DID YOU GO ALL OUT?
I don’t care anymore. I just want to win. I’m tired of losing. I’m tired of knowing but not acting, I’m tired of saying I’m sorry or feeling depressed because I can’t do what I know to be right, but I’m also tired of false opportunity. But what I’m most tired of is feeling bad about trying.
Fuck. That. Shit.
Did I win today? I most emphatically did not. I took 9 trades and made no gains. I broke even.
But I fucking went for it. I bet when I knew I had an advantage and that’s all I can do. And I don’t have anyone else here to tell me that I did a bad job, or a good job or even knowing that I had a job.
But I know. I know who I am. I know what I think about all the time and I know that those thoughts are not the ones I share with anyone.
No one knows me. I am an enigma. I run in different social groups, each one with a different opinion of me. Each one with a positive ID on the me that they think that they know, when they don’t get to see but a few choice hours of my week or month.
That’s not me. That’s me at play. That’s me relaxed and unassuming in an environment that I have chosen as non-threatening and rejuvenative. But it’s a mask.
The real me hates not having a big life. The real me wants to scream, dance, sing, hit, kick and bite. And it takes a lot of repression to keep all that rage inside. But some days I need to let it out. To fuck, to fight, to win.
And then laugh, smile and share my joy.
Because that part gets repressed too. If I can’t release the rage into a dominating performance, then I feel undeserving of the laughter, the smiling and the joy. And then I don’t have enough laughter, smile and joy to share with others.
There’s a full circle of life that I am taking orthogonal stabs at and yet never riding its continuum.
And I don’t know where to start. But it doesn’t seem like it matters where I start the momentum so long as I am on that continuum. And right now it just makes the most sense to me to just go for it.
Rage into joy.
It’s been awhile since I posted, and my intent here is to continue the past and make way for the present. I am super excited to be talking about markets, about personal development and about their intersection. How we do anything is how we do everything.
There is no activity that is not hashtagged with your personal pound sign as we leave biomarkers in every action and interaction. And so I have started to consider the trail that I have left.
Is it positive? Is it kind? Is it inspiring? But most importantly, I want to answer the question of WHY am I doing anything that I am doing?
My worldview seems both Machiavellian and nihilistic, which are contradictory intents. On the one hand, Machiavellianism would favor tactics and strategems for my own survival, while nihilism would expose the futility of any of my endeavors, whether tactical or strategic. It would literally make no difference if I believed in nothing anyway.
There is an emptiness to both worldviews. Both leave me alone and unfulfilled and this is largely my fault. And wouldn’t you know it, the internal conflict it underscores manifests itself everywhere else…
Married? No.
Rich? Hardly.
Rich in friends and love? A work in progress.
So let’s focus on that progress. It’s always been my intent to create a life that I can’t wait to keep living. Something special, aspirational and better than my dreams.
But it takes actual dreams to exceed those dreams and I have stopped dreaming of bigger things.
Well, no more of that. I am thinking big and dreaming bigger. Let’s skip the kickoff party and get into the work.
I will write more. I will explore more. I will be better.
The Flaw in My Game
I have a very specific skill. I didn’t realize how specific until I actually started looking at my trading and my life as one and the same. I am a pessimist. This is my skill. I can see the negative or the potential consequences of all great things. And the part that pisses a lot of people off is that I am right. Frequently.
But it’s a flaw in my game. The inability to see both sides of the coin is a potential source of biased blindness that I have derided the perennial polyannas in my life for well, my entire life. The fact is that polarity, either negative or positive, is equally flawed. Both fail to see the potential or potential value in recognition of the other.
And both are wrong. Frequently.
What I began to notice is that every time the market moved up, I would sell it. But every time it fell without me first selling it, I was upset that I had missed the move. In other words, I just like to short the market. I like it when things go down.
However, some of the time the market is headed up because it’s just headed up. There is nothing incorrect about the move and no reason to doubt it. And some times the market falls merely as a precursor to a larger move up. So I was blind to both of these possibilities.
And in my life? Same damn thing. A girl smiles at me in public, I look away (dashing both her dreams and mine). I see a nice car, or see my friends getting married or taking vacations (again) or having children and I want to retreat from this. I want to hide myself, my intense shame and self-loathing over a life that I am currently living that I can barely accept. It is what it is, but it’s just not even close to what I expected.
So I am a short seller of my life? A persistent pessimist in the panacea of possibilities in my life? Yes. Yes. Yes. A word I use infrequently. Yes to the smile. Yes to the world. Yes is the answer.
Unless it’s no. There’s still a no that I hold and love to play. But yes should not be verboten. That’s the flaw.
This. Is. It.
This. Is. It.
Sometimes we suffer from the delusion that life is going to begin somewhere out there, ahead of us, when “things calm down”, but the truth is, this is it. Life is happening right here, right now.
If it isn’t feeling good to you, if you aren’t feeling at peace and comfortable in your own skin, nothing is more pressing than that. Slow down for just a little bit. Tune into your breath. Feel your heart beating. You don’t want to get so caught up in the race that you miss the journey.
THIS FEELING
I want to bottle this feeling. Ferment it. Make it stronger, bathe in it and let it become me. Put it in storage for times when it’s absent. And especially for the times where I can’t imagine ever feeling good again.
It’s pure satisfaction and bliss. I got up, did what I was supposed to do, what I have practiced over and over, and finished the day strong.
Could it have been better? Yes, but that’s a worry that’s far away from me right now. Success feels too good. Ahhhhhhhh….
Cruelty
Unlimited capital, unlimited time, an agenda that is antithetical to anything that I can think of on my own. It’s the market: infused with the agnosticism of nature and a cruelty that can only be human.
