Anti Work Movement

Life is like a treadmill, niggas runnin in place
Gettin nowhere fast, a whole year done past
I vowed to never stop winin, 'til the earth stop spinnin
Rock hot lenin, cop hot cars and hot women
If it's not him then you got it confused, y'all not remembering,
My motto is simply I will not lose

- Jay Z

I knew from a very early age that the 9-5 life wasn’t for me. You could never call me a good employee and even though I did very well in school I was far from a “good student”. In every job I’ve had I always found a way to get my work done faster doing it my way instead of “the right way”. Apparently I never learned value of hard work because this never sat well with my bosses. My jobs would inevitably end one of two ways. First I would get in an argument with the boss over why their current methods were wasting time, and with me not wanting to continue wasting time and they having too much pride to admit things could be done better, we would soon part ways. The second way would be to request time off work, having that request denied, and me promptly quitting. Freedom has always been the most important value in my life, much more than knowing I will be getting a check every two weeks.

Even though I knew I didn’t want to go through life with the standard game plan, it was still very difficult to actually make that happen. The pressure from society to go to college, get a job, start a family, and save for retirement is extremely difficult to overcome. If you don’t follow the crowd you’re not respected and just considered lazy. I gave into this pressure for a long time and ended up spending a year of misery at the University of Michigan. This was the place I had always wanted to attend, and the only school I applied for. I couldn’t help feeling empty the entire time I was there. Everyone was so worried about getting their degree to move on to their 50k/ year job. Even at the best parties nobody truly seemed happy.

After that year things were really in perspective. The “American dream” was not what I wanted for my life. I wanted to do the things I enjoyed from life when I wanted and how I wanted, and I didn’t want to wait till I was 60 for that to happen. So I took what most people would consider the biggest gamble of their life. I dropped out of school and left my old life behind forever. To me this wasn’t a gamble at all. No matter how it ended I would be the winner.

At this time I had not even started playing poker online. I bounced around from Chicago, Texas, California, Seattle, and Michigan. I worked a few very interesting jobs and quit them as soon as they became not so interesting. The main thing was I enjoyed every minute of it.

During this time I met my soul mate, and her name is No Limit Hold’em. I started playing while in Chicago and improved my skills over the following year and a half of bouncing around the country. After taking a road trip across the US with my good friend Jared Devlin-Scherer we both decided to take the plunge and moved to Florida to peruse our careers as professional poker players.

While there have been both ups and downs, the positives have greatly outnumbered the negatives. Poker not only gives me freedom to live my life the way I want, but also the financial means to do so. In the 3 years I’ve played professionally I’ve had the opportunity to spend months in Europe, sit courtside at NBA playoff games, travel the USA, attend baseball games 3 times a week, and play in the World Series of Poker main event.

I don’t say this to brag. What I want to do with this blog is open people’s eyes to a life style that anyone can have. This site portrays a mentality I like to call the “Anti Work Movement’. For those of you not satisfied working a 9-5, making someone else rich, I hope I can make you take a look at your life and put the wheels in motion for you to break this cycle. I’m not suggesting you tell your boss to fuck off and become a poker pro, this particular life might not be for you. Why not figure out what you love to do and turn that into a business? Maybe there is a job you actually enjoy doing. If you’re doing something else figure out a plan that changes that.

I can’t tell you what will make you happy with life, that’s something you’ll have to figure out yourself. The most important thing to realize is the risk is minuscule compared to the rewards available. As a poker player this type of situation is exactly what I look for at the table. You should be looking for these same situations in life. Never be afraid to make a low risk high reward decision with your life. Hopefully reading about my life in this blog will inspire you to do everything in your power to design a life that you’re truly happy to live.