A Year in the Making

The last year has been a pretty fucking wild whirlwind for me.  It's been full of ups and downs and a whole lot of uncertainty and doubt. It has been, without a doubt one of the strangest 12 month periods in my life and I went on this self-discovery journey and started to pick up the pieces that have been falling apart for a number of years and I just wasn't aware of it.

Oddly enough, one of the biggest influences in my life has been all of you people.  Yes, whoever happens to be reading this shit right here, I'm talking about you.  Even if I have no interaction with you in any other way or if I talk to you daily through phone, texting or even social media you all have helped me out in one way or another.  What started as another (to be) failed attempt at keeping a blog of some sort to detail certain aspects of my life for shits and giggles turned into the ultimate version of self help and self discovery.  I've gained quite a few friends and positive influences along the way and I'm happy to have you all in my life.

And by our I mean My - It's all Mine Dammit!

So, November 8 2011, one year ago to the date I erased the last 5-6 months worth of poker related content that was populating my blog and I began anew with a less focused blog and just some random desire to express myself.  I started with just a few random people who would read regularly and posted links in various places that I would frequent depending on the content of the days ramblings.  Over the course of the last year I have gained a small following and it still amazes me to this day that people come back regularly to read and even comment on the various crap that filters through my fingers - but whatever - you are the cool people of the world!

There is a party in my pants and you're all invited

I have never kept up anything quite like this for this length of time.  I generally lose interest after a few months but something changed this last time.  I rediscovered my love of writing and telling stories.  I suppose it was the change of focus from trying to be something that I wasn't completely comfortable with to actually partially finding my "voice" as it were.  You see, I had registered this blog sometime back in 2008, 2 years after moving to Vegas, with thoughts of detailing my poker experiences and seeing how I have changed and improved over the years.  At first I just regaled myself with poker stories from my past and different humorous situations that I got myself into when playing up at the Indian Casino's in New York when I was living in Erie PA.  I never marketed the blog and never told anyone about it and thus never received any hits, not even a couple of random ones.  Whatever, no big deal.

My next adventure started a couple of years later when I became a functioning member of the Vegas Poker Now forums and started occasionally blogging about poker again.  At that time they forums had a Wordpress blog set up that I used that linked directly to the site/forums.  I enjoyed it a bit and kept it up until the site finally was bought out by AllVegasPoker.com.  I saved my blogs and imported them here.  A little while after that I started writing again but deleted everything prior to it - probably a dumb move.  I'd love to go back and read anything random that I wrote from those time periods but that will never happen.

This was my pattern and I expected it to continue.  Write for a few months and then quit. Come back a year or two later and start all over by deleting the previous experiment and beginning anew.  Somewhere in there I got back to what I enjoyed doing and that was just entertaining.  Sure, I know that a good many of you specifically started coming because this was a rough "poker blog" and that was a big part of the group that I managed to weasel myself into. However y'all stayed when this became a (for lack of a better term) "life" blog and I just started talking about whatever the hell I wanted and stopped trying to focus on just one aspect of my life.  I thank you all for that.

Over 60,000 page views, over 3,000 comments and 42 registered followers (And also a few regular anon's who comment and give feed back - Chuck and Fboy the main two).  I also randomly got paid to make one of the blog posts (though I don't think I ever talked about that on here) which still blows my mind! It's all pretty surreal to me in all honesty.  Over the next year I hope to interact with you all a little more.  If you have a blog I'm going to attempt to visit regularly and leave comments and feedback as well because I know how much it means to me when someone takes the time to respond to let me know that they are following along.  Hopefully in another year I can look back and marvel on the fact that I've been doing this for 2 straight years as I really haven't grown tired of it in the least.

With all of that being said, this next year promises to be fucking amazing.  Everything that was wrong with the previous 12 months is no longer valid and my life has done a complete turn around.
I'm happy, I'm in love and I'm about to take a few steps towards some goals that I set for myself decades ago, yes - decades.
As of this writing I currently have set up a meeting with Vegas Linda Lou who has agreed to help me try and break into the comedy biz. She is one of two people who have volunteered to help me out and allow me to make an attempt at something that I've always wanted to try and yet still scares the piss out of me at the same time.  I don't mind the whole public speaking aspect - it's the potential failure that knots me up.
However, I have talked about it in the past and now is the time that I finally put the foot forward.  You cannot succeed at something that you do not even attempt.

So thank you all for being amazing and accepting me for who I am.  Thank you for checking out my little part of the world and making yourselves comfortable.  I hope to continue to provide some sort of entertainment for at least another year and really hope y'all stick around for it.

This was enough seriousness - hopefully my next post has more humor and probably some titties in it just to change the mood and keep people interested!!!