This was undeniable to me this morning. Markets are not only alive and dynamic, but they are sneaky and vindictive in a way that only humans are capable. I have seen videos of predators stalking and then viciously attacking its prey, but it always seems purposeful.
The oil market appeared today to stalk me in a way that was just to stalk. There are no cute lion cubs back at the den waiting for mom to bring them a meal and make her efforts worthwhile. This is just sniping. It’s just cruel.
I traded 8 times this morning. Six of the those times were in the same area, in the same direction. And the market hit that area 4 times without a breakthrough that held. Will it break through there eventually? Yes. But it seems intent on preventing me from participating in that.
Markets can be beautiful, and I try to keep that in mind as I realize that it’s my choice to trade beauty or become a beast of prey.
The fifth time was the charm. Beautiful.
John Waters commencement address RISD 2015.
I just can’t like this enough – an invocation to fuck up the world in a beautifully unique way. What a way to say it!
Old people yearn for yesteryear, which roughly translates to them wishing they could go back to the time where they stopped loving the pace of change in their lives. Probably around 35-45, their peak physical, mental and emotional combined states. You know when it was with most men (and some women) because, as the saying goes, they still have the same haircut.
I know for me that I definitely feel that yearning. That pang of fear of not being able to keep up with change. I hate it. (The feeling, that is.) I know rationally that change is the best thing, it’s the only thing and I might as well welcome it because it’s going to happen anyway. So why fight it? I should be like nature: adapt and evolve. Be like water and stay in flow.
And yet conversely, I can’t think of any image more distasteful and sad than that of the aging hipster… the guy that is just way too old to be trying so hard to act way too young. The clothes, the hair and the stiffened movements that define the guy that just can’t reverse aging no matter how much denial he can muster.
So I fear becoming that guy too. Which makes me want to dig in my heels and deny all people who advocate for change, progress and the new. But I don’t want to be that guy either. He’s a real dick at parties.
And he’s a shitty dresser.
John Waters says it best: go out in the world and fuck it up beautifully. He knows that change is like Schumpeter’s creative destruction, it only looks clean, obvious and linear in retrospect. In our world that has a forward crest of time, it just looks like someone tagged the Mona Lisa and then pissed on the White House carpet. It looks bad, feels awful, scares the shit out of the present elite and provides for a future that none of us could predict would turn out so pristine and beautiful when we look back on it having already happened.
Timing my life
One of the constant annoyances that I have to deal with is trying to explain to others that I must stop whatever we’re doing and leave. Now.
But why? They ask. Because I have to prepare for the other parts of my life, and this is the discipline that is required. The reason that you don’t understand it is because you don’t have that discipline, which is also the reason that we don’t hang out more.
Surfing used to be something that I struggled at. Then something changed. It became a game of positioning and wave selection. And beautiful rides.
But there was one more thing. When I was paddling back out to catch another wave, I was no longer unhappy to see an even better wave coming towards me. In fact, it filled me with more joy than the ride.
Hold on my heart
Just hold on to that feeling
We both know we’ve been here before
We both know what can happen
Hold on my heart
‘Cause I’m looking over your shoulder
Ooh, please don’t rush in this time
Don’t show her how you feel
Hold on my heart
Throw me a lifeline
I’ll keep a place for you
Somewhere deep inside
So hold on my heart
Please tell her to be patient
'Cause there has never been a time
That I wanted something more
If I can recall this feeling
And I know there’s a chance
Oh, I will be there
Yes, I will be there
Be there for you
Whenever you want me to
Whenever you call, oh, I will be there
Yes, I will be there
Hold on my heart
Don’t let her see you crying
No matter where I go
She’ll always be with me
So hold on my heart
Just hold on to that feeling
We both know we’ve been here before
We both know what can happen
So hold on my heart
Just hold on my heart
I’m gonna hold on to that heart
Hold on, just hold on
Just hold on, just hold on
Just hold on, hold on, hold on
Today is my birthday. I am 38 years old. I am exactly half as old as my father is now. I am not a father.
I wake up this morning with a black eye from an accident with my dog yesterday. He accidentally head-butted me as I was playing with him. During the night I scratched my hair and a rough fingernail tore open my skin near my forehead, drawing blood as I lay awake.
Upon awaking, I took a walk into the hills that surround my home as the morning mist gave a shroud of mystery to the area and the heavy dew dampened sounds of morning commuters on the surrounding roads.
I have often considered my life on each successive birthday, but today, unlike perhaps all the rest, gave me both moments of pause and the environment to explore that pause.
On the one hand, I find myself calm. I find greater occasion for serenity and more consistency in creating that serenity than I ever had. I know myself better now than I ever have. I love myself more. I find the time to actually feel that love and appreciate my gifts than when I was younger.
But on the other hand, this serenity was borne out of necessity. Watching my life devolve in front of me was either going to drive me crazy or push me towards several available coping mechanisms. I tried them all. Crazy didn’t work, alcohol solves nothing today and robs me of tomorrow and running away to another city to start over again was getting expensive. Meditation was just cheaper.
What struck me as I was brushing my teeth was the cause of the devolution itself. Certainly no one intends to add chaos, uncertainty or continued failure to their lives. I didn’t. In fact, it was quite the opposite.
My pursuit of perfection - and my rejection of things imperfect - has led me to this imperfect state of my life. The things that I fled, the things that I fought, the things that I thought I had escaped… I was just carrying with me. My shadow never left my side despite running towards the sun.
If I can make any wish for myself on this birthday morning, it is that I accept my imperfections as part of the greater whole. Too long have I chastised myself for being less than I am able to be, while not giving equal appreciation to the more that I was able to achieve.
I will start and end each day with forgiveness, gratitude and compassion. Each day is my practice. There is only a pursuit of perfection. There is no actual perfection.
