Road back to HS PLO

ABOUT ME:
My screenname is portemilio. I've been playing Poker since I was 16. I started off playing poker on Runescape gambling sites where you'd buy coins ingame which had a $ value and deposit them on runescape poker sites. I found myself obsessed with the game since I was young. I specifically loved the HU format. At 16 i ran up 100$ to 20k when BTC was around 1.4k playing 6 max and 9max nlhe but ultimately got destroyed headsup because i lacked a lot of discipline and had major ego issues wanting to be the best. I always wanted to be the best and would get extremely angry when dealing with variance on top of the fact that I was an unstudied player. In college I transitioned to PLO. I got staked and coached but I wasn't winning no matter how hard I tried because of my serious BRM issues. I'd run up a couple of thousand dollars then instantly shot take 5/10 and lose it all and then go back to the lowest stakes to rebuild, rinse, and repeat. My senior year of college I decided I really wanted to give it my all. In class I'd bring my laptop and drill spots and this was the first form of studying I'd ever experienced (other than hundreds of hours of youtube videos and poker content that I consume). I significantly saw a change in my game. I've always been a highly intuitive player but with the baseline theory I developed I quickly skyrocketed though the ranks. I still had really poor mental game and not great BRM but I was able to run up my first 30k ish month in April of 2022. Unfortunately, I lost it all back shot taking 10/20 on ACR (very commend trend in my poker career). I had to take6 a fifth year of college because of a couple of other reasons but I always knew I was going to end up being a poker player. I dreaded school and felt it was the reason I wasn't succeeding because I still had to commit so many hours to school (studying Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Fluid Mechanics). I come from an Arab household and poker was not accepted at all but that didn't deter me. My fifth year I had the same routine where I'd study in class and play countless hours when I was back. I was also gaming a lot (League) so i decided to cut that out because I figured it was a waste of time if I really wanted to succeed. After I graduated (May 2022) I moved to Lebanon where my parents lived. I finally had no obligations, nothing holding me back and barely any expenses. I devoted all my time to poker (literally 15h days). After 6 months playing 1/2 - 10/20 on mainly bovada and BOL I made roughly 170k in profits. My mental health really suffered. I longed for social interaction; I had none of my friends in Lebanon and I started to not care about poker anymore. My health declined heavily and I felt despite the fact that I was winning that there was a constant judgement surrounding what I was doing. Once I showed my parents how much money I was making they couldn't complain about the journey I was decided to take ( as much anyways) but they were still greatly against it. My biggest mistake came when I decided to shot take 10/20 on Bovada. I was absolutely crushing Betonline and Bovada midstakes for atleast 8bb/100 over a sample of 400k+ hands, but when I played 10/20 nothing I did worked. I got absolutely crushed. My mental game was very strong at this point and I wasn't disheartened, I just figured it was variance. I ended up losing 45 ish buy ins (90k) running 70k below EV. This was almost 2/3 of my roll. I had heard rumors about collusion and cheating rings going on at 10/20 Bovada but I just figured that was bad regs crying about losing because the same was being said about every stake that I was consistently beating. I will never know if I actually got cheated as I have no definitive proof but I highly highly suspect that I did. At this point despite convincing myself that the loss of the money didn't affect me in reality my play began to change because nothing I did was working so I thought i had to deviate. I ended up going to EPT Barcelona in 2023 because I felt the need to prove to myself and everyone that what I was doing was a real job. I had around 50k to my name. I ended up losing 20k there playing 25/50 live (brm issues started coming back I really began to chase what I lost). Once I returned back to the US, started paying rent I prolonged into a 4 month period of break even/losing. I really thought at the time I was playing well I dont know maybe it was variance but looking back at it I had basically given up. I was playing 3h a day max and not putting in any volume at all (20k hands/month max). I'm using this 2+2 thread to hold myself accountable. I'm not going to give up on poker because I know I truly have a talent. I'm at a crossroads right now because im 24 and have little to no job experience so If I want to get a real 9-5 I'd really have to start looking now. I have a couple interviews with some investment banks just to appease my parents but it isn't something I'm taking seriously. On top of that it's really hard to explain to friends and family the journey I've been on because they don't understand variance at all. I'm not saying I didn't make any mistakes I definetly did, but to lose that amount of money is definetly gut wrenching I finally made it and saw it gone at the blink of an eye. I have a lot of fuel in me now and I'm ready to play atleast 50k hands/month. I'm not going to let anyone pressure me or feel the need to prove to anyone (online or IRL) that what I'm doing is valid, I'm just going to do it. It may get lonely but this is truly what I love and I know i will get rewarded.
I'm going to attach this month's results. I had very little money to my name, I moved to my uncles house where I'm paying no rent and felt a lot less pressure on my bankroll. I started at .5/1 and 1/2 and slowly started to shot take 2/5 and very little 5/10 volume. I played almost 72k hands this month, which is the most volume I've ever put in in a month in my life. Attached is the graph. Eventually when I fix my old computer I'll export the DB to my new one and merge them. I will be posting interesting hands and lines I play here as well as weekly-monthly updates. I want to hold myself accountable no matter what and am interested to hear people's thoughts. I only have the last two months of my play tracked I'll post them shortly as I had to buy a new computer
GL ME!