I don't think I want to leave here. Common sense is telling me that it's time, but there's nothing more chill in Costa Rica then walking down the mountain streets. The air is cold enough to remind me of Seattle. Below my street, the lights of San Jose spread out in every direction, everywhere you can look. It's nice here, it's relaxed. People wave to me when I go for my jog. The dirt roads are easy on the knees. The local soda (family diner) won't let me tip them, and they always put a few extra plantains in my casado. I can see the internet tower from my backyard, and my service has never been cut off. Scratch that, it did once, and it was because I forgot to pay the bill.

That being said it's starting to become necessary for me to move. I want to make the move to bigger monitors, more sites, more in buy-ins. I can't be relying on one internet connection, however stable it's been. In the city I can have two landlines and two network cards if I want, which is probably what I'll end up doing. The one connection I'm working off is fast, but I don't know if I trust it with five or six sites running, like back in the good ol' days.

I like my place right now but I'm kind of far from everything, except for my girlfriend. That was attractive to me at first. The quiet of the country allowed me to undo ruin after Black Friday. I still paid off everything I'd invested in and kept investments alive when 90% of my net worth disappeared overnight, and I thank this place for that. It's easy to keep your head together with clean air and a calm environment.

But if I want to go to school in the city this place isn't going to work. Taking the bus there or riding my scooter would take an hour back and forth, oftentimes more. San Jose traffic sucks. I don't have hours to spare most weeks. It's also becoming a little more crowded in here as I get more settled down.

The place is also falling apart and the owner has not helped me with anything. I spent four hours the other day fixing the hot water heaters on my showers, after not one but two of them broke. The water system has a bunch of leaks. I have to clean it out a lot because all the water can go bad places. I leaned on a wall here one time and it made a hole. A door came off a hinge. The owner never installed a few things she told me she would, never cleared my view of the city. The fence is full of holes so my dog can escape, and the fence is broken. Anyone could just come in through the fence and grab my dog, if they wanted a pure bred. When he hangs out inside unsupervised all day he makes all sorts of messes, which costs me more time to clean up every day. One or two of these things are fine, but I end up fixing this house up a lot.

I am happy to have lived here. I mean, it's real nice wood, it's like something a writer would rent, a hilltop escape.

It's a far cry from where I started in San Jose. After going broke I wanted to punish myself, so I pretty much rented a shack in San Jose. At first it was kind of a challenge, a grind hole to get some money together. As I got broke from things I couldn't control, it became more of a necessity. It was crazy, going to the grocery store, counting my nickels and dimes again, something I hadn't done since I found poker at 17. Then the money came in. I grew to really like the area. The people renting out the house to me were very nice people, and they helped me with getting me cable and a cheap refrigerator and things.

That annoyed me with Poker Hispano. I offhand said "yeah I had kind of a shitty apartment in San Jose", which to me isn't bad, just saying it wasn't a great apartment. I didn't think of how that would translate though. They had me saying "I lived in the apartment of shit." It sounds bad in English, in Spanish it sounded much worse. I'm sure the owners read that, and I felt terrible about that, when they showed me so much kindness. I just meant to say the apartment wasn't The Ritz, but I still liked it.

After a while I wasn't working well within that area, as much as I enjoyed it. Every corner had a pizza place and a liquor store. I'm embarrassed by how many days I was faded, stuffing my face. When I moved to the country I just didn't feel claustrophobic or anything. In the city, things are intense, pace of life is fast, the way people talk is more forceful. I feel rushed, closed in on, and I end up smoking and drinking, old habits. Clean air, mountains, dog always wanting to play...I pretty much stopped drinking completely, to the point now that when I have anything more than a beer my body goes "hey what is this" as opposed to "all right now where's the other six?" I feel way more energetic in the mornings and throughout the day, and way calmer.

I think a lot of people like me just have a drink at nights or smoke a pack a day because it gives some relief to their ADD. I'd feel more occupied, and could sit down and read a bit. After nearly a year of just running a lot in the mornings and drinking a lot of water, I realize that makes you way more settled down.

I made a lot between my San Jose grindhole and my first three months here, which Full Tilt took most of. Eventually things have been working out however. I made a library, nice living room, love having my people over to watch a movie and chill.

This place is still really nice, and the internet's never failed me. I've just outgrown it, the owner wants to charge me more, and I'm spending money fixing this up for her as it is. I can get a four bedroom in the city, have guest rooms, full office, library, place not falling apart, security guard, sick security system, a lawn for my dog to run around. It'd be nice to be 5 minutes from a school instead of an hour. I really need to start studying Spanish. I'm at that point I should really be speaking more. I can do the basics, pleasantries, asking basic questions, ordering food, guiding a taxi, making a few jokes with people...but I still get confused when people go rapid fire on me. Plus getting student status here would really help me legally. I've been here long enough that I'm at that point Costa Rica wants to know what the hell I'm doing here. Kind of hard to say you're still on vacation when they open your passport to 22 different entry stamps.

So that's really been stealing my focus the last couple weeks, budgeting how much I want to spend on my new office, then realizing I need new internet hook ups and real estate. I've been making pretty decent money on Stars and Merge, so I've gotten lazy about getting onto Party. Well, I also just don't have much screen space. I'm debating getting two 30"s, just because Naza114 has been bragging about his dual 27"s and I want to shut his Portuguese ass up. I don't know if that'd be excessive however, and paying the taxes for electronics here is annoying as hell. Two 24"s would probably work, or one 30". I think I should just spring for a ton of screen space, because I think I could manage a ton of different sites then...just being able to read the stats really fast and everything. Then my dream grind pad would be complete. I could justify grinding at home 99% of the time, since most live buy-ins wouldn't come close to my online hourly.

I don't know why that's so important to me. I love to be in different places, but I'm sick of travelling. I know, rich white people problems, but when you just broke yourself for four years playing so many live events, only to finish like 13th through 7th five or six different times , you grow to hate them. I'd rather go to a country and not play cards at all, just walk around and take the city in. I still love PCA, and I'm sure I'll be out for the Main Event, but otherwise I'd rather chill at home, with my music, my podcasts, all the stats in the world, and tournaments upon tournaments to outdo the variance.