Steaming Stanley
Poker is so diverse. It always puts you to the test in different ways. A few weeks ago you guys read that I wasn’t able to play my best because of a family situation. I chose to play some short days then. Last week it was a whole different form of pressure: stress. I don’t mind stress so much. I like feeling pressure. Streaming and everything that comes with it has turned me into a workaholic. This is the first time in my life I’m able to commit to something as hard as I used to do with grinding. You might think isn’t it all poker. That’s true in some ways, but mostly it’s just the same branch. I used to fly solo. Study on my own. Play by myself. I would put in ridiculous hours. It’s good to find something that shows you that you have that kind of drive in you. I applied it to kickboxing as well for instance. And I was confident I would be able to do so. The key for me is passion though. I can’t just turn it on because something needs to be done.
Twitch feeds that fire the same way. Overall I think I actually make more hours than when I used to grind. Also the hours are a bit more tiring. Playing for 10 hours is not nearly as tiring as 6 hours of streaming for instance. It’s funny though, because streaming also gives me more energy and motivation, so maybe it’s easier to keep doing it consistently? Whatever the specifics, I love what I’m currently doing. I also want it to be as good as I can make it. So that means developing stuff, brainstorming for new ideas, making sure there is youtube content, update the website etc. There is a lot of stuff happening at the same time. It might be a bit of a flaw to juggle so many balls, but I feel I can pull it off and I feel like I need it. If I slow down I lose a bit of my passion.
It does create stress. When it reaches a certain level, it does become a problem. That’s what I ran into this week. Monday through Wednesday I was running very bad. This happens. I can handle that… most of the time. This week I had some issues with it. The energy needed to handle situations like that was spent on different stuff. I was able to be cool most of the day, but at the end when it was clear it wasn’t gonna turn around, I got pretty annoyed. Being tilted from losing is such an annoying feeling. It also makes me feel like a child. I know better than this. Wednesday I realized something. I can’t expect myself to be able to handle situations like that as I’m still a 100% poker pro. I do so much stuff on the side now. That’s gonna take some energy.
The stream always comes first. The only days I’ve taken off are days I work on something directly stream related. Last Thursday I decided I needed to take off because I needed to catch up on stuff completely not stream related. I wrote last pieces for my website (hi!), did some taxes, had some skype calls about projects under construction. I cleared about half of my (enormous) to-do list. I immediately felt chill and accomplished. Every Sunday I spend working on stuff like that. If there is a stream on Sunday entirely depends on how much work I get done. What I did today was make a top 3 of things that could stress me out during the week. I tackled those things first.
After the day off I had a grand ol’ time during Blowup Friday. Overall poker was terrible last week, but it still was a productive good week. I’m so fucking happy my website finally launched. I’ve been writing these blogs every week for about 5 months for my subscribers. I will post them on my website now. I try to do as much for my subs as I can, but I have to create content for the site too, and blogs are perfect for that! Follow me on social media, or check in here to see when a new blog gets posted, but expect one to be online every sunday evening the latest. Please understand there are some growing pains on the site and some small stuff that needs to be updated, put in place.
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