Hello All,
First let me apologize for my sort of abandonment of the forum. I posted several weeks back that I had fallen ill with pneumonia. I came back and was ready to go with things...
Then, I had to clear my bankroll out to pay some bills. Not medical ones... I have insurance for that, but other things to make up for the time I lost at work. It was disheartening to say the least.
Between my illness and having my bankroll obliterated, I just kind of gave up on poker. I've never been a high stakes player (or even a very good player) but I've managed to build up 3 buyins of less than 100 bucks each to fairly large sums, and had some life event wipe them out. I've never gone broke from poker, but rather from outside expenditures. It is very disheartening to find yourself having to drop back to playing $2 SNGs rather than 20+2s. At that point, you wonder why you even bothered in the first place.
So I unceremoniously and kind of quietly walked away from the game, deciding to give it up. It was the right move at the time for me (I assure you, I was in no mental state to play the game).
What I've felt bad about was leaving FTR. This forum has been great to me, and Xianti and co. Gave me full license to do the book club thing. I totally f'ed that up. I wasn't motivated to do it when I wasn't playing, adn didn't really want to come on here and admit my failure in front of everyone. So I just kind of slinked off and disappeared.
It was a very classless thing to do on my part, and I'm here to ask forgiveness from the forum. I'm not here to make promises about the book club I won't keep.
But I realized that walking away from the poker altogether was wrong. It is incredibly frustrating to bang your head against the wall and not get anywhere... but then I realized that suffering through these low stakes games and grinding up these small bankrolls actually helped me. What if I didn't have that money to fall back on? How screwed would I have been then?
I took a very negative and pessimistic view, only considering that I had to step back. I never really considered how far I've actually come.
I need poker, and frankly, I need FTR. It's the reason I succeeded at all in the first place, but if I betrayed FTR by bailing out when I did, then I could understand why you all wouldn't want me.
I'd like to be back (I don't really care if the book club thing happens, or if I'm unmodded...). I just want to be back learning the game and getting better. I know my hard times will eventually pass and I'll make SOMETHING out of this game at some point... So what do you say, FTR?
Forgive me?
Fortune 500.
