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I'm feeling pretty depressed about stuff lately and I'm not sure what to do.

Dont have any friends and dating is hard for me. I dont have many avenues to meet new people.

I have a stupid job that I stay at because it pays ok around 72k. Currently have around 150k+ in savings. Living with parents at the moment cause I dont know what to do. Life is passing me by right now...

I kind of want to just quit my job and travel/live in cheap countries for a while. Maybe just the winter and then start working again. I could probably keep doing that every year. Still I'm not sure if that constitutes a real life. It's probably the most realistic plan I have now though.

I'd like to work remotely somehow while traveling but I dont know how to get this done. If I knew I could do the job I wouldn't mind getting some sort of IT or programming skills but I have heard alot of remote positions are for seasoned/high demand workers and I really dont think id have the chops for it.

My original plan was to just keep working, save up like 500k and just live off that forever(in cheap countries). I can't wait that long though. I think if I am very frugal I'm saving around 40k a year right now so that'd be 9 fucking years...

What should I do?




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"There is nothing in the world worth clinging to." - The Buddha

Think about that. What does it mean to you? Is it valid?


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It seems like there are a fair amount of people on this site that have visited or lived in Thailand. I just keep having this nagging in me to get over there. It's funny in my previous life I wanted to ball it up on poker monies and do coke and cum on prostitute tittays (2 prostitutes, 4 tittays, or maybe a cum swap... but I digress). Now, I just want a nice spiritual trip. Check out some monasteries, check out some nice beaches, I am not even really sure yet. I may even want to go up North and hike the forests. I really would like to go to Myanmar (Yangon) as well but I think that might be unsafe at this point?

Suggestions?

I am unsure on how to even go about it. In the past all my traveling has been pretty bourgeois. Hotels and vacation rentals. I would want to do it up pretty cheaply here. Straight up backpacking mode. I don't even know if I would want to bring a laptop. I want cheap shelter, cheap curries, fresh fruit, cheap transportation. Don't mind hiking long distances. Check out some monasteries. Check out the art. Visit some family. I may have to choose between forest and beach. I think it depends on what monasteries I want to check out.

What else is there to do in Thailand?

I want fresh mango and mango and sticky rice. I want to avoid partying and prostitutes. Stay away from big cities and sordidness. If anyone can help please do.




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Here I sit on this Monday morning at around 9 am EST. Thankfully I am not scheduled to work today. It looks beautiful outside. I will probably take a walk on the beach and go for a swim. It's ok worker bees I unfortunately still have to work. Not as much as you all. I am typically at 30-35 hours/wk. I worked last night which is probably worse than working a 9-5 on a Monday. I was looking at my expenses for the next pay period. It is literally all food and gas. If I sold my car and started taking alms I would be ok. We've been through this before though. I can't be a monk and I am not going to go homeless in a city center. I would still need health insurance, dental insurance, etc. Working at a monastery or a meditation center makes sense but I would still need health insurance.

Nothing is stable. That truth is disconcerting. I can get a "steady" paycheck coming in and then what? Who knows? I can take measures to stay healthy but it's no guarantee. The thing about work is that you can not want to do something but you sort of have to do it. That causes stress, suffering, and dissatisfaction. I didn't want to make so many god damn pizzas yesterday but I did. At this point it's how I have to be useful. I have a friend who is retired that always harps on being at work is better than being at home. I want to point out the obvious "then why are you fucking retired? Being at home is clearly better than being at work." He says because at home I will be in my head and that's a dangerous place for me to be. I don't know. I get to hang out with my cats, I get to meditate, I get to go to the beach.

The problem is I am starting the cycle again. Work is quite a disruption to meditation. I could have pulled the bandaid off last night but I was so not into it. You would think a good night sleep has a good effect on meditation but I am not so sure. In a way I am starting over or simply maintaining. I made a lot of progress the last 2 days I want to keep it going. I guess the only way I can find out is by continuing to meditate when I can. That's all I can do.


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Is life all about satisfying desires?

Every whim that pops up? How can we keep track?

I am writing a blog because when I gave up LP all I was doing was substituting with endlessly scrolling through Reddit: Girls gone wild. I mean I was doing useful stuff too but for me r/ggw is useless and unwholesome. I hadn't masturbated for a long time but I think sitting in a car scrolling through r:ggw led to more desire like a forest fire and I ended up lusting after Lana Rhoades. I satisfied that desire. I felt pleasure. Then what? I have kind of eased back from 8 precepts so does it matter? Not really. I don't feel guilty. I would go into it more but I wonder if this is all jibberish to everyone.

