Apocalyptic variance posting and motivational thread for me, or something

I have thought about writing this for a couple of weeks now and i have decided that im just going to do it.
If anyone finds this interresting or even remotely helpful that is entirely by accident, im doing this because i want to and because i think it will help me with motivation and some kind of progress perhaps.

Im also gonna post some of my general goals and such.

As of the last couple of weeks, it feels like i have been entirely unable to win a hand in poker. This is ofcourse not the case, however i have lost many of the most important hands in my tournaments recently.

The effects of this downswing on my bankroll amounts to just about $300, all of which is money i have won, so its not like im about to move out to live in a cardboard box in the woods or anything like that. It has however been quite devastating since im playing primarily $5.5-$11 tournaments, although i have been forced to move all the way down now to rebuild.

Theres a particularly devastating hand that i think about alot more than i want to, i guess i will post it in a reply or something, It actually didnt really bother me at first, but there are serveral things that go wrong here, some of which i think are fine in the situation and some of which are the direct result of me playing poorly. Its a pretty good hand to demonstrate the effect variance has/can have on me.

There are serveral other effects and im just going to list them off the top of my head, and i will randomly throw in **** along the way as i remember/discover them

Playing scared
Playing less, because i lose interrest
Study less, because i feel like it doesnt matter, adding to the circle of losing interrest
Playing worse, because i play and study less
Being overly results oriented
Turning to high variance formats to rapidly win back what i lost. This is the most ******ed thing i can possibly imagine someone doing
Taking shots when im not playing well. again, ****ing ******ed
Adding more tables, so i can lose faster(???)
Playing cash games, which is not something i study
Playing PLO, which is not something i study
Depositing $100 dollars and playing 100NL Heads up cash, which is not something i am good at or studied in
Doing the above one more time just to make sure.

To be continued, probably

I guess that list is just things i want to get rid of or fix, and i might aswell just start with the easiest ones so im going to do that right away

So far so good, I locked my tournament buy ins to maximum $5.5 aswell. And just if anyone gives a ****, i locked myself out of the casino entirely. I did this ages ago and i did it while grinding SnGs because i got in the habit of taking everything i won and dumped it into various idiot magnets for fun. I still occationally play slots and other pit games but i keep this completely seperated from my poker bankroll now which is just better.

I experience variance in different forms:
Losing flips and such, running bad
Not great, im not overly sensitive to this
Setups
Reasonably devastating, varies wildly how much this manages to ruin my day. Crushing when it happens over long stretches of time
Never actually making winning hands for long stretches of time
This just makes the game boring, it doesnt make me mad, doesnt make me pile on money on bluffs i shouldnt pull the trigger on, it just makes the game straight up not very interresting to me
Coolers and such
Definitely the thing that has the largest financial impact(thanks ICM). I try to place very close attention to times where im the lucky idiot hitting a one outer or whatever it might be, i tend to not overreact in these situations.

Lately has been a pretty healty mix. I have been running under ev (i can tell by looking at the graph), especially in situations with large payjumps, and this makes up the majority of the reason by bankroll has taken a beating. Losing the majority of my flips just mean i reach the money alot less than i usually do, and there have been quite a few hands where im not ever not going all in and villain just wakes up with better hands somehow. Fair amount of suckouts, again in spots where you just need to win hands to make money.

All of these things are completely normal variance, they just kind of ganged up this one time. The most devastating effect this has on me by far that i just lose interrest. I think taking a break is fine, healthy even, but completely losing interrest does not allign very well with playing more and playing better poker.

Couple of important questions to take note of:
Am i a winning player?
Well not the last few weeks that much is for certain. My database is currently just about 500 tournaments which is not as many as i would like. But as of now i am still up money despite the downswing, $201.99 to be more exact. I started playing again this year after not playing for a year or so, the first 4 months i had about $50 roll for tournaments which, yeah, and i just withdrew everything i won which amounts to like somewhere in between $500-$800, i had a couple of pretty good mystery bounty wins in some of the $11 tournaments along with a couple of firsts that make up the last 30% of the money or so. I was definitely running quite well at the start of the year, but this was before i installed PT4 so it either doesnt count or i have decided to disregard that information. I am aware that i am capable of also running well.

what are my goals
I want to win money. I also want to get to a place where i enjoy studying and playing poker as a hobby, i need a hobby that i can sink time and energy into and poker is an exceptionally good choice.
I want to study more poker and i want to get good at it. Winning in poker just feels good, i want to do that more.
And i want to be on top of my bankroll management, poor bankroll management is just unacceptable.
Long term goal currently not well defined.

First step(s) is going to be getting back into grinding, i hardly played the last 10 days because i just havent felt like it. This is not a constructive approach. Im going to focus on formats i know that i beat so theres going to be a fair amount of $1 Sngs happening, along with $1.1 and $2.2 large field MTTs. Im going to decide later today on how im going to structure my bankroll for shot taking and playing different formats, but generally speaking i lean towards having a pretty conservative bankroll with atleast a couple of hundred bullets for tournaments.
Im not going to be playing many bounty tournaments because it tends to be a complete bingo shitshow at these stakes, i will add tournaments as i feel like it.

Tournaments im going to be playing alot, they will be played as i become progressively more rolled for them

3.3 and 5.5 heads up zoom TPKO tourneys, these are great although quite high variance so im going to have to wait
Sit and Goes, im going to be playing alot of these
9 man sit and gos, probably going to happen eventually for volume. Going to have to figure out how to study these in wizard somehow(help)
Might consider slapping $2 hypers in but probably not untill i have alot more bullets for them
as many of the normal large field MTTs of whatever buyin im rolled for. Again gonna have to wait a bit before i add PKOs

I think this is just going to be the first post. If anyone has a good way to structure a bankroll for all the different **** i play that would be great otherwise ill figure something out.
Im going to be posting that hand just in case someone accidentally came in here