Life is good!

Well it's been an interesting past nine months or so. It's a bit sadder viewing the world in a slightly darker light, but I'm trying to be a bit more upbeat and less emo than my last post here made me seem! Some relationships have fizzled or been cut, but the ones I still have I think are better and stronger because they are based on mutual appreciation and both sides know the other will speak up when they want something.

I'm online, and have been trying to hone my PLO skills playing low stakes omaha, and Stars just introduced their version of Rush poker, “Zoom,” which works very well. As my former coach described it “it's brilliant; it allows one-tabling fish to multitable!” I also like it because it allows you to re-use the same old postflop moves over and over without people catching on, and you can also manipulate your stats without people looking. (Now I can ship the turn or the river light EVERY TIME completely unbalanced, and very few people will notice. I can also min 3-bet all my playable hands against middle and late openers, and then get paid huge when I re-pop aces full pot from regs who I know have their HUD running.)

And without the weight of obligations that I previously had, I have been able to steadily make my own life situation much more tolerable, and even good! I've made many new friends and poker connections, I've moved up a few levels in stakes, I have some staking offers and people who would eagerly be students, I've played in ungodly high stakes private home games... just lots of craziness, but good craziness, happening poker-wise.

I also went back to New Zealand to visit my dad, and once again, had enormous trouble with my step-mom. I thought that since I paid for the trip she would be better, seeing me able to support myself better, but that was not the case. She apparently just does not approve of anything about me or who I am as a person, and I've decided that she's just not a person I care about or want in my life. I love my dad and he deserves to be happy, and she makes him happy (apparently, some how!), so I'm grateful to her for that, but I'm done with my efforts to include her in any way, shape or form in my life. Too bad. Other than her, New Zealand was fantastic and I once again had a fantastic time.

I'm also moving to the LA area which will be good for poker and for life. There's just not much to do in Vegas, and the culture and general attitude of the people is much less appealing than the LA culture/attitude, so I'm very excited. (And LA, in turn, has worse culture and attitude than New Zealand, where being laid back all the time, not wearing any shoes, and just generally relaxing and hanging out with people constitutes a full days work. Paradise!)

So, life is generally good. Keepin' on turckin'. I'm still playing a lot of poker, but I'm at a point where I feel like I'm starting to be able to work towards a good steady life, without much stress, not having to grind on my computer 10 hours a day 6 days a week making less than minimum wage just to barely pay my expenses each month. And I really enjoy the people I've been meeting. The new poker friends I've met are really good and decent people, and networked in the poker and entertainment world like crazy, and the people outside of poker are just generally good people whom I respect and enjoy. Life is good, and looking very much like it will get even better.

I probably still won't update this blog much. I got my twitter hooked up so I can send tweets via text message, and my facebook hooked up to automagically post my tweets on my fb wall, so now that I can just post things everywhere with a single text message, I will probably update those more often (and still not post anything on here more than once or twice a year!).

So yeah, life is good!