Tzen1 – PokerStars Team: Online

I haven’t blogged in a long time but I don’t really feel like catching up on all things I’ve done since my last blog. One thing is for sure and that is the fact that I’ve enjoyed myself during this period, life is great but it really is time to look a bit further down the road again and that is mainly what I’m going to write about today.

I’m an ambitious lazy guy. I have many dreams and many goals I still want to achieve in my life but day to day I’m a pretty lazy guy. If I can get someone else to do something for me I’m happy to sit on my couch and do nothing. This makes achieving things in life pretty hard but so far things have always come very easy. The fact that things always came pretty easy makes me even lazier, it also makes me a bit arrogant and less ambitious. If I would only look at the short term I would say my life is really good and that shows by the fact that I enjoy my life almost every day. I’m a happy guy, I do a lot of fun things and hardly ever do something I don’t want to do. Some people would wonder what the hell the problem is then and a big part of me fully agrees with them. You should enjoy life when you still can and I’m really somebody who embraces that fully. However between long and short term there is also something in the middle and that’s what I want to try to keep in mind a little more often.

The last 2/3 months I haven’t played a lot of poker, I’ve done what’s necessary but that’s about it. My main focus, especially just before my trip to Vegas, was to finish an assignment at work which required me to put more hours in then the regular 24hrs/week. I cycled a bit but never more than once a week, I didn’t play any tennis or visited the gym. From the 15th of May I did play a lot of Diablo III and loved every second of it! I was either playing SCOOP or playing Diablo during that first week, I really felt like 16 again! I also had some great weekends with my friends like the weekend cycling the Amstel Gold Race in April. The vacation with my buddies to Vegas in June was really the greatest two weeks of the last 3 months, what a blast again! I might write some more about it later in this blog or another, Vegas still feels like a second home to me! When I got back from Vegas I also didn’t miss a single European championship football match, including the talk shows after the matches. The problem is that I want to keep doing all these things and for almost all these things I would also like to put some more effort in them. Looking at the last 3 months this especially counts for poker and exercising. I can shift priorities whatever I like but that doesn’t give me 28 hours in a day and that’s basically what I would need.

So it might be good to focus on some of these things but I’ve tried to complete that puzzle and I just can’t seem to solve it. Two years ago I didn’t really have to choose between work and poker but nowadays it’s becoming harder and harder to find the right balance. Just playing poker isn’t enough anymore to keep winning money, I also need to invest time in learning and studying the game. Limit hasn’t become any softer so if I want to keep beating it I need to work for it, I’ve thought about switching games but that would require even more study time for at least a couple of months and I just don’t have that time. However quitting poker is really something I don’t want to do. So why not quit work a lot of people would say? Well that isn’t that simple either. Besides that fact that I really like that stable income which makes me play poker comfortably, I also really like my job and think in the long term it holds more value. Two years ago I had a busy job but I was really experienced in that line of work so it gave me little stress and it was pretty easy to do in the 24 hours I worked. However since then I’ve moved up and I’m really a junior in my current role. This means I have to work harder and limiting it to only 24 hours a week is really hard which bites with my poker ambitions. So what to do? I’ve pondered about this for months and still don’t know it 🙁

For the midterm it would also be good to get some more exercise and try to look at what I eat and drink. This has been a topic many times before in my blog but despite writing about it and putting in some effort for 2-5 weeks it never really changed anything the last year. I promised myself never to get above the 100kg again and I can’t remember the last time I was below the 100kg, it’s probably almost a year ago by now. I really feel good and healthy and being 103kg isn’t really an issue but I don’t want to wait till I’m 115kg and my health is going downhill which will make it even harder to lose that weight again.

Well combine the above and you understand why “Time for change!” is the topic of this blog. Luckily I didn’t even start-up Diablo III after my holiday so that gives me some more hours to spent on other things. The Netherlands (worth a complete blog as well) didn’t qualify for the next round so that will save me a lot of time as well. I could also be a bit less lazy and hopefully these things combined give me those extra hours I’m looking for! The next thing is prioritizing the things I do want to do and exercise is going to be my top priority for the moment. I think it’s the hardest thing to keep doing if it’s not your top priority as it’s pretty easy to not go to the gym for one day while it’s unlikely to skip work for a whole day. Next on the list is poker for the same reason as exercise, it’s easier to skip a poker session then a day at work. Third on the list will be everything else and no that doesn’t mean that if I have to choose between my girlfriend, family or friends and poker that I chose poker above them, this is only about prioritizing time. I really hope I can find a good balance between all these things, I know it’s going to be hard and I really have to work for it but I do think it’s possible. Work is going to be a huge factor in this and I just hope I won’t get flooded. I already know that I’m going to get a pretty tough assignment till the 1st of October (and I doubt that will ever stop) and it’s really hard to say no at my job since there is no manager that really wants to hear no at the level I’m working at in the company but they will just have to accept that in some cases. I got a contract for 24hours, I’m willing to work a bit more when needed, I’m always flexible but I do have other obligations as well. It’s way easier to skip a gym or a poker session then to say no at work and I think when this isn’t working out I really have to make a choice between poker and work. Basically this is my last effort in finding a balance between the two of them and when it doesn’t work out I will force myself in making a decision.

I already started with my new exercise routine. I’ve been 4 times to the gym the last 7 days and 3 times in the last 3 days. Tomorrow I give myself a break in the gym but might go cycling for an hour or so. I teamed up with a buddy of mine who is always really serious for longer periods of time and he just had a small break and started last week again as well so hopefully that’s going to be really stimulating. So far the sessions went really well and I hope exercising more will also give me more energy at work and poker. Tomorrow I will start playing poker again (didn’t play since my return last week from Vegas) and I should put in at least 6 hours and next week I should be back to my normal routine(20hours a week). This week I’m also starting my new assignment at work so it’s going to be very interesting how everything is going to work out! Oh yeah, the Tour de France also almost starts, don’t forget the Olympics and let’s not even think about what will happen if the sun comes out and it’s really going to be summer over here……..