[1800GAMBLER]

You have always seemed somewhat well strung with your self awareness but your shooting up stakes seems like you want to ride the variance rollercoaster. You will probably think those days are over because you hit badly once, but they are probably far from over. No matter the level of your poker skills, the level of stakes you play or the size of your bankroll there are always bigger games and there are always stakes in which with a bad run you could go totally bust. The reason i meantioned this was because about 3 times you meantion how the swings in poker had an effect on your mood when over events should have engulfed it,

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My grandmother also passed away, and combined with the worst month of poker career and adapting to college, it was not a fun month.

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I missed my good friends, and my relationship with my long-term girlfriend self destructed. I was in an emotional rut for quite a while. Fortunately, during September, I was also running very well and end up having my best month of poker ever (42k) which helped alleviate some of the emotional turbulence I was handling

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In both of those quotes, the event poker is coupled with should [for a professional] easily outweigh whatever poker swings you go on. Having the fact if you are up for a day/week/month control if you are happy or not is unhealthy. You are flipping a coin for whatever mood you are in.

Hopefully you can use your self awareness to monitor how much poker affects your mood and progress with correcting it.

Along the way you will realise poker is a very emotional game and controlling your homelife and mind state is just as important as focusing on your game. While we see many kids shoot up stakes and win big a lot, there are tons of older people who grind out very successfully, because they live more balanced and organised lives.

Best of luck.