From riches to ragz: The story of a gambling nomad

Dear Steemit Community,

to introduce myself I wrote a short recap of what I've been doing so far and what my goals in life and this community are.

I was born and raised in a small town in Germany: The usual boredom and refugee in drugs and rock'n'roll and one thing missing. Things changed when I was offered a become and exchange in Brazil for one year. I didn't really think about it and just took it, since all we had to do was receive other students and pay for the flight.

The time was great, filled with sorrow less day after day. It also sparked my interest for getting to know other cultures, something that would dominate the other half of my life. After I finished school I was drafted for the army, failed the drug test and had to return six months later, with the kind suggestion to get clean. I actually did since being drafted allowed me to participate in an alternative program, and hence I found myself in Chile for one year, probably the only foreigner in a desert mining town. I worked at an organization that aims to get rid of the slums and improve the quality of life there, somewhat being aware that the first one is impossible to reach. Every now and then we would build some wooden huts, which was quite interesting, since I could go into neighborhoods where otherwise I would have been robbed within minutes. The office part was rather boring, and things were badly organized, in which I take some blame too.

I had no plan for my time after the social service, I only knew that I wanted to travel, preferably around beaches. Since I had discovered online poker shortly before, I ordered some books and started playing in Internet Cafes. Took me a while to beat the hourly rate, but I eventually had saved enough to buy the cheapest, crappiest laptop I could find (with a downgraded version of windows that only allowed 3 programs at the same time). I walked around the neighborhood following a wifi signal, knocked on the wrong door, shortly after found the right door and was actually given the password thanks to South American friendliness.
I eventually got my own connection shared with my room mates, a gay couple (a little detail the agency had mentioned exactly one day before my flight to Chile). A lot of hard to endure Abba songs and many hours playing poker later, I had enough to start my great journey.

I traveled to the Dominican Republic and was joined by a German friend who I had met in Chile (and infected with the poker virus). Life was great and exciting until that moment when the damn ATM informed me that I was broke. My great adventure had lasted no more than 3 months. My buddy had a lot more discipline than me, and hence some money, part of which he used to bail me out.

For the next 18 months we made our way down through South America and stayed a few months at each place. When we had arrived in Argentina my buddy was tired of traveling and returned home. Since there were quite a lot of international online poker players in Buenos Aires, I moved in with another play. This American fellow quickly convinced me to move to Columbia, where we stayed a few months in Medellin. Eventually I was the one who needed a change and decided to take a break from South America.

I joined the online poker scene in Thailand, which was pretty huge and featured many legendary characters. This was largely due to the fact that money could still be made relatively easy, and life was cheap in Thailand, hence the less nerdy guys had a chance as well. I became obsessed with poker strategies and started making a shit ton of money. As a reward I took a six week cycling trip to New Zealand and visited several South East Asian countries. But just like my attempt a year earlier to cross Laos on a bicycle, my poker career ended in a crash. To summon it up: I cracked psychologically (poker, not the crash in Laos, that was due to a cow).

After that I had lost all my passion for this game and found myself struggling for survival. Loosing the rent money a week before it is due is not a nice feeling. I finally freed myself of the chains of poker when I was living in a bamboo hut in Thailand. Rent was 150$ a month including utilities, quite a nice deal since the beach was just a 5 minute walk. There was only a pretty crappy wifi signal from a distant building, forcing me to take a break from poker. Needing no more than 200$ a month, I could afford to take some time off. Somehow I ended up discovering a game engine that was designed for beginners (Stencyl). I gave the tutorial a try and then my head exploded. I had chalked off game programming as something way too complicated for a fool like me. Turns out it wasn't harder than anything else, I just had to learn it step by step. And so I became a self declared indie game developer. I spent every waking minute working and thinking about my game, a real time strategy game which was out of my scope like a dog chasing a car. Eventually I ended up making another game, spent 300 hours on it, and earned a whopping 80c. Minus the 200$ I had paid for a Stencyl license. You can actually play that game here: A fair warning: It's not very good.

I moved back to Germany and became a night receptionist based on a “great” idea: I could get a job where I get paid to sit around and just take my laptop with me. So instead of getting paid for programming, I'd get at least paid while programming. I even said that in the job interview at the agency, but then they sent me to a hotel where I had to do paperwork all damn night. On top of that I found it impossible to sleep during the day. I quit and my next plan was to go fruit picking in New Zealand and save up some money, but then my grandparents asked me to move in with them and take care of the household. I took that offer and am sitting in that house right now. To save up some money, I started working part time as a kitchen hand and dish washer, both are quite fun. I like working with food and when doing dishes I'm allowed to use head phones and listen to audio books. I'm still not getting paid very much for making games (I recovered my losses though), but at least I'm getting paid while listening to audio books.

In the near future I want to focus on making games, including getting good at drawing, something I hadn't done since my childhood. But my long term goal is to become a writer. I had already written a book and an agency interested in it, but then they kinda forgot about me. Having tried several agencies, I decided to not approach publishers but work on my skill first. I believe it takes years and decades of practice to become truly good at it.

I recently discovered Steemit and thought this is a great opportunity to work on my writing skills and maybe even earn some money. I've seen interesting contests and challenges related to writing, and quite some high quality content. I will try to be constructive and always thankful for criticism. For quite a long time I've been gathering ideas for a writer's workshop, and Steemit seems like a great place to try that workshop.