I meditated for a while before I left yesterday and was mindful for maybe an hour or two on the drive. I got to a state where I wanted nothing. I had no desires. No greed, no anger, maybe some delusion. It was really weird. I wanted to always be in that state. It didn't stay for too long maybe 20-30 min. Then I was scarfing down pizza and scrolling through r/ggw on my phone before it ran out of batteries. I think a part of it is on the trip it become so clear spending my days with ordinary folk that that is so not the life for me. It was nice seeing my family but I could just as easily detach and be ok. Even the setup of towns was jarring: Bank, McDonald's, grocery store. I don't even want to go into it too much here either as most people on this site are probably living an ordinary life with aspirations of getting married, owning a house, having children, work, and chores.

My point is I don't think it's all about satisfying desires. Being on call for every thought that arises is madness. It is about detaching from desires. Letting go of desires. Letting go of the habituated paths in our lives. I am not quite there with LP obviously (or pornography and masturbation) but that is ok. I got hooked again in both cases today. I am back home. I have desire for excitement and insight from LP and desire for escape and pleasure with pornography and masturbation. The only useful one is insight and I am not sure how much I actually get from here.


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A few years ago I quit poker to enroll in a full-time 2 year web development program. I had to suck up a lot of pride to go back to college in my late 20s. The college then offered me a co-op, and my hopes for breaking into the web field was high. But once my time ended there I found myself back at the poker tables, again - this time live poker. It's easier to grind live poker than it is to hustle my way through an entry level position in an expensive city. Most of last year I played live with success, then I dedicated a few months to online until I realized that I no longer have the necessary skills to make a good living off it. To be honest, I never studied hard enough and I never put enough hours in. It's no wonder I failed. I forgot about the crippling loneliness and isolation of playing online poker, which made the challenge more difficult for me.

In hindsight, I should have stuck to live poker - I would have had more money. But live poker is excruciating boring and the variance is wild. The reason I keep coming back to poker is that it offers me FREEDOM, and there's a lot less freedom in live poker. I was basically grinding at the casino from 9 to 5. I might as well get a job that offers me more opportunity, growth, and freedom in the coming years.


So what do I do from here?..


Its been a year and a half since I did web development work, so I forgot a lot of the things I learned. And it doesn't help that it's a field that is constantly changing. So I have a lot to learn before I'm employable. I'm considering enrolling in a 'coding bootcamp'. The cost is 10k CAD, its full-time, lasts 3 months, and they help you get an entry level position. If I choose to do it I'll have to slum it in Toronto, because it's one hell of an expensive city to live in, and I won't be earning money during the program. Hell, I'll have to slum it even when I do earn money. The starting salary will be ~45-65k, which is dirt in Toronto. The cost alone for a 1 bedroom apartment is $1800 minimum in a decent location. The good news is that as long as I stay motivated my salary should rapidly increase over the years, but I have a long way to go until then.


The way I see it I have no other option. Sure, I'm able to go to university and work on a 4 year degree, but I'm not willing to spend 4 years living with roommates and eating ramen noodles.. No, I need money. I'll continue playing live for a month or two, then I'll likely enroll in the bootcamp program. The thought of living in a new city and the fact that I never worked a full time job in my life is causing me a lot of stress and anxiety. A few months ago I wrote somewhere on this site that "I would rather die than fail" (fail at poker). Apparently my instinct to survive is stronger than my false pride.


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The freakshow is back in town. I listened to music for the first time today in quite a while. It got me dancing and then it left me somewhat dissatisfied. I wanted new, better, more interesting music and even that felt like a dud. It coincided with my caffeine iv this morning. I had comic books to sell! There was a lot of interesting things I found out about comic books this morning. Most pretty much just appreciate with inflation or not even but in fact they actually depreciate in my case as the comics books age (comic book grade decreases). So, I had a huge stack of comic books valued at anywhere from $1-$5 ON PAPER. The problem is shipping is $3.75 which kind of kills all of those books on eBay. I could take the stack in to a comic book shop and haggle but I didn't even want to bother so I threw them in the recycling bin. There were some diamonds in the rough however. I am first selling one at about no profit just to get the hang of it. An education/trial of sorts so I know what I am doing when I get to the heavier hitters.

