The Life we Live

The Life we Live

My career path does not entail many outward struggles, the struggles I face, all come from within. In the career path that I have chosen there is a lot of pressure on me and how I preform. My chosen path for myself is not a traditional path. What I do on a daily basis may be a little different than what most consider to be work. You are probably wondering what this kid does and why is he beating around the bush? The fact is, I personally don’t know how to explain it. In this profession there is a running joke on the question, “What do you do for a living?” Some say I sit at home and click buttons all day, and some just lie to avoid the question. What I do for my work is called trading. I make money off of volatility in both the stock market and crypto currency markets. While this profession sounds fun and exciting it can be anything but that. There is a sense of adrenaline when you place a 50 thousand dollar bet at the age of 21; but that exact emotion that you feel when placing the bet is the exact emotion that will end you in this game. The separation of self and emotion is the most important way to compose yourself on a daily basis in this field. Being able to detach from the real world and continue in your own with enough confidence that you are right is one of the biggest struggles that comes with this game. I have gone through a lot in the few years that I have done this, there have been good times and there have been bad. At the age of 22, I turned 10k of student loans into 50k in a very short period of time just to see most of it lost in that same year. Some days I have moved around 50 - 150 thousand dollars in money and currencies, all in directional bets, either I am right, or I am wrong, there is nothing in between. While this amount of money may not seem large, or equate to much risk, betting this amount of money can become very taxing on an individual. The emotional swings that one feels seeing their 401k drop 2% in a month, I feel tenfold in a day…every day. So my biggest struggle is myself and the emotional toll this profession takes on me as a human being. Being able to train yourself to detach from the world can be toxic to those that are a part of your life. People see you change and you become distant from those you feel closest to. The best way for me to describe the feeling is sitting on a park bench in the middle of Central Park. While you are sitting there thousands of people pass by, yet you just exist. The world continues on while you are just a part of it. My goal for this year and for the future is to get up from that park bench, engage with the human population and continue on. I will push further in this field knowing that without those closest to you, you will never make it. This is the game I chose and I love the challenge of it, but with challenges comes struggles and these are mine.