going to bars

In the last 6-8 weeks, I really haven't been out to bars at all, and I have no problem with it. When I do go out to a bar, I have fun, and I still do out from time to time ,but it is always for a reason, it is never just to go to a bar to get wasted. It is nice to know that I don't need to be doing that anymore and it is nice to know that I can still enjoy it while im out, but I really dont want to be there and I don't feel the need to go there.

It used to be when I would go out, people would say things like they haven't seen me for a while and ask where I have been and stuff like I haven't been around just because they didnt see me at bars. That used to get me to almost get defensive and it would make me think that I need to be out more etc. I them realized that most of the people that say that have never once invited me to go anywhere with them that isnt a bar, and that if they really were my friend or really wanted to hang out, they would invite me to their house or to a party or anywhere that wasnt a bar. I am now at the point where when people say that to me, I just responded, you are right, I have been doing other things to enjoy my life. If someone is only going to be my friend if I am out to a bar with them, then I don't need that person to be a friend.

Don't get me wrong, I still love to have fun and I love a good time, but I don't need that good time to be spending all day and all night at a bar just getting wasted. Last Sunday, a bunch of us were out at a bar for the Ravens game. The game ended and we went home and hung out and did things and had a great rest of the Sunday. The majority of my friends stayed out, got wasted all day and night etc, and they all said they had a great time. I know they had their fun, but that type of fun of spending all day and night at a bar is just not appealing to me anymore and I really don't need to be doing that to have fun.

I guess this all stems from the fact that I am happy with my life, I love my gf, I love being with her and spending time with her, and sitting with her on our couch just doing nothing is more fun and enjoyable to me then any night at the bars. I just hate that it took me this long in my life to realize it. I do hope that the people I know that are still going out to bars 2-4 days every week and getting blackout wasted all the time, will eventually find something else that makes them happy instead of getting wasted all the time. I am not saying that is a bad thing, because I used to do it, and it can be a lot of fun, I just think for me, at my age and where I am in my life, that part of my life is behind me and having fun for a couple hours is one thing, but the all day and all night drinking fests at a bar and the hangovers and all of that are something in the past for me.

true happiness

I have always thought of myself as a happy person, but I always had things that would get me sad and bring me down etc. Recently, I have found myself way more happy and just always in a good mood. Of course, I still have things that stress me out and things I worry about it and things that get me down etc, but overall I am just so happy with my life right now and the people in my life, that those things seem not as big of as a deal as they used to be, and I can just go along being happy with my life now.

I realize now, that all the times I thought I was happy, I was not truly happy, it was more of a shield and a cover and I would just ignore all of the down things. Now I am at a point, where if something is wrong or upsetting me etc, I deal with it, but at the end of the day, it doesn't get me down or stress me out anymore. I know that is because I am truly happy, and I know that being happy with myself and my life is the most important thing. It is so great to know that I am happy from minute I wake up until the minute I fall asleep. I have been waiting a long time to be this happy, and I finally glad that my life is in a place where I am truly happy.

Death of a friend's parent

When someone I know and someone I am Friends with has a parent die, I take it very hard. There are many reasons for this, but I think the main two are that a. I never fully coped with my mom's death and it still eats at me how the whole funeral/ grieving situation was handled and b. I know( unfortunately) how difficult it is to lose a parent.

I try to be there for them as much as I can. Sometimes that means just showing up at a viewing, sometimes it means doing the eulogy, sometimes it just means being able to answer a phone call and listen to them. Whatever it is, I am more then willing to do.

I remember when my mom died, thinking that I do not want anyone I know to have to go through this pain and overall shitty feeling.

Am I a good person or a bad person

I have been thinking about this a lot lately. At first impression I say, of course I am a good person. Then, someone told me that I was a bad person and that I have no morals and that they can't trust me, and that they think I am just an overall bad person. That me think a lot about my life and who I truly am.

I started to think that if someone said name 5 of your friends who are good people, I could do that in a second, and if they said name 5 people you know that are just bad people, I could do that very quickly also. I started to wonder that if anyone I knew would put me in either category. I would like to think that I would sometimes be in the first category, and I would hope that I would never be in the second category. Yes, I have made some mistakes in the past, and I have done things I am not happy or proud that I did, but that doesnt make me a bad person at all.

