(written on the 31st)
Today was an absolutely devastating day.
I returned to my old arrogant ways in my day trading, thinking that even though cognitively, I knew I was not properly prepared to train with big size yet, I just couldn’t help myself getting in and sizing up.
The results were absolutely devastating.
I lost $4,700.
Same old weakness. Same results.
😞
Losing the money certainly hurts, but what hurts most is just seeing myself fail over and over and over again.
I’ve lost my self-confidence in most of the important aspects of my life, at least the aspects of my life that are important to me.
I’ve lost my self-respect.
And I operate each day without any real hope for a future to look forward to.
I’ve been home for nearly 2 months, and I haven’t even listed my skid steer or other excavator for sale. I haven’t even listed my work van for sale. I haven’t done what needs to be done.
Why?
I’m just afraid. Hopeless. It’s like, what’s the point? With my body the way that it is, and my mind is broken as it is, and a future that it best looks dismal, I can’t find the strength to manufacture hope.
I’ve lost all my motivation. I don’t have passion anymore for anything.
When I think of the future, pretty much all I can see is profound loneliness and constant physical pain to go along with never-ending mental and emotional distress.
I’m paralyzed. Without hope, I can’t find the strength to do the things that need to be done.
Day trading was one of the few things that I could get myself even somewhat excited about. And even then, it was a dulled excitement.
I have all sorts of notes that I’ve taken about the strategies and rules and everything with trading, but I can’t get myself to read and study them.
Everything everywhere is overwhelming.
And feeling pathetic because of how weak I am right now. Only adds to the stress and struggle and pain.
Seems to reinforce the lessons that appear to be getting pounded into me over and over and over again. I seem to ruin just about everything I touch. I seem to make almost nothing but bad decisions.
That’s how it feels, at least.
So when I failed yet again in such a huge way with trading, with this one, the area of my life, the only one where I could find even a semblance of motivation, it’s devastating.
I just want to succeed somewhere.
…somewhere that’s actually meaningful to me
At first, I was mostly just stunned looking at the loss column on the trading platform. Platform. At one point it had been as high as about $5,700 down. I had clawed my way back to being down somewhere around. I think $3,600, or so, and then lost again and ended up down the $4700.
I was so embarrassed as well. Embarrassed that I just can’t seem to manage the self-discipline to do what I know I should do.
Self-Discipline used to be one of my hallmarks. At least, that’s how I saw it in my own life. Though maybe I’m totally wrong.
And now, it feels like I have almost none.
I know I’m not ready to trade like that. Why would I do it? Why would I think that I could? Why would I size up?
It’s just impatience. I want to be good at it right away. I want to know what I’m doing right away. I don’t want to have to learn and struggle and spend time with small share sizes that are completely inconsequential to the pocketbook.
It’s funny my life feels like it’s inverted. When I was a kid, I seemed to be good at just about everything.
Quite the opposite these days.
Anyway, after nearly a dozen hours of trading, I finally emerged from my mom’s office admitting my embarrassing failure.
I talked with my mom for a while. Sobbed for a little bit.
I just want to succeed at something that’s meaningful to me. I feel like a waste of flesh and like my future life is… pointless.
Anyway, so I didn’t do really anything in the way of working because I spent the whole day trading, and when I was done trading, I just was an emotional mess.
Eventually, I left and headed to Haven Hill to try and get at least something accomplished.
But I didn’t really get much accomplished. I made a fire and burned more branches, which is something. It’s looking better and better down there, though I don’t know if anyone besides me is ever going to see or use it. I hope what I’m doing down there is meaningful for at least some of my Hill family clan here.
I did destroy all of my old cell phones. I had several of them, so I at least got those destroyed and put in the dumpster. So that’s something. Those have been sitting around with me trying to figure out what to do with them for a while.
When you realize that they’re not worth anything anymore, and you’ve got all your data off of them, and you just… get rid of them.
I feel badly throwing away things that are still functional, but no one’s going to want cell phones that are outdated. But what do you do?
It takes so much time and energy just to give things away for free, in my attempts to do that heretofore have left me with bad reviews from entitled Karens.
One good thing that did come out of the $4,700 loss fiasco was that I finally got the motivation to ask my neighbor, the one who bought the mini excavator from me, if he would be interested in doing trade work so I could get my skid steer bucket welded by him.
That’s been on my to-do list for a long time, and I just haven’t had the strength to send him a text message. That’s all I’ve needed to do for a couple of months now, and I just… couldn’t get myself to do it until today.
So I guess that’s something.
I came home and retired to Rover early. I think it was like 7:00 when I got home after doing a little bit of grocery shopping.
I’ve been re-binge watching the John Wick movies.
Wasting my life…
😕
I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to do about trading tomorrow. Do I quit yet again? Do I quit because I don’t have the self-discipline?
Or do I fight through it and try and use this as a learning experience and keep going, knowing that I will be risking losing more because I’m so terrible at maintaining discipline while trading?
Maybe it’s like an alcoholic going to the bar with friends, even if he doesn’t plan to drink?
I don’t know.
I’m actually a little bit afraid for tomorrow.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 