Need Life Advice Bad

[lehighguy]

This isn't related to politics. However, most of the posters I know are here. It is also posted in the general forum.

First some background. I'm 22. I just graduated college a little over 3 months ago. Now I work for an investment bank in NYC where I live. Our training program is just finishing, and afterwards I'm going to start on some desk in sales and trading (front-office) for those in the biz.

So about my future. I have three options as I see it:

1) Keep working on Wall Street:
I really really hate my job. When I was a freshmen in college my Aunt got me an interview without asking me (this is very young, most don't do it until thier junoir year). I did a summer internship and was very successful. They invited me back for another the next year and offered to pay for part of my college (which I turned down because I didn't want to be locked into working for them). We are just finishing up training, and I will then be assinged to a business group. I didn't really want this job, I took it because I didn't know what else to do. I did it because it was the "right" thing to do. I even turned down applying for other jobs because I would have to use my company as a refernce and they would probably fire me if they thought I was applying for other jobs. So this is where I'm at now.

Pros of Job
Money. I make $55,000 salary +$10k signing bonus right out of college. Two more years and I'll be making six figures. 10 years out I could be making a $million/year. However, my expenses are ginormous. Rent, food, and taxes in NYC are rediculous. I have no spending money left. I can barely save. And as I make more money, I'm expected to spend more. It's part of the business. I'm expected to hob nob with my rich clients and co-workers and spend. I turned down going to vegas with them this week because it was too expensive. It will only get worse. Also, later on they try and compensate you with stock and options, which I can't keep if I leave the company. The whole thing is designed to lock you in. I've even met people that have all the money they need to retire, but they have been doing this so long they can't. Everything they do, everyone they know, is tied to the bank. They can't get out. The idea of retiring at 35 is really appealing to me, but who knows if I'll be able too. Maybe in 15 years taxes on the top bracket will be 70% because Social Security is bankrupt. I could be chasing nothing.

Moreover, I don't even want money. I just want enough for food and booze and videogames. I want to spend time hanging out with my friends. I've never been able to spend all the money I've gotten. I've got between $25,000-$30,000 in the bank. Even when I was 17 I hate a huge bank account. I wouldn't know what to do with it.

Good Resume Builder
If I do this, I will be able to get another job much easier. I don't know if it will be worth much outside banking, but its gotta be impressive. If I quit, I'll be labeled a quiter for life, right? I turned down my shot. Who's gonna hire me and spend money training me?

I'm good at this
I may hate it, but I'm very good at it. I'm better then most of the other trainees. The company is always trying to push me foward.

Cons
I don't know if I can make it another 2 years. I don't know if I can make it another 2 months. Each day is killing my soul. Minimum workweek is 60 hours. Sometimes more. Because I hate work so much I've developed a crippling insomnia. I don't want to go to sleep because I have to wake up and go to work. I'm getting less then four or five hours every night. If I had work today I would have gotten two. It feels like its getting worse. And it makes my waking hours unbearable. It's like I'm niether awake or asleep. I drink two red bulls a day. This is killing me.

Also, I hate corporate America in general. I hate having a boss. I don't think I'll ever be satisfied until I own my own business and report to myself. I don't think a different kind of banking job is the answer.

Play Poker for a Living
This would be a dream solution, if I thought I was good enough. I started playing 3/6 on party one year ago. I made 1.7bb/100 four tabling during fall semester and played 5/10 short towards the end.

When I came back in Spring semester I really picked up my game. I played 5/10 on pacific and made about 4k. Then I started playing 200NL and made great moeny too. I played in the sunday tournament about 10 times ($100 buy-in) and cashed in 3rd once for $8,000. When they opened up $600NL I did very well, up 8k. However, I've gone down 5k since then, including 1k last night (first time I played in two months).

I also played $50+5 tournies over the summer and made $4.89/tourney (ROI = 9%). At 40min per tourney that is $7.62/hour. I play 4 tournies at once so that is close to $28/hour. This is over 541 tournies. If you include my shots at 100s and 200s the results go down. I make $3.85/tourney (ROI 6%), $6.01/hour times 4 tables. So $24/hour over 601 tournies. None of this includes rakeback. I would add $1300 in rakeback since Feb including tournaments and my 50NL and 100NL cash play on eurobet. I also earned rakeback from pacific, but not as much.

In summary, I've made about $19,000 this year. I would estimate I played an average of 10 hours a week over the first 6 months, mostly at one table of pacific for the first 4. My main source of income has been pacific, which is getting harder to beat everyday and still offers only one table. Avg pots are comming way down, more sharks are feeding. This last 5k downswing is destroying my confidence.

