Well it sounds like your a bit unconstrained currently in life (maybe most of the marrired folks gave-up on this type of thought many years back) other than paying the bills and debating the dilema of working (any type of work where your an employee seems unfullfilling) to pay the bills vs playing poker (but its not a slam-dunk living salary). I say that b/c once you get married, have kids, have debt, etc... people generally realize life is a balance of individualistic enjoyment vs sacrifice.

Ok, so what to do? Well working 10-hours a day to make a meager salary and wasting another a fews hours to prepare for work is a complete waste to me other than paying the bills. The accomplishments made at work are remotely satisfying and maybe some character building (soft skills, tech skills, etc), but overall a waste. Especially true if your spiritual, non-confirmist, etc. However, working is comfortable and does provide an "easy", "non-stressful" way to pay the bills. In my experience, it never gets better than that. You sacrifice 14-hours / day for a "nice", "easy" salary. You give-up enjoyment for comfortability... Sales folks have it a little easier, since you are commisioned based, but you still deal with the same garbage of being an employee.

Ok, so what do these folks do? Go back to school, work for a dot.bomb, quit, or become an entrapuneur (either consulting or own business, self sales (insurance, homes) etc). For me, not doing anything is not an option. I either must be accomplishing something or at least occupied. With those needs, I would prefer some type of self business (consulting, sales, franchise, etc). Typically the investement type of self-businesses require upfront capitol, which most people dont have at a young age. Consulting requires an expertise in a subject (maybe Poker Tutor). So a likey choice is sales of some sort. The main requirement for these is some type of license (home, insurance, stocks, etc). These types of work get you unbound from a typical corporate environment and the amount of pay vs time invested is not as linear. My vote would be to get some type of license, develop product knowledge, soft skills, and you should be successful.

Why do I say this? Well, with the self sales type of jobs, you dont necessarily need alot of time to make a comfortable living and the rest of your time you can play poker. These types of jobs can make great money, hours are flexible, etc.

What I wouldnt do. I wouldnt just start and play poker full-time, unless you are 100% convinced you can make a decent living (pay the bills) at an acceptable level of hours spent. For example, if I can track at $100 / day playing poker, but my comfortability is at 52k / year, I would want to prove consistently that I could make $300 ($400 for safety) / day. I would be a bit turned-off at correlating that to living off of tourney wins. For one, I dont have experience in them and it would be hard to demonstrate the you would be good enough to make money at live or online tournies. However, if you could play 3-4 3/6 tables profitable, I would think that would be enough to secure 200-300 bucks a day at least. Plus the ring games give proven performance of profit over time so can have some comfortability that youll pay the bills.

It doesnt sound like your the type of person that would just quit and play poker unless you had a proven revenue steam (rich wife, parents [j/k]) and it doesnt sound like poker is a proven revenue stream currently. I would suggest in your spare time, building a convincing track record of making profit at tournies and when the stats show you are dominating, make the leap.. results over time the only indicator of success. Of course, you could win the lottery, WSOP and retire and then play poker w/o any constraints.

I have been toying with the idea of how much money I could make at poker if I spent my whole time at it. I am tracking about $100/day and could push $200+ if I moved up in the limit tables. However the losing streaks are stressful (even more stressful if I was counting them as primary income), but I havent had a bad week in a few months and I am average 600+ games / day. At these rates, I could entertain maybe 52k before taxes... maybe the same amount as a college grad... is it worth it? probably not since I a have a family and kids. However when it gets to 100k+, Ill be the first one to give my resignation.

Good luck and maybe someday you can "crack the nut"