I may be coming to the realization that although I have studied the crap out of poker and am a pretty solid player with a good grasp of many concepts both intermediate and advanced, I'm going to be a low stakes lifer. A hobbyist at best.

I want to do more but I lack the initiative. And when I get the initiative for a while, something always happens that kills it. Right now I don't have that much time to play, my home game has withered away, etc. ...but the main problem is that between the economy and more personal financial woes, I took a look at my bankroll and said "Well I can keep playing with all this money and trying to move up stakes - or I can take half of this out right now and pay off these two bills that are looming over me." And I've done this repeatedly. When I bought a house I drained my bankroll to pay closing costs. When my girlfriend quit her job to go back to school, I drained my 'roll again so I could pick up a majority share of the mortgage and utilities, and take some pressure off of her. And this is exacerbated any time I happen to have a downswing that coincides with even slight financial problems. If I have a -4 buyin swong, the prospect of "letting it ride" on more poker sessions looks really unappealing next to "withdraw it now and pay off your credit card, jackass."

This is a cycle for me - I can't make myself believe that the money is off limits. When it comes down to it, the biggest discipline problem I have is leaving that couple thousand dollars alone to blossom into something else. But it makes me feel like I'm failing in some way that I'm still playing 50 and 100 NL, when I should have moved on to bigger and better...