I would be satisfied with playing poker for 50k/year, but I worry about the future of its popularity. I kinduv want to make $100k per year so I can save 50k of it. That way if poker dies in 5 years I'll have $250k to start my own business. I'd really like to open an internet gaming cafe or something. I know they won't loan money to a gambler, so I'm gonna need my own capital. Thing is, I just don't know if I have enough natural talent to do that. If I was gonna make it, shouldn't I have done it by now?

Bankroll considerations. I have like $25-30k in the bank. Of that money 10k + interest in my signing bonus. If I leave the bank anytime in the next 9 months or so they will keep it. So now I'm down to $15-20k. I still have to pay taxes on poker winning, so that could be like 7-10k right?. Down to like 8k or so. I have prepaid next month rent, so if I work until the end of decemeber I could probably save another 2k or so. I have $20k of student loans. Most are low interest and only require $50 payments each month, but 1k or 2k of it is at 7%, so I want to pay it off.

If I quit I will move back into my friends apartment off campus. Rent will be only a few hundred a month. I won't need a car. I already have a 21 inch monitor and a new computer for poker, as well as all the poker software. I can't think of any big expenses.

Lastly, I LOVE POKER. I spend all day everyday thinking about poker. I can sit for 6 hour sessions and love every minute of it. I hate losing specifically because it makes me believe I couldn't go pro. If I had made $100,000 this year and lost $5k I wouldn't care. Specific bad beat hands don't bother me. It's when I think I can't do it that it bothers me, because I want to do it so bad. I study, I read, I'm trying so hard.

I'm a big gamer. I played chess on a state champion chess team. I play every strategy game ever invented. I was an extremely good RTS player. Poker is like the king of games, and I love playing it. What hurts about my job is I'm so tired I can't play poker at all anymore. I'm being forced to give it up.

Game Developement:
I would really like to break into this industry, but I have no skills. Sure, I understand game balance and mechanics extremely well, but those jobs usually go to more senoir staff. I have no graphics art talent at all, which is what most people in that industry do. There was an opening for a community manager at blizzard, but I didn't send my application because people said my company would probably fire me if they found out. I get the feeling most jobs in that industry go to friends and family anyway, seeing as everyone wants one. Nevertheless, I wish I had tried.

I had straight As the firs two years of college and loved it because I was doing what I wanted, but dropped to Cs the last two years. I started doing a finance major junoir year because it "made sense" given what my job was. I hated the classes with a passion, and while I got As on the tests I usually slacked off so much and mouthed off so much I ended up getting Cs. Between that and quiting my last job I can't see someone hiring me.

Final Thoughts

4 months ago life was perfect. I had tons of good friends, I have fun all day, I was making tons of money at poker, and I have tons of free time. 4 months later I'm ready to keel over dead. Poker isn't going well, i have no good friends, my co-workers are shallow tools, i hate my job, i have no free time. I can't even get more then 4 hours of sleep. It just all went so wrong so quick.

I talked to my parents about this and the jist of what they said is the life sucks. My best years are behind me, work is suppose to be totally miserable, and it won't change. Just suck it up.

I talked to one of my roomates who is 30. He has been doing 9-5 for 8 years now. He absolutely hates every single day of work. He says he just goes into a trance for 8 hours and pretends he isn't there. When I told him I work 60, 70, 80 hours a week he said he was sorry for me. At least his off hours made up for his on hours. No such luck for me. I asked him how he keeps doing something he hates every single day, and he said its just life. He's 30 and miserable and totally resigned to fate, am I gonna be like that in 8 years?

I've been making the responsible decision everyday since I was 5. I've always been living for the future. Now that it is here I hate it. I'm totally lost and don't know what to do.

[stealyourface]

do what makes you happy, in the end thats all that matters. it is cliche but so true.

The society we live in beats it into our heads that the accumulation of wealth is the goal in life and the key to happiness. While this is true for some people, it is not for most.

[censored] it man, just do what you want, live your dream. The longer you are in the job the more attached you will become and you will lose the oppurtunity to be what you want to be.

[lehighguy]

My main concerns summarized are:
1) I probably don't want to do poker more then 5-10 years. I want to open my own business at some point.

2) I don't know if I'm good enough.

Two really worries me.

[Rduke55]

[ QUOTE ]
I hate losing specifically because it makes me believe I couldn't go pro.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is worrisome.
The only thing I can say is try to find a job you love (or at least can tolerate). You're right that money doesn't make up for long hours at a job you hate. Right now it doesn't seem like you're consistently winning enough to go pro yet.
You said you're much better at your job than your peers. Why is this? What skills do you think you have in this regard. Think about where else they will be useful.

You and I are not ideological friends. Nonetheless, please believe that the following comes with the best of intentions and from the heart.

You need to change jobs. You know this. You cannot be miserable, let alone let it affect your health. And its not the hours. I work more like 80 hours a week and I love my job. It's that you are doing the wrong thing for you.

