Mexico Day 26

Penzu sends me emails every so often about journal entries that I wrote on this day x years ago. Today’s was written four years ago, and was entitled “Mexico Day 26”:

Weird day today, felt super drained. Played a solid 8 hours and had a massive winning day, but felt miserable afterwards. When I lose at poker I hate myself and think I am a huge failure at life, but when I win I don’t have the equivalent happiness, I simply know I will soon lose and feel miserable. I guess maybe I offset some of my misery at least. Meditation felt a lot better today too which is nice. Just 10 hours to go in my 200 hours/month so will have it almost done by the end of tomorrow.

It’s a pretty sad read, obviously. Clearly the life of a poker grinder was nowhere near as glamorous as one might have thought, and even the supposedly good bit, the winning, didn’t do it for me at all. It’s jarring to not see much self-awareness or self-compassion in what I wrote either, I have no positive spin on things, and am seemingly fully intending to keep going down the path I’m on, despite it obviously not being good for me.

I’m obviously glad that I’m not playing poker anymore, and that I have a healthier relationship with programming. I also think, or at least hope, that I’m less resigned to misery, and would not write something like that in my journal without at least considering some kind of plan to change things.

And now I know that as a fun player, if I had a massive winning day, I can buy all my friends drinks and we can all celebrate together.