Shew! I have been a busy bee the last couple of months and I was way out of my normal routine. Finally,things are starting to return to normal. Buying a house was way more work than I bargained for, but I am very happy to have put in all of that work and finally being able to enjoy my new house. I didn't have a losing month for the entire year of 2008, but I have already had 2 losing months this year. I lost in April, had a good May, and then had my worst month ever in June. It wouldn't be so bad if I just had my worst month ever, but to lose about 4-5 times what you have in any other month is pretty disheartening. I have always thought all that stuff about "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" was a bunch of crap and usually just a a way to not take responsibility for something that you failed at or didn't handle as well as you could have. Usually, people say that when they feel beat down or overwhelmed from something they are having a hard time dealing with.....I feel like I am not doing a very good job of explaining why is dislike that saying so much, but it almost seems that when people say it they are basically conceding that they can't deal with something and saying that makes them feel OK about it.
Anyway, I think a lot of people would take the "since it didn't kill me it will make me stronger" approach to dealing with my poor results from June. However, I prefer to take responsibility for those bad results and try to fix whatever problems/leaks were the cause of it.
I'll go ahead and say it.....I played the worst month of poker I have ever played.
There can be many reasons that someone doesn't play their best poker, but the most dangerous reason I can think of is if you are playing poker when you can't focus on it because you are stressed/worried about something else in your life. The reason this is so dangerous is because it is very hard to notice that you aren't playing your best in this situation. I had a lot of stuff out side of poker on my mind during the month of June and it really, I mean REALLY affected my poker. I knew in the back of my mind the whole time that all of this was probably causing me not to play my best poker, but I wasn't able to get myself to take time off. In fact, I played more poker last month than I ever have in any other month of my career. Great, huh?
Now I am feeling very focused on poker and am much more in tune with how outside stresses could possibly affect my play. I was out of town until about the 10th of this month and despite only having played about 40 hours of online poker I am having some great results.
I feel like I am lucky in that I don't get rattled or stressed about hardly anything in life and I can honestly say that is directly attributable to having such consistent success so far in my poker career. I had a small hiccup last month, but I think that kind of a breakdown happens way more often to other people/poker players than it does to me and I am thankful for that.
Jeff asked me to caddy again for him in the Reno/Tahoe Open and I think it will be perfect timing to give myself a break from poker. I used to do a better job about forcing myself to take vacations when I needed them and I think I might need to go back to planning them out ahead of time rather than just taking them when something pops up.
It feels good to finally get back to being in a great state of mind for playing good/winning poker and I look forward to staying in this mindset for a while....maybe even forever?!?! Muahahaha!
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