It's so easy on a day off after a big lunch being a little bit dissatisfied to come on here and write stuff. It's a sneaky addiction. I have been trying to follow the 8 precepts of Buddhism. One is eating before noon. I didn't quite make it today. I got lost in the comic book project and then my mom wanted help in the garden. I ate at about 12:30pm. Some days go by pretty smoothly and then others are tough. I experimented with drinking juices at night which is allowable but that seems to just start the craving for food and then sometimes the lust overcomes in a big way. It's actually easier on days that I work nights. I don't even really think about food. Chips and salsa or dark chocolate is a killer for me though.

The Blessed One is the Buddha:

Kitagiri Sutta

"I have heard that on one occasion the Blessed One was wandering on a tour of Kasi with a large community of monks. There he addressed the monks: "I abstain from the night-time meal.1 As I am abstaining from the night-time meal, I sense next-to-no illness, next-to-no affliction, lightness, strength, & a comfortable abiding. Come now. You too abstain from the night-time meal. As you are abstaining from the night-time meal, you, too, will sense next-to-no illness, next-to-no affliction, lightness, strength, & a comfortable abiding."

I actually cannot be a monk due to my mental illness. So, why live the 8 precepts? I think it's the right thing to do. I have noticed my life to be more content and peaceful even if I slip up at times. That is actually the hard part. I just had this romanticism in my mind of doing tedious tasks and loading up on caffeine and listening to music and I just decided to do it. Kind of like I am just deciding to write this blog. I can feel a craving for music pretty strongly now. A craving that hasn't been there for weeks. This is suffering. Almost on a micro level. I never thought about this kind of thing when I was engulfing myself in music. Nothing really that bad happened except I was suffering and craving unknowingly.

Nothing is permanent.

So, I can't be a monk. Not that it was like this slam dunk that I could be a monk but it was motivating for me. Now, I have visions of me just being this shithead guy that calls himself Buddhist. The 5 precepts are rather elementary for someone that is in recovery for substance addiction. I think I still gossip but usually I catch myself or leave the conversation or just don't say anything. I know I repeat myself but I want to be the guy that sells pots down by the river. I have to find my version of that. I have been working more lately. It is harder to find time to meditate and study. I say this while writing a blog and like I meditate 4+ hours a day. But, it is a bit more difficult even if I only meditate 30min - 1 hr a day. I don't know. It's weird though. Now, that I can "only" be a lay person it's like I don't have to care. But, I do have to care if I want to be free of suffering. Not even in a Nibbana (Enlightenment) but just the reduction of suffering, dissatisfaction, negative emotions. I think even my positive emotions get blunted a bit because I know where that leads me too as well but I would like to carry a certain cheerfulness and joie de vivre with me during my days.

So, that's really why I attempt the 8 precepts on a daily basis. Peace and contentment. No euphoria, not feeling happiness or pleasures but an inner freedom. It's really quite different to how I ever lived my life up to 4.5 years ago and it feels like I am only now starting to understand it. For a while, I thought I could just be a "clean" addict. Fashion is "clean." Being cool is "clean." Vagina is "clean." Listening to music really loud and speeding on the highway is "clean." I didn't quite get it or I never really understood renouncement. The more I get rid of the better I feel. Perhaps I am clinging to that feeling. It gets to a point though where it gets tough to give up more. Caffeine has been the toughest thing I've ever given up. Sexual activity also but I am abstinent. I still drink 1-2 Monsters every morning. I would be at 10 precepts except for not handling or using money is basically impossible if one isn't a monk. Monks have 227 rules though. I don't think I have any interest in getting involved with THAT. I've read through them. Many of them are very specific to monks. My goal is just a guy man. A practitioner. An explorer. My fellow sufferers, I just want to suffer less.


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Need $40 Skrill can do $45 paypal.




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hi liquidpoker,

I currently have a Ergohuman but its shit and my neck hurts, I think its asian size and its too small, its the worst chair that I ever had,
it pulls my lower back AND my neck forward like its made for those MIB coffee worms, ridic

anyway,
I'm more inclined to buy the Herman Miller Embody but I haven't done any research about treadmill desk, so I'm here asking you to do the research for me :D

treadmill desk looks like another hipster crap like those dorks that sit in a yoga ball,
is that correct or is legit ?

Herman Miller embody costs about 1.6k USD here
I dont know how much a treadmill desk costs


which one should I buy ?


