The Last Cigar Day 11, 8/25/2010 – Funk, 7 habits

Awful day yesterday on 8/24 and today so far, feeling in a funk. I haven't straightened out my sleeping yet and it's probably the reason for just feeling
under the weather. The reason I say it's awful is that I just plain old feel like crap. The initial momentum I had when I started the blog has waned quite a bit.

I have that book 7 habits of highly effective people and I think it's good. I sometimes have internal conflicts because I'm angry and mad because of things in the past either at other people or myself. When I look at the 7 habits concepts in the early part of he book he talks about taking a pro-active approach to life based on a character ethic. When I read that it sort of anchors my emotions and helps me look at things from a responsibility view point. When I do that it grounds my feelings and gives me perspective. I don't think as humans we can control our emotions or our thoughts but we can certainly control our response to them. I also like the book because I think it shows the way life really works as compared to psychology texts. In psychology texts it seems there is no "moral" compass to help guide your actions in a framework. It's like, ok, you feel bad because of x so you use this cognitive or defusion technique to help alleviate your mental suffering and change your feelings. That is useful in many ways because it does illustrate things like blame and not having irrational thoughts on that, or basically any negative thought or emotion, but I feel they fall short in compared to concepts that are in Coveys book. For example, if you do something dishonest and then a negative consequence manifests itself from that, a psychology book doesn't teach you the value system to prevent that behavior in the first place (although there are some books that do illustrate personal value systems) Coveys book educates the basic "you reap what you sow" and that you can only break yourself against universal laws. In that sense many of our problems are caused by violating these laws and if you followed that precept you wouldn't need to use a cognitive technique to help yourself in the first place. I'm not deriving these concepts from religion, even though many of them are in the religious texts, but I'm a firm believer in these universal type truths as a foundation to life. So basically when Covey talks about living according to a character ethic I agree with him.

I'll pick up more on the bad habits thing in the upcoming blogs...I must confess I have slipped with the smoking a bit, but the food and exercise thing is still going fine. Things are mentally tough on me right now because of lack of $$$, everything gets amplified, and this has been a drain for a LONG time.

Studying I.T. is frustrating too, the phrase "Rome wasn't built in a day" is certainly true when learning technology, sh8t can get frustrating in many ways, and there is so much ground I need to cover.

Some good news though.

-I made a small deposit on FT and started playing 10nl, It's murder to not be in action, lol. I mean, no rakeback/points no nothing, no playing, I can't do it, I have to put in some hands. Not playing poker is frigging depressing. At least if I win 10 bucks on a cash table I can play a small tourney or something, and I like that. My first session back was rediculous with some coolers, I mean, one hand I 4-bet AA 100 effective, dude flats AT and jams over my c-bet on 872 and runners a straight and then berates me in the chat for being a donk, lol. Ok buddy, whatever. I just love these insignificant players that know this "2+2" lingo and say your a donk just to say the word "donk", funny.

- Wife just graduated from the Paul Mitchell cosmetology school in Atlanta, she has 2 weeks more or so for state exam prep, but if I start working and then she starts working, financial problem resolved.

Peace out!