When I think of an overall good person, I think of someone that more times then not is always doing the right thing, they are always nice, they are not dicking people over, they love their family, they have good friends, and you just know that you can always count on them if you need them. When I think of someone that is a bad person with no morals, I think of someone who mainly only cares about them self. They are the person that if there is ever something bad that can be done, they will 100 out of 100 times take that route. They will be rude and mean to everyone, except for whatever people they are hanging out with at that minute, if they are a guy, they will only acknowledge a girl if there is chance they could sleep with them, and if not, they will not even say hi and they will be a complete dick to that girl. There are other things, but I guess I just want to always be considered in the top part of that.
An example of an overall good person is Brad Carey. 6 of us went out on a charted rockfish trip a couple years ago. There is a limit on how many rockfish you can actually catch and keep. I had no idea of this. I am not a big fisher,but all of the other guys on the trip were. Apparently, most people if they are having a good day will just keep some over the limit, because no one actually checks in the coolers and counts them. Well, we hit the limit for how many we could catch, and 3 of the guys wanted to keep fishing and keeping more, and brad was addiment about not keeping any more bc that was against the rules, and he would not participate or stand by anything like that. It was at that moment, I realized how good of a person he was.

With me, I think I am a great person. I care more about making other people happy then I do keeping myself happy. that can be a fault sometimes, but I just always want all my friends to be happy and they all know that no matter what, I will always be there for them no matter what they need. I am a good person, and I know I am a good person. The problem is I have made mistakes in the past and made some bad decisions that give the impression that I am not a good person and because of that, I still have to live knowing that certain people still view me as a bad person, and that eats me up every day :(

Do I really care what people think, and if I do, how do you change that?

Here is the problem with suffering from depression. You find yourself always worrying and you find yourself wanting people to like you, and you find yourself wanting acceptance from other people. For me, that is so crazy, because the majority of my life, I have done what I want, how I want, and people can either like me or not. But, at the same time, I do think that people don't like me, and there are certain times that I want people to view me a certain way, and I want people to not necessarily like me, but at least to have a good impression of me. As I am sitting here typing this, I am realizing how stupid this would seem to any person that read it, but at the same time, most people do not go through what I go through on a daily basis with the depression and the self esteem issues etc.

I have led my life a certain way ever since I got divorced. I am not sure if it was the divorce that triggered it, or what it is, but since then I feel like my life has been in a downward spiral. I was living in a house with my gf/fiance, I was gardening every day, our big night out was dinner then home to a movie, I didnt have the need to always be at a bar, i didn't care what any one thought of me, I didnt need to be out etc. For some reason, once I kicked her out of the house, my life went downhill. Certain things were great, i had some great times, I met some great people, I gained some great friends, but overall it's like I went from being a grown up and I just started regressing at a rapid pace. Part of the problem was everyone just empathized with it and encouraged it and was like, just get it all out of your system. The problem, is that is not who I was, and it didn't really show what type of person i am. Because of how I was living my life, I lost perspective of who I really was, and what I really stood for.

Next thing I know, 3 years has passed and I woke up and found myself still living that life. I looked back and I saw how many mistakes I had made and how many bad desicions I had made, how I had hurt people I truly cared about, and I realized the overall way I was leading my life and how that was not the person I want to me, and that was not the person that I truly was on the inside. At that point, I realized I had to change everything about my life to get to a place that I was happy with and to start living my life the way I wanted it and to get back to being the person that I know I truly am. The first thing was to move out and to live on my own. That was huge for me. that got me away from some very bad influences in my life. From that point on, every day I am working to get my life back together to the way I want it to be. I want to make up for every bad desicion made. I wish I could un-hurt every person I hurt, and I wish I could change the opinion that so many people about me. I know I can't and I know that is just something I am going to have to live with now.

The flip side of that is over the last 3 years, I have led a life I am not exactly proud of. I have come across a lot of people over that time. I truly wish I could go back and change the perception that so many people have about me, but I know that is not something that can happen. All I know is that every day of my life, I just have to live my life the way I want it, and to live it the way that makes me the happiest and maybe over time people will see I truly have changed and they will see me for person I truly am, and not the immature, irresponsible, stupid, drinking to much, caring to much about social acceptance, person that I have been over the last 3 years.

30,000 americans a year commit suicide

Some people think suicide is one of the most selfish things a person can do. I on the other hand, 100% understand why people do it. I have to assume that most people that do it are deeply depressed and sad and that combines with not having people to talk to about it, not having people you can trust and the feeling that no matter what you do in your life, things will never be better.

More and more every day I understand why people do this and I just feel bad for them. I have to assume that if that many people kill them self each year, I have to think that probably 10 times as many people have the thought somewhere along the lime.

Most people do not know what it is like to be depressed every day. Most people do not know what it is like so be sad and have low self-esteem every day. Most people can not grasp that every day you wake up, even if you have things going good for you, you are still down, you still are stressed, you still think people are judging you, or saying things about you etc. The point is, when you suffer from serious depression and you get anxiety and you have low self-esteem or any sort of combo of those, life is very difficult on an everyday basis.

