My goals for last month can be found here.

The Gratitude Journal
This was the most unique goal I had and it ended up being a a really interesting experiment. I tried to jot some notes into a Word file every morning shortly after I woke so that I could start the morning out on a positive note. Some mornings I forgot, which resulted in me thinking about my life and gratitude during mundane times: on the train, while walking to work, while making dinner, etc. I failed to write every single day, but I still feel that this was a really worthwhile activity.

I’m not going to write out the whole list, but here’s a few of the things I wrote about: my fiancée (seven times), my friends, DeucesCracked (a number of times, including a few specific individuals), my coach Entity, my job, karma, and oddly enough, the price of gas (it really was cool to fill up my tank for <$20 for the first time in years).

After a few days I made a more elaborate entry into the journal which I’d like to share here:

An interesting thing happened today. So far I’ve had no problems being grateful and making my daily entries. But I haven’t really been elaborating. That’s not because I don’t have more to say – it’s just that I haven’t typed it for whatever reason.

But today my brain got a bit out of hand. I thought about gratitude during my shower, my commute, and on my walk to work. I thought of literally a ton of things that I’m grateful and it was just this huge spiral where I kept thinking of more and more things. It was almost like I was building up a stock of grateful things.

But really I won’t use those unless I am particularly grateful that exact day (since I think that’s kind of a condition of this experiment). But I do think that the experiment is working – I mean, isn’t the whole point to make me focus on the positives and be happy about my life?

That pretty much sums up my thoughts on the validity and benefits on the gratitude journal. I did miss a number of days in the latter part of the month. Again, from my journal:

Partly I was too busy, partly I was too forgetful, and partly I’ve been feeling not particularly grateful as a large part of this month has been pretty tough on me (see my previous post, and let’s be honest – the holidays can be a difficult time of year). I’ve decided to not make post-dated journal entries as that seems contrary to the point of this activity – I was supposed to feel grateful each and every day, not make a laundry list of good things.

Despite that, I think things went very well. Probably shy of a resounding success, but the bottom line is that I think writing the journal improved the quality of my life.

What am I doing?
I don’t know. The good news is that my videos on Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker (which, to be fair, was already out before this month). The bad news is that I have not yet completed the final video, which will compare the two.

At the same time, I have been thinking about my poker future, as well as discussing it with a number of other DeucesCracked members. Although I have not reached any conclusions, I think I have made some progress in this area.

Out of Game Analysis
I pretty much kicked butt in this area. I reviewed a ton of hands in Hold ‘Em Manager in a timely manner and didn’t let them pile up. I even worked with Poker Stove a bit, which is always educational.