Its been about a year now, my pokerstory

[The Velour Fog]

disclaimer: way tl;dr

about a year ago i was basically a bum making meager money doing odd jobs like filling in at kindergardens, being a temp teacher in elementary schools and so on. looking for meaningless jobs during the days so i could perhaps get a steady income. life wasnt fun.

the story begins before that though, a few years ago me and my gf moved to a new town together, both starting our academic careers. i had been accepted to one of the more prestigous universities in sweden for a law program that would take about 5 years to complete. It took me about two years of studies to realize that this was not what i wanted to spend the rest of my life doing, so i dropped out much to my gf's dismay. my plan was to take a year off and figure out what i wanted to do with my life.
it was at this point i discovered online poker for the first time. like many other i deposited a little, ran good at the beginning and thought "hay, this is easy monies yo". having no clue about proper bankroll management and also suffering from severe tilt episodes it was only a question of time before i bustoed. i think it was about 3k that i had spent 3 months grinding up at 50NL and 100NL, i remember playing 3/6 and 4/8 games at times with this roll. when the inevitable happened i felt disgusted and vowed to stay away from the gambool devil and promptly started my second tour in the academic world.
this time i went in for journalism where i only lasted about a year before my motivation ran out again, it seemed the academic world was not for me.
i spent about half a year doing nothing, depressed about my lack of future and the increased nagging from my gf about how we would make ends meet. this was about a year ago.

enter friend (tulosba on 2+2, he doesnt pot much) that didnt have a party account and only wanted to participate in a 2+2 (lol) bbv game at lower stakes. i had one set up for freerolls which i played occasionally, so he asked if he could deposit a few bucks and use it for the evening.
a few days later he told me he had unlocked some kind of welcome back bonus with the deposit on my party account, 75 bucks. and since i was pretty much life busto at this point he told me to have fun with it (he had a substantial roll at paradise and didnt really care about party). not having any particular hopes about the whole thing i started playing 6 dollar donk n goes, then 11's and later 22's. when i had run it up to about 500 i started playing some 25NL as well just having some fun. i also began visiting 2+2 frequently now, reading and posting in SSNL.
in august 2006 a highstakes player in my chessclub (lol chessnerd) heard about my poker struggle and promptly "staked" me 1000$ with no strings attached "pay me back any time you want, if you lose its no biggie" he said casually. now i had a reason to try and improve my game, it would have been embarassing going bust without paying him back. at that point something clicked and i started moving through the SSNL ranks rapidly but being extremely careful with my roll, even to the point of being nitty. never taking shots before i had 20 buy ins for the next level etc. i realized that i could make enough to pay for everything i needed when i reached NL100. my gf wasnt enthusiastic but said that if thats what i wanted to do she'd support me.

today im playing NL400 and making good money (at least by my standards), first month when i moved up here i made 15k, a year ago i would have laughed if anyone told me that that would happen. if anyone reads this behemoth i hope i gave some motivation to you low limit grinders out there.

cliffnotes:
brag: parlayed free 75 bucks into 68k in a year
beat: i suck at the education
variance: nobody will probably read this

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