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I'm eeking it out guys. Eking it out. I just did my bills and I've been eeking it out. I really don't know. No job is stable. No matter how much I renounce it seems like my monthly expenses are barely covered by my paychecks. It's kind of what I'm going for. To just live a real simple life and eke it out. There is little comfort in this life. I have no desire to chase the worldly life. I feel estranged from the ordinary life. One of my old, good friends just sent me a thank you letter for attending his wedding and my wedding gift. He said he will put the cash towards buying a house. In that moment I just felt kind of bad for him. Marriage, house, kids............ He probably feels kind of bad for me. From most viewpoints I am a bum. I AM a bum that wants nothing to do with society except for maybe some friends but quality friends are hard to come by for a bum like me. I don't want to go out to dinner, I want no part in entertainment, and I want no part in this society. It can be quite a lonely path with out a community but I am not ready to be a monk. Here I am writing a blog again. It's like my dissatisfaction is seeping out into different avenues of addiction which only makes the dissatisfaction worse. Life is a bumpy ride that is for sure.


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I think I am writing this blog out of boredom and maybe glimpsing a bit of despair. That's what boredom entails anyways. If you get bored enough it is difficult not to confront your own death. I am winding down my days off to head back into work tomorrow morning. Besides Refuge Recovery meetings I am mostly isolated. My parents are gone for 2 weeks. Besides my habit of napping I feel I use the time to my benefit. I really don't know if writing this blog is beneficial. I should just meditate and tend to the garden. I linger on that sage suggestion. But, no, I will write on. An addiction some (accurately) say. This blog has brought me a lot of useless chatter but also some jewels. Like any good addiction there is intermittent reinforcement.

...

So, I decided to meditate and tend to the garden. There was a phrase that kept coming to me in meditation: Ever vanishing present. The ever vanishing present. I can snap my fingers in 1/365th of a second. That isn't even the present. The flower is closer to annihilation the instant it blooms. It wilts regardless of rain or shine. What are we doing in this ordinariness, this everydayness?

This isn't therapy. Perhaps it was. That whole ordeal was foolish. Transparency in an online blog is foolish. Taking risks in a format like this is foolish.

I had the thought of caring about my viewership. I hope k2o4 is right in that some sort of spiritual vibe is passing through the air. It would be for the benefit of all of us. I don't think this is true though. This is a dwindling gambling and entertainment website.

I had an acquaintance tell me yesterday that I have changed dramatically since he first met me. I carry myself better and seem very comfortable in my skin now and that whatever I am doing to keep doing it. Part of that is caring less what people think about me but it's hard not to indulge in a compliment like that a bit. I have been mostly open in that meeting what I have been doing. I have been renouncing worldly things, meditating, and studying Buddhism. Previously, with the help of LP I studied Neoliberal Economics, Anarchy, Edgar Morin, Byung Chul Han, etc. It is all documented here. The worldly society is bunk guys. See, I don't want to fall into self-congratulatory bs which I may have just done. Taking refuge in the 3 jewels changes things. Abstaining from substances and sex changes things. Eating only the bare necessities in food. It's a lot of little things. Giving almost all my clothes to charity. Meditation. Learning. Reflection. These are all things I should not forget.

I am unsure of the point of the last paragraph. Perhaps to document. Perhaps to make sense of it all.

Ever vanishing present moment. Let's make it count.


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Well hello there people who still use LP,

Don't shoot, I come in peace

I first started posting blogs back in 2007, and boy did I post a lot. I'm happy to see that I still have the record for most blog posts on the site, holding strong at 633 (but DustySwedeDude is catching up, so I have to start posting again to hold onto this auspicious achievement).

It used to be so damn busy here, a hustle and bustle of online poker activity. I guess that was the poker boom, and the end of BW, and the arrival of smart phones, and the rise of social media's domination of content... all factors which I'm guessing led to this slightly ghost town vibe.

But that means those of you who are still here, are truly dedicated. I appreciate that, cause out of all the online communities I joined into, this is definitely the one I shared the most with. I was close with my StarCraft teams, but I was generally the manager and focused on running the thing rather than enjoying it. Here at LP I was just focused on poker and me, and it was fun to meet so many of you during those times, to learn poker, to talk shit, to be exposed to all sorts of interesting topics and debates... ahh good memories.

When I quit grinding after my trip to Southeast Asia, I continued on the path of being focused on me, and finally experienced the joy of attending school because of wanting to be there, not because someone is forcing me. I decided to use my time in school as an opportunity to research and learn about everything I'd ever been curious about, and come to my own conclusions. I'd gotten really good at copying other people's statements on controversial topics, and while they worked during interactions out in the world, I didn't actually know the logic or data behind why the statements were true, or even if they were true.