I think one of the main reasons people do commit suicide has to do with not being able to talk to anyone about the feelings they have. You can not go to your parents and talk to them, because they will over react. You convince yourself that what you are thinking is dumb and stupid and you aren't really that depressed and you would never do anything, so there is no reason to tell your parents. You can not go to any of your friends, even your best friends, because you feel so ashamed and embarrassed about how you feel and you realize that they wouldn't understand and when you suffer from depression and the low self-esteem you convince yourself that not only would no one care about any of your problems, but that no one else is depressed at all and no one else is sad and that everyone else's life is perfect so you get to scared/embarrassed to talk to them about it. Instead, you are stuck by yourself in this depressed bubble of life and every day is a struggle. Yes, they have all types of pills you can take that can help, but one of the main problems is that when any little thing happens, instead of just letting it happen and then move on from it, you end up dwelling on it and it eats you up inside. You end up not wanting to go out in public, you get this feeling of all you want to do is crawl up in a ball or just turn off all the lights and hide in your room from the world.

I guess the point is, I understand why people do kill themselves, and under no circumstance is it selfish at all. I can see if someone, say a father of 3, gets fired, go and gets hammered and kills himself thinking he can not go on or something like that. But, for the most part, it is people that are truly depressed. They have either never talked to anyone about it, or they just do not know how to deal with it. They truly think that not only would no one miss them at all if they killed them self, they also think that their life is just so shitty that no matter what it can not get better and nothing can make them happy. When you have those thoughts all the time, it can add up, and then they end up doing it. It is a very awful thing, but again, the average person doesn't get it, and the average person has a good, happy life and they could never understand what it is like to be depressed and get sad and to think that everything is down and that things could never get better.

what i want in poker/ why I play

I love playing poker, and I know I am good at it. I also know I am not a professional, but I also know I am way better then a lot of people. I am starting a whole other blog just dedicated to poker, but I am going to be playing it a lot more. I want to be able to play and still have fun but also make money. There are very different strategies on how to play and how to be succesfull, and they are very different for online and for live play. I will discuss them in way more detail in the other blog, but I just know that I want to be successful in poker. I am not doing it to quit my job, right now I am using it as another source of income, but I do know that it is something I am good at and it is something I truly love to do.

One of the things I love about poker is how I feel at the table. I have a lot always going on in my life, and honestly a lot of it is not always good. I get depressed, I get sad, I get stressed out etc. When I am at the poker table, all of that goes away. I am just enjoying what I am doing and I am only thinking about poker. All of the bad and depressing things and stressful things in my life dissapear. This is huge. I guess this is what it is like to have a true hobby.

I used to play golf a lot, and I could get this same feeling from golf, but it is slightly different in poker.

my dog getting old

The other night there was an earthquake at 5am. I didn't hear it or feel it, but I guess it was enough to freak my dog out. I woke up to her in her dog bed whimpering and shaking. I sat with her and she just cuddled up to me. and let me pet her and I couldn't figure out what was wrong. Over time, she went back to sleep, but it truly freaked me out.

I couldn't get back to sleep at all after that. It was then that I realized that something wasn't really wrong with her, but also I realized that she is coming up being 7 years old and for a dog, I know that is really old. It got me very freaked out, that my dog could be getting old and in turn getting sick and could die soon.

Yes, I have had friends and family die and when I was 17 my cat died and when I was 15 my dog died, but this is a totally different feeling. Summer has been my dog, my life, she has been part of me for the last 7 years. Every day she is there for me no matter good or bad. I would never expect anyone that didn't have a dog to understand how I feel, even when I am mad at her, I still love her.

Seeing her like that the other night, made me realize that she is getting old and that I may not have tons of time left with her and that makes me very sad and very upset.

My April Goals down, on to May

I set out in April certain goals for myself. I wanted to work harder at work, save money, get my living situation figured out, and work on my side business. I feel like I have been able to accomplish those goals and now I can move on to setting new goals for myself for the month of May. I know I will be out of town for 3 weekends in May and that will eat into some of my time, but I feel like I can still get my goals done.

I was able to find a new, one bedroom apartment to move into, and I should be fully moved in by this weekend. I have been doing a good job at saving money and still being able to enjoy my life. Last week was sort of slow at work, but other then that, I did a good job of working hard and trying to get things going. For my side business, I met with the promotion company twice and we came up for a general time line to get the business started and how we are going to market and advertise it.

For May, my goals are pretty much the same thing, minus getting my living situation figured out.

my dad

Over the years I have gained a different type of appreciation for my dad. My dad and I are exactly like in almost every day( granted he is taller, balder and can hold a tan way better then I can), but other then that we are almost exactly a like. WE act the same, talk the same, have the same manurisms etc.

The biggest difference between is that I am not nearly the overall person that he is. He is a great person on the inside and 100 out of 100 times will choose to do the right thing. I want to get to that point. I feel like in my life, I am not quite there yet and I want to get to be that type of person.

I have never told my father this and how much I respect him as a person, but I do know that if I can become the exact type of person that he is, my life will be way better.