Hey guys, think I'm going to start blogging a little bit more.

The main reason I stopped was I felt like the whole self-promotional, thinly veiled brag aspect of blogging was a bad influence on my life, and poker was a little too much a part of my ego, but I feel like I'm over that now and I miss writing, reflecting, and being a little bit more a part of the poker community.

I've started staking and coaching quite a few people, and in the process started feeling more connected to the poker world again, which I have enjoyed.

Actually I think one of the main things that influenced me was going to the US June/July and not being able to play online poker.

I found it unbearable and was forced to re-admit to myself how much I love playing online - the stresses of all of the peripheral things that come along with the poker lifestyle can be very negative and draining, but man, when it comes to sitting down to play an online session, and forgetting that there's anything else in the world other than you and your opponents, it's just the best.

Sorry if that is insensitive to some! But wow, there's really nothing like not being allowed to do your job to make you realise how much you love it.

My life seems to change one month to the next...

Like in June I was some guy in a punk band, playing shows in Baltimore, Austin, LA, SF, and Phoenix, sleeping on floors, spending entire days in a van full of dudes, playing shows every night, eating at gas stations.

In May I was an online MTTer staying in a hotel in Toronto playing all the SCOOPs, waking up then hitting the gym and the pool, before playing 12 hours online until I busted the last tourney and passed out.

In July I was a lazy lollivepro living in a Vegas mansion doing virtually nothing all day occasionally playing day 1s of WSOP tourneys and busting them with an eye-rolling indifference.

Then in August I was getting up at 8am every morning to go to the casino to play nosebleed PLO with one of my favourite opponents after he dropped his kids at school (crucial to get him before he wanders off to baccarat, so funny all of us young bleary eyed complainers super tilt-prone because of the early hours, despite playing for significant percentages of our net worths)

Now it's September and I'm a budding empire builder waking up every morning hoping one of my horses shipped something, loading every lobby and slowwwwwly looking down the lists to give myself the best sweats.

So far staking has gone very poorly for me but I have been putting a lot more time into it recently (I've barely been playing myself) and it's become that latest of things that I am determined to beat.

I'm still at uni but I'm ridiculously slack, I'm just doing 3 units and I'm basically just phoning it in so I can look my parents in the eye, keep my girlfriend from thinking (noticing) I'm a complete degenerate and not hate myself quite as much during downswings.

Extortion is going really well, we still play quite a lot of shows, we have a new drummer who is this fucking insane 19 year old skinny faux gangsta who's name is Milky (because his skin is so white), still can't quite believe he exists - the self-proclaimed king of all kings.

I'm still seeing the same girl too, it's been almost 2 years now, she's a good one.

Sometimes the poker lifestyle (despite how hard I try not to live it) is hard for her but I have learnt to segregate the two things and it's a lot easier now that most of my own play is PLO cash-games (which I can play anytime), though overall that has gone fairly poorly for me post Black Friday - I was really determined to destroy the 25/50 shallow and cap games on FTP, and had gotten pretty competent at specifically 40bb PLO, which is now a fairly useless skill, and try as I might I just can't seem to quite get there at 100bb+.

It's not like I'm losing heaps or anything, I'm winning on some sites, losing on others; it's just a bit weird for me right now to not have one definable thing that I am *very good at*, like I would hope I'm still fairly good at MTTs (main problem right now probably being lack of desire, as much as people want to believe in the power of variance when it comes to MTTs there is a lot to be said for raw hunger) but as I'm mostly playing PLO (and still kind of sucking at it after all this time) and working with horses (who so far, have lost me a significant amount of money) sometimes I feel like a huge whale, in spite of all my past success.

In any case I am very much enjoying life and working harder than I have for quite a while, the trip to the US was really good in that way.

There's nothing like a life of drinking beers in the spa, going out to amazing restaurants every night and mindlessly grinding NBA 2k in a country where online poker is outlawed to make you want to get home and fucking grind again.

So yeah, I hope to update this fairly frequently again and I hope y'all are well, I was very sad to miss the Leggo party in Vegas but I had already booked a hotel in Portland when I found out when it was on. Next time!