It's pretty amazing to look back to how low I was feeling at the end of September.

I was really losing the plot, donating tens of thousands at omaha, feeling burdened by the weight of my mortgage but lacking in the enthusiasm to *really* make anything happen.

All until that one conversation with Bond18 where I realised that I just, really, love, tournaments...

Since the blog post I made the next day where I said I was gonna let myself play tournaments for the conceivable future, I've made about $150K, and come first in the P5 Monthly Leaderboard.

Pretty amazing to reflect on, and even though I have obviously run above expectation, there is really just SO MUCH to be said for "wanting to be there".

There is so much subtlety in poker, so many close decisions, small decisions, patterns and presence that we project with all of our play.

If you don't want to be there when you're playing it's hard to ever truly play well, whereas when you really do wanna be there, you find a way to win.

So anyway now that I've paid off my house and achieved most of what I wanted to achieve from the grinding side of tournaments, I'm going to be putting in a lot less volume and focusing more on other stuff, like taking care of my health, sleep, diet, exercise, organisation, music, coaching, leggo etc.

The weather here is getting amazing, every day is that perfect 25c/77f where it's not *hot* but it's just warm enough, the sky is a beautiful shade of blue, the wind is blowing through the trees, birds are chirping etc... I love spring.

I'll play here and there of course, probably every Sunday and the better FTOPS events and stuff but I'm just not stressing myself out over this game anymore.

I've made ~1M the past 2 years and really, I'm still young, I own a house, I live in a beautiful city, have tons of great friends none of whom really have any money anyway, when I look over my life I really just... don't need to be grinding anymore.

How much is enough?

Basically I'm just going to try and do life-extending type stuff, and read, and watch movies, hang out with people, enjoy not being dead, enjoy having some semblance of youth remaining, etc.

I've been pretty slack about Leggo/Coaching related stuff for a while now too, and that's gonna stop, I wanna put a lot more effort in and make some improvements in those areas.

I feel good about the future and great about having gotten far ahead enough of the curve that I don't have to be a slave to the game anymore.

I think Apathy is a great example of doing it right, how much money would that guy make if he just stayed at home and grinded?

Inconceivable amounts, but that's not what life is about, it's about sailing around the world in the sun with friends and then shipping live donkaments here and there, imo

For posterity's sake here is my list of 4-5 figure scores for October:

4th 1k monday - $31727
2nd 200K gtd - $27000
1st 55+R - $25850
1st 60K gtd - $19942
3rd 90K gtd - $11188
1st 30K gtd - $10670
1st 40K gtd - $10160
1st 30K gtd - $8100
3rd 40K gtd - $6240
1st 20K gtd - $6113
4th highroller - $5362
6th 100R - $5116
4th 100 cubed - $4567
1st 17K gtd - $4287
2nd 18K gtd - $3984
1st 10K gtd - $3975
3rd 30K gtd - $3764
3rd 30K gtd - $3684
6th 100+R - $3665
12th 100R - $3628
2nd 21K gtd - $3420
3rd 27K gtd - $2940
3rd 20K gtd - $2300
6th 55+R - $2191
19th ipoker 250K gtd - $2000
59th 1M gtd - $2000
7th 100 cubed - $1692
7th 50K gtd - $1675
8th 40K gtd - $1441
4th 15K gtd - $1312
4th 33+R - $1222
7th 40K gtd - $1220
4th 10K rebuy - $1137
26th sunday brawl - $1120
23rd 200K gtd - $1100
7th 40K gtd - $1080
9th 50K gtd rebuy - $1054