Going back to university and taking it seriously was a big awakening to me, as I first got my mind blown by all the mainstream info about how amazing the universe is, and then got my whole world shattered when I realized the mainstream answers were limited and it was ok to jump off the cliff into the crazy answers, into the world of investigating consciousness and what this reality really is. And when I say shattered, I mean things were falling to pieces all around me, I had no idea how to interact with the world anymore upon realizing that so much of my behavior was wrong or beliefs were not true. I went back to school as a 26 year old in 2010, but halfway through I'd crumbled back to my 12 year old self, as I realized that everything I'd used to build my personality during my teenage years wasn't based on me, just based on copying in an attempt to survive. I had to relearn how to be around people, and new techniques for dealing with the anxiety which had always plagued me. It was a total nervous breakdown, which I soon learned was also my spiritual awakening.

The biggest realization I had was that healing was important. I'd always done my best to be tough and strong and recover quickly and not feel it and numb the pain and don't be a pussy and be a man. My closest friends as a teenager were all going through the same thing, and we'd often become friends because we met by punching each other in the face, and we'd be tough during the day but when we got drunk enough at night tears and bro hugs would arise. Then we'd go destroy some property or beat someone up to feel better, not realizing how the destruction always made us feel worse in the end. We were friends cause we had brief moments of healing together, but we didn't know how to truly heal because everything we'd learned about being a man was getting in the way.

Halfway through my Psychology degree I decided that continuing to get straight A's wasn't as important as diving into the crazy stuff. It started with marijuana. I used the university's resources to do a deep dive into the research, and I found out about the conspiracy theory level shenanigans which had occurred to suppress the scientific truth about cannabis. I realized that the opportunity to legalize was fast approaching and that Colorado could be the first domino tipped to start a process of legalization around the world, so I dedicated myself to the political process and organized my campus. We crushed it and won a huge victory, something I'll be proud of being part of until my dying day <3

Along the way I opened up to alternative healing modalities, and especially the world of meditation and yoga. I'd grown up with exposure to both through my dad, but had always rejected them as woo woo, weirdo, extremely unenjoyable, and a place where crazy people hung out and talked about spiritual mumbo jumbo. But that piece of my personality had fallen of when everything shattered, so I began to tiptoe cautiously into what had always looked like the abyss...

Luckily my childhood exposure to family friends like Richard Davidson, Jon Kabat Zinn, and Daniel Goleman, amongst many other amazing minds of our time, had grounded me in how to scientifically approach the world of meditation. You see, my dad started something called the Mind and Life Institute, which has been bridging science and spiritual practices for over 30 years. It all started by bringing scientists to India for a meeting with the Dalai Lama, and has grown into a vibrant community of scientists and contemplative practitioners who are learning from each other. The meetings inspired loads of research, including the famous studies done by Richard Davidson with Mattieu Ricard. With the data they collected a new mainstream acceptance to the benefits of meditation has developed. I watched that process happen around me as a kid growing up, and it informed so much of how I approached my psychology degree, and my personal dive into the abyss.

As I began to practice yoga and meditation, it became clear that I needed to make it my lifestyle. I became a yoga teacher and began teaching 8 classes a week, of all types and styles. As my practice developed I learned more and more about my body, about my thoughts, about my energy... I began to feel things I'd never felt, see things from new perspectives, and find new ways of interacting with myself. While my personal research into "wtf is going on in this world and who the hell am I" had left me shattered, my practice of meditation and yoga helped to build me back up into a new person, updated to version 2.0.

That started a path of healing for me, which I'm still on right now. I've had a few more upgrades since then, often thanks to the beautiful help given by plant medicines while working with loving shamans, and I know I have many more patches left to come. But I'm finally starting to be ok with that, to be ok with being on this ride, on this journey of growth and evolution.

Resisting what is, resisting the bad feelings, resisting how things are... that has been my habit, that has been my pattern. Meditation has been the great teacher of learning to accept what is, right now, as it is. Learning to allow what is happening, to happen. And to be fully present with myself, my emotions, my stories, my thoughts, my energy, without resisting or forcing anything.

So the journey continues, as I'm just a silly noob who has barely begun upon the path. But I'm happy to see that I'm not alone, as a few of you other long time members are now talking about meditation, Buddhism, addiction, and healing. I guess this site is still about poker, but for those of us who have been using it for over a decade, maybe it's also now about our journey of evolution from the fervent pursuit of money, believing it was what we needed for happiness, to a deep dive into ourselves to find that inner source of happiness which doesn't depend on the transient nature of the external reality.

Or maybe I've just become a woo woo hippie dippy crazy person I guess that's ok too <3


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