Hey Guys,

It's been a while since I've posted much on RIO. I have been busy with school until yesterday, but now that school is over, I should have more time for other things, including poker.

I already started a journal here a few years ago, but that's a bit outdated and hard for the readers to follow all the comments IMO, so I thought I'd start a new one for 2016. As I did my previous one, I'll try to post some updates on my progress here, but I also expect this to become more than mere HH/PT4 graph bragging fest. There is a good chance I will start blogging on a different (and independent) domain, in which case I will try to cross-post as much as possible.

As a starter, here's what I wrote a few hours ago because well, I'm out of school and bored as hell, but not quite motivated to play lots of poker just yet.

Good luck to you all!

-- midori

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11th Feb, 2016

On 10th Feb 2016, I finally became a doctor. Since I am not intending to stay in academia for an extra second, this means I will be set free from the academic and social responsibilities I have had, and instead become responsible in economic and -- more than ever before -- individual sense. It is probably true that school has been a long journey, with which I could delay making decisions in my life, and to which many ideas and attempts of mine could be chalked up. However, I knew sooner or later I had to lose this safety net, and it is happening now. Nobody will tell me what to do or when to show up at a meeting anymore; nobody will for any longer compliment me for my academic performance or offer to pay me. Finally, I -- and nobody else -- am responsible for myself. My decisions, my goals, my life. My time, my money, my friends. How I decide to manage my resources will determine the quality and depth of my life. And of course, eventually, this brings me back to the question: what are important for me, and how should I live?

I am not going to pretend as if I know the answer already, because -- to some extent -- I think I just have to figure it out as I go, that is, as I live. To this end, I expect this to be a continuing journal of mine that can reflect my thoughts at different times and how they, if at all, progress. What I do know now, however, through experience and thoughts for years, is what I value the most in my life: freedom. Now, I must admit that I often used to confuse this with happiness, and every now and then I would orient my daily activities in such a way that they revolve around the axis named happiness, hoping that the precession will produce a meaningful degree of happiness. In thinking so, though, I failed to acknowledge two things, one general and another more personal and relating to myself. First, life is not all about becoming happy or happier. On the quite contrary, it seems as if a large part of it is filled with negative emotions and hardships, which doesn't surprise me at all. Second, I myself am not a very positive -- albeit optimistic -- person, which puts some limitation as to how, and how often, happy I can be. No matter how I try to do things or have thoughts that I think will make me happy, I simply won't be able to be happy all the time, and this just tells me that I should focus on something else, something more fundamental, more process-oriented, and so on. I reckon that this process for me can be roughly called "understanding", of myself and the world around me, throughout and after which I will be freer than before.

In retrospect, for a lot of things I like, or used to like at some point, I had a desire to understand them better. This applies not only to intellectual and social activities, but also to physical activities, which actually allows me to understand myself better in certain ways. When I first got into rock climbing, I wanted to understand those different holds and how I should grab and step on them, which in turn helped me better understand my body and what I can and cannot do with it. Understanding, I realized, was a process that could happen not only by thinking, but also by moving my own body, i.e. "acting," and sometimes the latter would help the former, even though the targets to be understood were totally different in each case. This totality and complementarity of understanding fascinated me like nothing else could. And very likely, it was one of the very few motivations that kept me in graduate school and let me finish my work, despite the burning urge to set myself free from all those leashes (which, by the way, is an excellent proof that the process and goal -- understanding and freedom in this case -- do not always go along with each other, despite heading for the same direction).

I have played poker for about 6 years in total, of which I was serious for roughly half the time. For the most part, it has been fun. Has it made me happier? Sometimes it did, but given the amount of stress and frustration it has given me, those that I would never have had to experience had I not known this game, I can say with certainty that it actually made me unhappier quite often. However, I have always tried to understand the game and -- through it -- myself too, which from time to time made me feel as if I was free like I was never before. And of course, somewhere between understanding and freedom, lie other emotions such as happiness, unhappiness, sense of achievement, meaningfulness, and so on, as well as more tangible outcomes that relate to time, money, and sometimes, even other people. Still, the bottom line is that poker is something that motivates me to understand itself and things beyond it better, and through this I can ultimately achieve freedom.

Of course, now that I am about to set sail for playing poker full-time and make a living out of it, and only it, I will have to make sure I will meet my end and my freedom is indeed being guaranteed. But I can somehow tell that, from the lack of ignitive motivation and my general philosophy, setting monetary goals, or even career goals, should never be on the top of my priority list. For, that would make me do this just for making more money, and ultimately deprive me of freedom and enslave me to money and time instead. I am responsible for my own life, and I should never let such a thing happen to me. Admittedly, I can easily see how procrastination -- in the broadest sense -- can get in my way and cause problems. And once again, I do not intend to pretend as if I know it all. These are things I have to struggle with and hopefully make something out of, and for the most part I simply don't know what will happen when, why and how. Still, not in spite of, but because of this very reason, I will have to make sure I have my motto right before setting sail. Understanding and freedom. It is probably not a coincidence that Hannah Arendt mentioned these two things, one as her utmost desire in politics, and another as the ultimate -- and the only -- goal of politics. Now, standing by the port of call and seeing that the coast is clear, I am very much looking forward to seeing how they will unfold and reveal their aspects to me.