As always, I'm a lazy blogger.

I spent most of April grinding.  I had a good month, +20k, although this was in contrast to a near-break even February and March.

I'm still making about 50 cents a hand this year, which is pretty good considering half of the hands I play are at 2/4.  I'd like to put in more hands but realistically, playing too much poker takes a toll on my life quality. 

I want to start playing more 5/10, and possibly higher -- I have some issues with handling the money swings at 5/10, however.  I've had 2 years of having -10k days in my life but it's still something that drives me absolutely insane.  I feel my mental limit is -5k before I become fairly depressed and angry.

This annoys me since I've had swings like this for a long time, and they've never got easier, despite a much larger bankroll and "safety net" that I have nowadays.  I can't get myself into the right mindset when this kind of money comes into play.

It's funny because I use to take shots at 5/10 back in late 2005 with a 15k roll.  Losing a couple buy-ins never really bothered me (in fact it got my adrenaline pumping.)  Now, losing a couple buy-ins just gets me sour, and further losses can drive me insane.

Part of it is that everything changed when I played for a living, instead of being a student.  There's something comforting about being a student -- that the future is still open-ended if things really go wrong -- but playing for a living, I don't feel that comfort, and any decent losing streak can bring out the fear of death inside since there is no back-up plan if I lose my money.

I know logically that my bankroll is so big that playing 5/10 will never make me go broke, and the worst-case scenario is actually not that bad if I somehow can't win at poker anymore.  Yet every time a few buy-ins go down the drain, my brain starts to get stupid.

I'm not sure how to fix this.  I could just play a shitload of 5/10 to get used to it, as people recommend, but that hasn't worked in previous stints. 

I'm really enjoying surfing down here.  I feel like I'm surfing as good as I was before I sprained my knee in Costa Rica (which is being able to catch most waves and working on actually doing stuff on the wave like turning.) 

After Australia, me and my buddy Slider are planning on moving to Montreal for the summer.  He visited there a few months ago, and he really enjoyed the city, and I've heard from a few others that the city is awesome.  I've never lived in the downtown area of a big city and look forward to that experience.

I don't think I've mentioned it here, but I'm staying abroad from the US for a year since there's a tax law that says you don't have to pay taxes on the first $80k you make if you spend 330 out of 365 days in a row out of the US.  Montreal will be nice for the summer, but I imagine the cold will start to suck and I really want to learn another language somewhere (learning french in Montreal isn't what I'm looking for.)

A few poker players have gone to Buenos Aires and learned Spanish so that is what I'm leaning towards after the summer.  After spending six or so months there, I might go to Costa Rica for a few months and live a surfer's life for a little bit before either returning to the US or continuing my journey abroad.

In a few days, me and my friends are going on a trip to the Great Barrier Reef, then me and Pat Southern are headed to New Zealand for 11 days.  I have heard NZ is awesome and look forward to the amazing scenery and glacier walks.