Hello and welcome to my new blog. I have been away from the forums for a bit and have still been playing poker, but would like to start posting here again after doing some self-evaluation and realizing what sort of goals I have decided on working at.

First off, one thing I am aiming to do is cut down on my drinking. I have progressively drank more often over the past couple years and its gotten to the point where my health and relationships with others have been affected negatively. So the number one thing for me right now is to cut back. One strategy I am going to work on implementing to help this is taking a walk whenever I feel like having a drink when my daily responsibilities haven't been completed. Another is avoiding hard liquor for semi-obvious reasons. Current drink of choice is beer. I don't think cold turkey is going to work, and I don't think its impossible for me to be very productive and still drink alcohol whether it be alone or socially, but the biggest thing I am working on is control. I won't go any further into this but if anyone has questions or experiences they want to share I would be open to discussion within reasonable limits. I'm fairly good at keeping it down to a point (I rarely if ever have a single drink before dinner), but I'd rather work on cutting it back so it doesn't become a big problem.

Second thing: Grind more. Strategies to assist this will include but not be limited to drinking coffee, stretching/pushups/situps during breaks to get my blood circulating, and keeping track of how many hours a day I play in this blog. Yes that's right I'm going to post the number of hours I spent at the tables here so if it turns out pitifully bad everyone can point and laugh at my lazy ass.

Third will be study on a consistent basis. I've had a pretty up and down year at the tables and my study has been lacking. I would imagine my less than stellar results are a direct consequence of this. I need to ease into it, so I'm going to make the goal of watching at least one poker video a day. As far as playing with pokerstove etc and working out ranges, I don't have set goals for that type of work yet. I am hoping that once I get into the habit of a video a day, the desire to learn more and dig deeper will come more naturally (this is actually how things were a couple years back for me).

Anyway, I'll be posting daily updates to track these little things. I'm also going to keep track of how much alcohol I drink. So far today it's none, and I likely won't have a beer before bed so it's cool to start off on a good note.

One more thing regarding the drink: I won't be posting in my blog drunk or anywhere else on the forums but the drunk thread. I also won't be having a drink until I've made my blog post for the day outlining what I've accomplished sober (well I might do it with a beer in hand but it'll be my first). These are pretty simple rules I've outlined for myself, and I'm going to do my best to follow them. Looking forward to seeing how this turns out, because I feel like a lot of you in this community support me despite me being a giant asshole at times.

Anyway, keep it real guys and good luck at the tables