Opening For Business

Tomorrow my job as a full-time teacher of English will officially end. I'll no longer be employed by Lewisham Borough Council or doing the job that I've been doing for the past 19 years. Needless to say, I won't be scooping in the half-decent accompanying monthly wage either. To some, this may be a time to mourn but for yours truly, I say good riddance! For I am now on an altogether different path!!

Full-time teaching in a state secondary school, in this country, can be hell on earth. You're crammed into a confined space and trapped with around 25 to 30 hormonally unbalanced juveniles for around 50 minutes at a time. With half the kids usually not really caring about what they're supposed to be doing and the teacher expected to educate them to the highest standards, the experience soon boils down to becoming an exercise in survival. With ever-increasing pressure to perform and the constant reminder that kids must progress (or else) it's little surprise that an alarmingly high number jump ship after one or two years. That I lasted for 19 is a bloody miracle!

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In November 2013, the demands got too much and I decided to quit. I asked for my contract to be terminated at the end of the summer-term and although this meant I had to work for another eight months or so, right up until mid-July, I soldiered on. I must confess that as I felt pretty much beaten down by a soul-less senior management team obsessed by results and Ofsted inspections, I practically ceased to care.

From around January 2014 I started to put more energy into the real passion in my life... poker. I'd been playing semi-seriously for about 10 years and managed to do reasonably well at the game to such an extent that by January 2014 the idea that I might be able to play the game for a living began to simmer and brew. By mid-April (after a life-changing epiphany - see below) the idea took root and I sought to make it a reality. On 1st September 2014, thanks mainly to the money that I've saved from the job that I grew to hate, I am now going to live the dream and open my new business!

Of course, the business is live cash-game poker!

Now, since my epiphany in mid-April which came to me soon after I lost the most money that I'd ever lost in one night, I have become a changed man. I am teetotal, I exercise more regularly, eat a better diet and I seek to study the game on a more consistent and serious level. The outcome is that I believe I'm on a sturdier road to cracking the game; a road which I hope will allow me to play the game to the point where I'll not have to look for another job for a long time. This blog is going to act as a journal chronicling this new venture and I invite you to join in me in the ride. It will be bumpy and it will be turbulent - that's the nature of the beast - but it'll be an experience which I don't want to regret as the thing I should have done when I was younger. Compared to the stress of teaching kids for a living and jumping through the hoops that a brutal education system has thrown at me (and continues to throw at downtrodden teachers up and down the country) I suspect it may prove to be heaven on earth.

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As mentioned, as I am still technically employed by Lewisham Borough Council (and received a monthly salary from them for the month of August), I am not going to declare my business officially open until 1st September 2014. From this date, I'll know that there will be no regular salary to rescue me if I have a break-even or losing month. I won't be on benefits, awarded any form of income support from the governement or receive any other form of income from elsewhere. In effect I'll be on my own with the safety-net well and truly removed with the only form of income being gained from the profits I make from live poker.

-- The padlocks are coming off the shutters boys and girls and they'll be raised up very soon. We'll soon be open for business!