First entry in my journal. Not sure how this will turn out but here we go.
Over the years, I have been honing my skills at trading, in particular the foreign exchange or forex market in which I have developed and built countless of systems with the main objective of proving that an algorithm can beat the human mind at reading and navigating the market.
Fast forward to now, my algorithms and strategies are outperforming far beyond my initial objectives. In a sense, it’s almost too good to be true. I mean, who knew this “kid” would actually be able to solve the market on his own, just by reading and trading from his bedroom, keeping 100% focus on the end goal and removing all unwanted noise from his daily life.
Well all this comes at a price. When you have such big dreams at solving one of the most complex problems/environments known to man, other than sending man on the moon, you are bound to have a few people of your entourage either telling you to give up or make fun of you with such condescending attitude. As you get older, you realize your entourage gets even smaller for whatever reasons, let’s just call it life.
I have now reached a point in life where I do not know which path to follow. Having always secured plan B’s all my life, making sure I graduate from school, go pursue higher education going through the hardest university courses and now climbing up the corporate ladder, you start to wonder, what happened to plan A and living your dreams? Isn’t it the reason why you started this whole trading journey in the first place?
Having spent 1/3 of my life trying to reach financial freedom, I now found myself sucked into what I wanted to run away from, this corporate life. The money which comes with it is definitely very attractive but at the end of your career, what have you really accomplished? All you did was basically to stand in good terms with everyone at work and do the job you were hired to do. Eventually you get promotions and raises until you pretty much decide that you are now at a comfortable level where your income can provide for all your basic needs and more if need to be.
Past few weeks have been different, maybe it’s because I am slowly realizing that the dream life I had in mind and worked for so many years is slowly fading away as I become more and more involved in the corporate world. Many people have come to me and commented about how I don’t seem to be as joyful as before and that my usual high level energy seems to be gone. I do the work because it needs to be done and I am very good at it but I have lost the motivation of going over and beyond what is asked, which is usually the way I work, I always over deliver because I take the utmost pride in my work and making sure everything is done right.
All these thoughts are troubling me and I believe it is my instincts which are telling me to re-evaluate what I want to do with my life. I am blessed with the ability to solve almost any problems thrown at me with such precision and accuracy, it is truly mind boggling how some individuals just seem to be able to operate and navigate on this level. This “ability” is causing me so much trouble lately. Imagine you could choose to be at the most senior level in the corporate world or choose the entrepreneur path and live life on your own terms and truly enjoy the experience. Which would you choose?
This question is so much deeper than it really looks. So many elements to take into account, pros and cons and so on, I don’t think even starting to list them would be of any benefits since everyone has their own values, priorities, insecurities and preferences. This question is so difficult to answer that I now have trouble sleeping. I can’t sleep. I spend 1h30-2h every night in my bed thinking about which path I should choose, going over all the elements I can think of, trying to solve this puzzle as if I was a chess Grandmaster but no luck so far.
As for now, I think the best option is to give it another 2 years doing this corporate life while I start to treat forex as a real business. With enough discipline and remaining focus on the end-goal, which is to break free from this corporate life, I do believe I will be able to live life in my own terms and be happy with whatever I will have accomplished. Only 2 years to go, stack the money up and take control of my future. If others can do it, why couldn’t I be able to?
To be continued…
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