#0 (revived) - Triggered

At the beginning of the month, I decided to stop watching my stock prices. I figured, what’s the point? The market is in a shitty mood, and I don’t have much cash on the side anyway.

But tonight I yielded to the temptation. I looked. Initially I thought I’d look only at one of them, just take a peek. But I ended up looking at all of them, going on the forums, the usual stuff. Honestly, it feels like an addiction, and maybe it is. “I’ll have just a sip, ONE sip!”, and you end up downing the whole bottle.

Anyway, I thought I’d write down what triggered me. Because there was a trigger, and it was a combination of two or three things.

First, my wife and I were looking at appartment listings, because the fucking neighbor upstairs decided that 10pm was a good time to start moving some furniture and stomping his feet on the floor.

So I started looking at some listings, and let me tell you, renting around where I live has NOT gotten cheaper lately. With two young kids and a third on the way, we’d love to find a four-bedroom but there’s not many of those at all. Even looking at the three-bedrooms, those have gotten so expensive - it’s nuts!

So anyway, that was frustrating. After my wife fell asleep, I stayed on Facebook with the idea of taking some steam off before going to sleep. Instead, I landed on this dude’s profile, and old aquaintance of mine who built a restaurant empire after inheriting a pile of cash from his late father. The guy is living the life: single, good-looking, traveling all the time, and he probably co-owns a dozen of super trendy restaurants.

I felt envious and angry. I remember thinking: “why am I a failure?”.

Then I checked the stock prices. You know, in case one of them would have 10x-ed since last week. LOL.

Nothing good can happen while I’m in this mental state. At least I know that now. I’m hoping that by acknoledging it and writing about it, I would at minimum avoid making any stupid decisions, and at best take back control of my spirit and move on to a better frame of mind.

P.S. I understand that this post makes me come off as a very small and envious person. Good. I want that written somewhere. I hope to be a better man one day. I want to, and I intend to work on it. I’d like to read this post a few years down the road and have a good laugh at my old self.