Curse of the Blank Page

Getting a new blog started is always a pain in the arse. If creativity were a superhero, "blank page" would be the villain. Stephen King's solution, which you can read for yourself in his book On Writing, if you wish, is just to start writing something... anything... and let the practice of writing flow into something that matters. I'll give you a minute to mull that over and realize that none of this has mattered - at least not yet. But I'm getting warmed up.

I've been playing more regularly on Poker Academy again, which some of you may have already noticed. I've realized part of the problem with my poker burnout and possibly some causal portion of the precipitous crash I experienced pre- and post-Vegas in February is due to a focus shift. For several years, when I was doing consistently well, I was strolling along, enjoying the journey, content to become a premier poker player "some day". I enjoyed some success, got a lot of hands under my belt, dominated my fair share of games... And somewhere along the line I changed.

About the four year mark on my serious poker playing venture, I started falling in love with the success and the pride and income that went along with that success. I started really *feeling* like a great player, like the flaws I did have were overcome by my strengths, and my focus shifted toward the goal rather than the journey. That worked fine for awhile, when things were still going reasonably well, but a long run of really horrible luck sent me into a spiral from which my poker game nearly did not recover.

On the other side, I am trying to force myself to focus on the journey again - trying to retrain some of the bad habits I'd gotten into as a result of laziness. It's hard as hell to do, but I think I'm having some success.

To that end, my friends, I plan to dedicate more of my time from here forward to the better games on Poker Academy... Primarily the Invitational Series. There's no money to be had and I believe I'm already fairly well respected by the PAO core, so there's little for me to achieve except putting more hands in, working on my weaknesses, and improving my game against some of PA's best.

So, here's to you all, those I plan to be stealing PAX from in liberal fashion. May you put up a worthy fight, but ultimately fail in the end...

I'll see y'all at the tables.