(written on December 2nd and 4th)
The trading week started again, and… I lost a lot of my self discipline and returned to my emotional trading ways. 😞
I spent a good while working with customer service, one of the issues being my trying to figure out how to change my default share size, which one can’t do via the cell-phone app.
But the customer service person didn’t tell me that he’d changed my default share size, which meant when I made a trade without realizing my default share size was different, I had more shares than I thought, which ended up giving me a multi-hundred-dollar loss.
I got angry when I realized what had happened, and then the revenge trading because I didn’t want to lose, and that ended with me in that cycle that’s happened multiple times before, knowing in my head what to do and what not to do but unable to overcome the compulsion of trying to get back what was lossed.
In the end, after trading all day, and being down even more, I think, then I eventually finished, I think I lossed $2300.
It would have been $2500, but they gave me a $200 credit for their changing my defaults without telling me.
Which was appreciated but was also a poor consolation. Certainly, the losing control was my fault. Yet it’s also true that the circumstance that brought on the losing control was their fault.
In the end, I can only really blame myself. I’m the one who can’t control himself. I’m the one who’s lost his self discipline in so many areas of his life. I’m the one who can no longer find or even manufacture hope, which has resulted in my acting without doing the work necessary for success because I just don’t have any meaningful level of energy left to give because I have little to no hope that anything I do will achieve what I hope for.
My sister Heather spent a long time trying to help lift my spirits.
🤍
I’m tired of failing at seemingly everything I do. I used to succeed at nearly everything I did because I believed in myself and in hope for the future, and I was willing to give my whole heart and all my energy to a cause or task or goal.
But now… there’s no energy left in me to give. I roll the dice, and hope I succeed, because that’s all the energy I can muster, just enough to roll the dice.
I’m unable to give the work required to actually succeed without sheer dumb luck.
😕
Rough day.
I finally tore myself away from the internal and financial hammering, headed down to the water, put on my wet suit and snorkel, and set out on an undersea adventure.
I love being in water. And I love being around the creatures of this world, so snorkeling is a wonderful combination, and was a good change of pace for my struggling soul.
In “good” times, I have no strength. In bad times, I despair.
But going snorkeling… was wondrous, despite being a little scary. There were definitely lots of fish, though the water wasn’t all that clear.
Nothing compares, yet, to the accidental opportunity I encountered in Dahab, Egypt at Blue Hole. I think I could probably see hundreds of feet through those crystal clear waters.
The scary part was more than just the normal, ever-present fear of sharks, but also an underwater obstacle of swimming under/between two, what felt like precariously purchased, boulder-sized pieces of concrete leaning against each other underwater.
So many fish on the other side, though.
Oh, and the current! Holy. Freaking. Crap. 😶
No joke, no hyperbole, there was a current so strong that it was like a river. Looking from above the water, you could even see small, not white-capped, but still very real rapids. It wasn’t a really wide current where I was, so you could get in and out of it pretty quickly, but it was like a river within a bay heading out to see.
But how?
I went into that current a couple times, once on the way out, and once on the way back, I think. If I swam really quickly, I could make progress, so that’s what I did.
Really interesting place.
Headed to Abbey Caves after that, but they were closed, a young man having died there while on a trip with his school because the group leaders ignored the warnings about going into the caves when raining.
I remember when Chase and I explored those caves before, we spent hours in them, crawling all around. One of the most sobering parts the the experience was climbing up into the highest portions of the cave that we could find, maybe 20 or 30 feet above the main passageways, and finding the sticks wedged into the nooks and crannies, clear evidence that if you’re in the cave when it floods, it can flood the whole cave, leaving no escape, ensuring to will drown.
Unfortunately, they closed the caves. 😕
The tragedy of the loss of life is real, but I strongly disagree with the mentality of closing something because of potential danger in adverse conditions or as a result of poor choices.
That was one thing I’d loved about New Zealand before–the signs of warning, but the opportunity to make your own choices.
Accidents happen. People will make poor choices. People will get hurt. People will die.
It’s part of life.
Please don’t take away the experiences that add so much flavor to life because of accidents and poor choices. 🙏 Please, if needed, add signs of warning, but I please let people make their own choices.
I remember when they did that with Nutty Putty Caves in Utah. It was a beginner’s cave. My oldest brother Jared took me there when I was probably 12, maybe younger. I took my junior high school students there (14-15 year olds).
It was a tragedy that the man died down there (in the Nutty Putty Caves. It’s also true that he made an extremely foolish choice).
It’s a tragedy the boy died in Abbey Caves. It’s also true that the poor choices of some shouldn’t ruin it for others.
I hope they re-open the caves (in Utah and in New Zealand). In New Zealand, you can ignore the closure and just go in them still (which I didn’t do). In Utah, they’re sealed with concrete now, I believe.
[sigh]
End soap box.
Anyway… wasted my life away on my phone screen for a fair bit there before finally crashing for the night at the Whangarei Falls parking lot again.
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 