I recently reconnected with my previous backer and old friend from Vancouver, and we are going to give it another run. I've fully recovered any confidence lost during the last beating I suffered. It was truly the worst downswing of my career, and I never saw it coming. Why?

After having great months from February to May, I lulled myself to sleep. I was in overdrive, playing 5 hours a week, having friends over every night, lavish dinners, picking up bar tabs, and feeling like a true boss. I earned admiration from degenerates and professionals alike, and at the end of May I contemplated moving to Spain for 6 months by the beginning of August.

I don't think I could have been any more careless or irresponsible. I wasn't putting in volume, wasn't studying, but carried by the illusion that money would just continue to pour in electronically to my Bank of America checking account, I didn't worry. I'm sure many of us have been there.

And then I started to run bad, which has happened several times in my 1.5 year professional career, some times worse than others, but I always eventually played through it. This time it was accompanied by playing bad since the doom switch caught me completely off guard. If you look at my HEM over the past 3 months you'll see that I'm running 30 BI below EV at 2/4 and 3/6, but I consider it irrelevant because I know I was C gaming as a result of me not mentally preparing myself for the next downswing.

Yet I continued to spend money as if I was still earning 10k+ a month until I bled myself nearly dry. Until I sit typing here with only $650 to my name. But I am strangely optimistic. I suppose the romantic in me has always been attracted to epic underdog, from the ground up, stories. I have always been the nemesis to inherited wealth, handouts, and free prizes, so I don't mind working hard from scratch as long as I did it.