Reflection

I keep thinking about the two months where I'll be taking my Craps dealing class and how I am going to find time to work everything else around it.

I have deleted this blog (not this particular posting that you are reading at this very moment - but the entire blog and all it's postings) probably about 3 times over the years since I first registered it.  Most of the time I just put up some stuff about poker hands or random events that happened over the course of a session.  I had some funny stories in there and some not so funny stuff. Sometimes when I would remember it's existence I would pull it up and read the 3-10 entries that I put last time I decided I was going to try to keep up with it and not like most of whatever I wrote for various reasons.  A lot of the shit that I wrote was pretty stupid and looking back on it I laughed at myself and my thought processes, and ultimately I deleted everything and started over.

I know why it all ended up deleted each and every single time, and it was because I was not satisfied with the content.  I could have left it up to show how I have changed over the years both in writing style and in thought process and I'm sure that some of you (now that I actually have a few voyeurs looking into my life occasionally) would have gotten a good laugh out of some of it as well, but ultimately I was not satisfied and thus it all had to go away.  I didn't even have readers at the time as my plan was for only a few close and personal friends to ever read it so that we could look back and get a laugh out of the way things were.

This is a pattern that I hope I have finally broke.  I thought I got through that barrier when Vegas Poker Now opened it's doors and invited me over to blog about whatever I wanted - and I loved it.  I really miss VPN as I enjoyed the site and the ideas that surrounded it.  The forums were really great and I enjoyed them much more than I have ever enjoyed what is offered on All Vegas Poker.  The technology was better, the format was better and it just really had a nice feel about it.  My favorite part was how Dave worked the blogging feature of WordPress right into the software which then lead to a few good blogs to follow at the time and generated a lot of discussion.  However, when the site went away, was bought out, and everything got re-integrated back into AVP I left behind a lot of words and stories to be erased from the web again.  I could have saved them, backed them up, and then imported them into my own user created WordPress site, but I decided to just let them fizzle out like a bad fart and start over from scratch again.

This lead me right back to this blog where I started writing again in June/July of 2011.  It was shortly after this time that my life took one of the biggest changes I've experienced (and unexpectedly to boot) and the next thing you know I hit the delete button on all of my previously written thoughts.

November 2011 is when this blog took it's current form where I decided to stop focusing on writing about poker after a good or bad session and then ignore it during the down times and decided to start writing about whatever the hell it was that was going through my head at the time.  I'd always like to write and tried to be creative when I was younger but as I got older I just tuned it out and wasted my time in other ways.  In a way I sort of regret it, but at the same time the "everything happens for a reason" adage applies.

So, here I sit, broken heart-ed, paid to shit but only farted.  This line I originally encountered in the mid 90's in something related to Beavis and Butt-Head that I had bought (and I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts that I still have it in a tote locked away somewhere).  But, in an odd way I think it sums up why I have continually erased all of my old blogs time and time again and why I think that this time it might be different.
I have tried to focus all of my old blogs too much, to devote my time to writing about one subject and eventually I get bored and walk away from it.  When I come back to it and go over it again I feel like I have let myself down because it just feels like something is missing.  Kind of like paying 20+ bucks to take your lady to a movie only to find out that the movie sucks and neither of you enjoyed it.

This time I find myself in a different situation without actually realizing it until just recently.  I started writing again with the intention of focusing and instead find myself much like a new puppy - all over the f'n place.  And, I like it. In fact, a blog that was supposed to be poker-centric with some random other shit is now random-centric with sometimes a dabbling poker.  When I finally tie all of this up (which I promise is coming soon, it's much longer than anything I had planned on typing today) and hit the publish button above this will be my 79th post since starting back up in November which far exceeds anything I have done before (VPN being the only one that even remotely came close).

The shit that I originally intended on speaking about instead of all those words above.
In two weeks I am starting a new routine (for 2 months) where I will not have an off day between my class and work.  I will be working every weekend and the days that I have both class and work I will be doing 12 hour days.  My weekends will be longer than normal as well because I need to make sure I still get close to 40 hours in at work and will thus find myself working 10 hour days then too.
Somewhere in my down time (which is being cut into a whole lot) I am going to have to find the time and motivation to keep doing things that I love and things that are positive - Mainly going to the gym and continuing to write.  It's going to be tough and I know 100% I am going to struggle with both.

I was talking to a friend today about going to the gym and lack of motivation and all that other fun jazz since I'm starting to struggle with going when I know I should because I don't have someone else to help motivate me to do it.  During this conversation she brought up a statistic that says "It takes 21 days to make or break a habit."  I found it interesting and wanted to look into that, find the research on it, when I got home.  Instead, before going to Google, I decided to sit down and write this blog post.
It is just now that I realize there has to be some merit to the statement because this is blog post number 79, far greater than any other time I have attempted it, and in my down time one of my first thoughts was to write it.  So, maybe 21 days is a variable number that is held within each individual but I feel that it holds true and this endeavor proves it to me.  After the first month or so (especially after I picked up a few constant readers who are kind enough to comment positively or negatively about what I have written) it has gotten easier and easier for me to come up with something to write and share and I often times do it without thinking about it.  Sometimes after I'm done I find myself wanting to make another post or two about random crap but I try to limit myself to a post a day at most (with the occasional 2nd post if it's truly warranted).  I need to find a way to translate this into me hitting the gym.  I need to trudge through it and manufacture my own motivation.  Keep at it until I notice and appreciate those first changes that my body goes through, from being a big fat ass to just a fat ass to just fat and then finally to just an ass(hole).  I know it can happen but I am the one who has to make it happen.

I appreciate anyone who made it through this whole wall of text - and to those who just skipped to the end to comment "tl:dr" I kinda sorta appreciate you as well.