Not much to report

Poker's been kind of meh lately....I've lost some momentum and some enthusiasm.  I'm playing pretty well for the most part.  I'm running hot and cold (which is a big improvement, nice to have some "hot" in there).  The motivation is there; I'm getting in a decent amount of hands compared to my historical level of play.  But it just hasn't been quite as fun, for whatever reason.  Plus things have been pretty busy otherwise, so it cuts down on the amount of time I spend reviewing my play, reviewing everyone's blogs, reading forums, watching videos, etc.

I keep bouncing between 100NL and 200NL.  I've been doing fairly well at 100NL, playing well and running decent.  I've been doing crappy at 200NL, playing well until I run bad, then doing a pretty poor job of not letting it affect my play.  I know the mindset I should have, but my outlook/discipline are just not there.  So, I run up enough to take a 5 BI or so shot at 200NL, then eventually lose those 5 BI and start over.  The poker treadmill.  Last Friday, I lost 4 BI in 3 hands somewhat close together:  KK < KQs, Turned straight/flush draw < higher flush on river, and middle set < top set.  Plus a bunch of middling pots where their flushes got there and if I had a draw, it never did.  Pretty standard stuff, and I should be able to take it, but somehow found myself AI vs a preflop maniac with 64s for 80bb.  That right there should have been enough to sit out on all tables.  Ugly stuff.

The silver lining is that the overt spew-tilt is still really rare.  I think I'm playing sub-optimal, but generally on the big losers either my money is going in really well or it's just a cooler situation.  I would just like my enthusiasm to return so that it's fun again.  After all, this is supposed to be a hobby for me and is supposed to be a way to blow off steam, not to cause it :).  Usually, making the right decisions and improving is enough to keep me enthusiastic.  Even when I feel frustrated, it's short-lived, and I'm able to see the big picture.

I actually lost probably a couple days of both poker and work last week fooling around with my new iPhone.  My old "smart" phone was really a POS and if I couldn't get a credit returning it, I would have figured out some really clever way to smash it to smithereens.  The iPhone is pretty fun to use.  I've also never had an iPod (small cheapo MP3 player ftw), so I get to fool around with some fun stuff there, too.

At work, there was a top level executive change.  It won't directly affect me (and if it does, it would only be for the better based on limited history with the guy taking over), but there are a bunch of fire drills to create some decent presentations for him to get a sense of what we're doing.  Also, it's annual review time.  For those of you not in the corporate world, count yourselves lucky that you don't have to go through this :).  Actually, it can be a pretty valuable mechanism to focus you, but the administrative aspects are a pain in the ass.  And because I manage folks, I have theirs to go through and comment on as well.  It's even harder for me to do those because I want to give them decent quality feedback.  I can do it pretty well meeting face to face or on the phone, but it takes a lot longer to write stuff up.  So those things get kind of piled on to business as usual.

Finally, I'm a victim of my success at work.  Today, I got handed someone's pet project that is pretty complex and was not getting enough love from the prior owner.  So, because I've shown that I can push through some tricky projects with some good creativity and vision, it landed in my inbox.  While hard, it seems like a pretty fun project, so I'm only complaining from a time-it-will-take-me standpoint...I'm actually looking forward to it.