And that you are good at it is irrelevant. Eventually, your performance will slip and less talented people that love it all will pass you by. At law school, there were plenty of people there that were smarter than me. I graduated first in the class becuase I loved it more than they did.

Nor should you let fear of being a "quitter" haunt you. People change paths -- especially your people just starting out. If, as you say, you are willing to settle for a smaller salary there will be people out there that will hire you at that salary and let you prove your worth.

I won't comment on the poker-for-a-living option, except to say that I believe it to be a bad idea for MOST people. I don't know you well enough to say it is a bad idea for you.

As for game development: if this is your dream then go for it. Pound on doors and keep trying until you get SOMEONE to hire you. Offer to intern for a few months for free if that is what it takes to get in the door, then knock their socks off. Saying that these jobs only go to insidres and friends is not only nonsense (it's a growing industry), it's a cop-out. Persistence is the key. If you really want this then you can make it happen. It is only a question of whether you really want it.

I do not for a second buy that your job has to be mindless and soul-sucking, and that that is "just life". Even for those who are not as fortunate as I, who have found something I truly love, a job is what you make of it. If you can't get paid doing something you like then you need to find something that you don't hate and can do reasonably well, then fill your outside life with good things. BUT EVEN IN THAT SITUATION, your time at work doesn't have to suck. You should be able to find some good things in interaction with your coworkers alone.

[ QUOTE ]
I've been making the responsible decision everyday since I was 5. I've always been living for the future. Now that it is here I hate it. I'm totally lost and don't know what to do.

[/ QUOTE ]

The "responsible decision" is typically the safe decision or the decision that society pushes us toward. It is not always the right decision for each individual. When I was 26 I had an ok career and a mediocre to bad marraige. I was getting older and my dream of going to law school was receeding. Eventually, I realized that if I waited any longer I'd be over 30 when I graduated, which I felt would be too late to start another career. It was now or never, but my then-wife would not have supported a decision to go back to school with the attendant fiscal and lifestyle consequences.

I eventually decided that if I did not go to law school, I would regret it for the rest of my life. I went, and it was the best decision I ever made. My marraige ended, but that was for the better, too. I have since remarried to the love of my life and I am about to become a father. I love what I do and make a ton of money. Life is not perfect (I REALLY, REALLY need to exercise more!), but I am very, very happy.

My decision to transform my life was not the "responsible" choice. My mother hated that my marraige ended and did not want me to make a decision that my then-wife would not agree with. My sister wouldn't talk to me for a year (we have since reconciled). I don't have a single friend from my former life.

But it was the right decision for me.

Follow _your_ dream, not the dream that others tell you you should have. And don't be an ass and wait until you're 26 or 27, like I did.

Good luck.

[Darryl_P]

There are some personality types for whom I wouldn't recommend poker because it will lead to certain disaster.

In your case, though, I think you should go for it. You are smart enough, hard-working enough, and level-headed enough to not overestimate your abilities. Beyond these 3 qualities there's nothing more you need IMO. Even you have no natural poker talent at all, you can compensate for that with hard work.

Just start small, set modest goals, and think long-term and you should be ok. And get the hell out of NYC and move somewhere where the cost of living is low.

I gave up a multi-million $$ career for a much more modest life and I haven't regretted it because I do what I enjoy, I have time for my family, and most of all I get to be me. I think you have a very similar personality type to mine and so I think being a pro gambler would suit you well.

I predict your biggest challenge will be to play aggressively enough and to get the right number of bluffs in. Honest guys usually have trouble bluffing or betting without the goods. But if you are aware your weakness and focus on improving them, then there's no reason you can't be successful IMO.

[andyfox]

I responded on the general forum. Hope some of it was helpful.

[lehighguy]

Bluffing is my weak point. Part of my downswing is because I'm trying to be a lot more aggressive and I can't seem to work it out.

I think I may stay on until the end of december.

1) I've paid rent through the end of december, the extra earnings will help the bankroll.

2) By then I'll know what business group I'm in, and I'll have a chance to see if things get any better.

[lehighguy]

That really helped dude. The whole thing. I'm gonna use this whole weekend to think things through.

[lehighguy]

[ QUOTE ]
This is worrisome.

[/ QUOTE ]

I used to get affected by downswings alot more. I've really lightened up about it. The reason this last downswing is so hard is because my primary source of income, pacific poker, is changing rapidly.

[ QUOTE ]
You said you're much better at your job than your peers. Why is this? What skills do you think you have in this regard. Think about where else they will be useful.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm just smart. I'm not a genuis, but if you just plain smart then you are successful at most anything you do. It has a lot of numbers and logic, which are my strong suits. Most of my co-workers are just rich spoiled kids, how hard can it be to outperform them.

I've only ever actually been in one situation where I wasn't at the top of the curve, and that was in genuis high school.