Allow me to dole out my first piece of advice since my break -- and it's advice that I and others have doled out time and time before.

Bankroll < $500 = underrolled for $25 NL. You can be the best player on Earth, losing for sessions on end can and will happen, and rest assured will happen again. I would have moved down to $10 NL long before you lost $550.

I can't really speak for short-handed play, but from my time here, the variance in those games at least has the potential to have an even greater variance.

And welcome to BTP.

Some would disagree with that, runner_runner. Ice shows very low variance at 6max and I always thought the variance seemed lower as well, although I didn't have PT until recently so I couldn't really prove it