Surprise! This will be my last post

I'm guessing it's pretty obvious to everyone by now that I lost the motivation to keep up with this blog.  The fact that I'm 6-days away from hitting the 1-year anniversary of my last post should have given that away.  I'm happy I tried it, had some fun with it, but in the end I found that keeping up with it was more work than fun, and that kind of defeated the purpose of writing it in the first place.

As a final farewell from the blog space, I figured I'd send out one final update.  Obviously a lot has happened in the last year, and I'm way too lazy to write about all of it in detail, so here's a bullet list:

• Katie and I went to Playa del Carmen Mexico, spent two months there, had an awesome time, and completed our PADI Divemaster certifications.  Hooray! We are both certified professional scuba divers.
• We returned home, and I spent the next 4-5 months focused on nothing but poker.  I achieved Foxwoods Platinum in 10-weeks which should mean nothing to anyone except for gambling degenerates, but it was actually a pretty intense accomplishment.
• I experienced the most insane poker upswing of my life with pretty awesome timing because it was immediately followed by the longest and most painful downswing of my life.
• Around early winter I hit a crossroads where I needed to decide if I wanted to fully immerse into poker (i.e. hire a coach for a long term deal and focus on nothing but that) or start to explore other options.  I decided to start teaching myself programming languages R and Python with the intent to look for work as a data scientist.
• In January, Katie and I moved to Boston.
• I started volunteering once a week at the New England Aquarium because I'm a fish and fish are awesome.

After that, something completely unexpected happened.  My plan was to spend the next 4-6 months immersing myself into data science training by enrolling in a coding boot camp.  I was on track to do just that when on a whim I decided to check and see if DraftKings was hiring.  For those of you who have never watched a sporting event on TV before, DraftKings is a fantasy sports product that I have been using for the past four years.

It turns out they are in the process of doubling in size, so I decided to apply for their Business Data Analyst position.  I didn't think I was necessarily the person they'd be looking for, considering I've never worked in that capacity before, but literally 7-minutes after I submitted my application they contacted me to set up an interview.  One month and four rounds of interviews later, I found myself signing an offer letter earlier today.

Had anyone told me even two months ago that I'd be working again soon, I would have thought they were completely nuts.  I had zero desire to find a job, and I still had no trouble sustaining myself with my other income sources.  I also never would have anticipated that a job would present itself to me that had so much respect for my poker background.  I did list professional poker on my resume, and every single person I talked to at DraftKings was excited to hear about it.  It turns out my new supervisor played professionally for 7-years before moving to his current role.

Anyway, that's my last year in a nutshell.  I definitely expect poker to continue to play a prominent role in my life, and I can honestly see my game improving further in this new position.  With the pressure off and a new network of poker people (my new supervisor isn't the only one there who used to play professionally) I could see this being a great move for my game.  Either way, I'm super excited to move into a new role working for what looks to be a really fun company and working on a product that am super passionate about and have been for the last 4-years.

Thanks for reading, everyone :-)