

I am going to give up marijuana for awhile. I've never been a steady smoker, never even really liked the drug all that much until I moved to Portland at which point it was good, relatively cheap, and seemed. . . appropriate. It's the Pacific Northwest after all. . . get stoned already! With all the hippy fun out here, great food and scenery how could you not be stoned regularly??

Lately however I've been loving it less and less. My memory has never been outstanding and now it has pretty much completely evaporated to the point that I sometimes feel like I'm just drifting in empty space with no past or future. . . . I actually don't think that's all too horrible a feeling to have, but it's not a very productive one for sure, and I've spent enough time there.

Drinking is also a recurring theme in my life. I love drinking. It's expensive as hell, reliably unhealthy and fat inducing, but god I love a good Belgium, a pinot, a glass of good scotch. . . I can seriously wax romantic over my favorite beverages as though they are each a member of my own private Harem. . . a drink for every occasion, and an occasion for every drink!

The problem for me is that I'm such a creature of habit that it's very easy for me to slide into a routine of steady night time drinking. It's entirely possible that I've had at least some alcohol every day for several months now. Many of those days I had quite a healthy portion I can assure you. I'm still far from guzzling Night Train in the back of alleyways. . . I actually really love the process of enjoying a great libation. Anyway, I am feeling strongly right now that I need to not be drinking on more than 2 days a week or so.

One problem is that I'm very indulgent with myself. I never save money because as soon as I have it my life program devolves into deliberate and constant debauchery. If I wake up with a hangover I'll go get sushi for those tasty Omega 3 laden slivers of raw salmon to rescusitate my aching brain. If I'm walking my dogs it's over to Amnesia Brewing on Mississippi. (Their winter specialty brew was a Belgium called Dubbel Whammy that had me going there nearly every day for over a month. Our dogs instintively try to walk in there now when I walk by, which I do more and more lately, because they don't have a beer I really love right now).

Here are some decisions I'm making, to sum up-

Some Bhavana every day.

No marijuana for some, as of yet, unspecified period of time.

Less drinking, smoking tobacco.

More excersize. I bought kettle bells for use on my 5 minute hourly breaks. I will use them more, and also grace the gym with my presence more often.
As always, I am considering yoga as well. For some reason I've been really attracted to the idea of yoga for a long time, but a certain part of me is horrified by all that stretching on command as well and all of the inevitable mindless hippy jargon that seems to follow right behind. I've got nothing against hippy jargon as a rule, but when it gets just straight dumb and new agey I start hating people.

I will also be trying to live more "mindfully." This is a big, complex deal that will require constant work and attention. If anything I think is interesting comes up related to that I'll share it. Part of me is thinking about starting a "Life" blog to contain all of the things "Not-Poker" but until that happens it's going here as long as it's relevant.

I'm still not sure just how strict I'll be with myself and some of these vices, but I am going to commit to Sunday being my holy day to detox. Sundays I will be vegetarian, I will not smoke or drink (tea is still okay. Nobody is taking my fucking tea away!), and I'll take some time to get spiritual, perhaps by attending a meditation group here in SE Portland that's actually reall cool. If you are interested in trying an excellent guided meditation, give this one, Mindfulness of Breathing, a shot. The guy who runs the Portland Insight Meditation Center, Robert Beatty, has really impressed me with his near guru-ness so far.

Peace out.