Tag: career

Self-therapy, part 2. Finding happiness, and the main barrier with starting that journey

First….yep, I finally added an image to my thumbnail. And yes, it took forever. But hey, at least it was less than a year 😛

Now, onto business.

Yesterday I mentioned how the only chance to salvage the second half of my life was to learn how to be ok with happiness. You can also include making substantial progress with the other aspects of my depression; that goes without saying.

This would be a very difficult and long road for anyone. But in my spot, there’s something else that may need resolved before I can even get very far. And the problem is, this may be an issue that doesn’t have a very good solution:

Becoming successful again with my career and finances. Or, at least recovering much of what I lost to start with.

I know that the general reaction to that will be “but much of life, success, and happiness isn’t about money!” Yes, that is usually true. But you have to understand how my entire adulthood has been centered around supporting myself that way. It’s not about having lots of actual $; it’s about how this a core part of my identity, and always will be. Not to mention the pride that goes along with succeeding at being your own boss.

So as long as I have failed in that aspect of life, I will continue to feel like I’ve failed overall. And could you really find happiness with that always lingering in the back of your mind?

If building success back the “right” way was going to take, say, just a few years, then I could manage that. But there lies the problem: my current lack of opportunities make that highly unlikely. This I’ve discussed before, and it presents a major barrier (not just for my finances, but even moreso for my state of mind). Because while I’m ok with having some patience, I’m not alright with grinding away until I’m 65 to come full circle.

This means that I may have to still take some bigger chances. I emphasize MAY, because I’ll have to think some more about whether or not it’s worth it (and the consequences if that wouldn’t work out).

These wouldn’t be the same hopeless larger risks (done for just a high) that I referred to in my last entry. It would be about focused, realistic chances to land just the bigger score(s) necessary. And then if that happens, returning to the “right” ways overall and entering my rebuilding phase with a clear conscience.

It would have to be with my financial market trading, because advantage gambling with an edge (in the current environment) has to be much more of a slow build for my situation. I’m sure you’re not surprised that the casinos don’t make it possible to intelligently crush them for large amounts overnight.

The good news is that if I go that route, I have the ability to find trades with incredible short-term potential. The bad news is that I missed out on two amazing ones in just the last year (one of which I blogged about), and they aren’t easy at all to come up with. So I may have already missed the boat. I can’t count on replicating those results anytime soon.

But I still may have to give it a shot.

The magic 8 ball is stuck

Today I made an unusual amount of progress when it comes to planning my career future. You’d think that would be a good thing:

I got caught up with a very knowledgeable close friend (a fellow advantage gambling pro), and found out some info that may cut down on the prep time that I need to do in my new city. Talked to another friend in that industry, and she said that she’d like for me to work with her at her company in that city. Looked at the latest environment for other 9 to 5 jobs in my “traditional” work field of recent years.

Realized that it might be worth a shot to turn my second wind of baseball card involvement into a side business on ebay. Talked with that knowledgeable friend above about that too, since he used to be a full-time seller years ago.

Unfortunately, these were the results:

Advantage gambling part to full time: The profitable opportunities are still not very plentiful for someone in my situation. Outlook not so good

Working that 9 to 5 with my friend: Her heart in the right place, but it’s just tough to see her following through with that (and it working out). Outlook not so good.

Other 9 to 5 jobs: Naturally places don’t seem to be focused on hiring at the moment for white collar work. Tough to tell how long it will take the world to get back to normal. Outlook not so good.

Selling cards as a side business on ebay: With all the competition out there (and the ebay fees and other transaction costs to buy and sell), it’s just tough to get the profit margins needed for a one-person operation that can’t sell in bulk. Even with my experience in that business. Outlook not so good.

Yup. The magic 8 ball appears to be stuck.

My past choices have gotten me painted into this corner, and now it’s gonna be tough to avoid paying the price for them. And needless to say, having to wait on the world to begin functioning again just makes things more difficult.

It might be kinda boring to just work in a cubicle all your life. To know exactly what the next day will be. Bring home that same paycheck, pay those same bills, and then do it all over and over and over again. But at least it’s normal.

My life is not normal.

Misery does “not” love company

While I realize how that title cliche…without my adjustment, of course….. partially implies that some unhappy people want others to be miserable too (to feel better about themselves), I have never agreed with the other interpretation that miserable people want to actually be around other miserable ones. IME, those who are unhappy and depressed are more likely to push others away (either directly or indirectly). And personally, I am never comfortable with my issues or any negativity adversely affecting others.

Back when I was doing well in my career, this wasn’t quite as much of a problem. Some of us few people who earn a living at either financial market trading or advantage gambling tend to meet each other eventually at some point. It’s a fairly unique (and very difficult) combination skillset, mindset, and knowledge mix that most don’t possess, and so there’s an underlying respect for anyone who can support themselves that way.

Unless you mess it up, that is.

You see, my friends from that walk of life have not dealt with most of my problems and failures. They may not have the most healthy overall mindset and ways of enjoying their daily existence (even the ones who are married with kids), but at least they are still able to keep their edge. Both careerwise and overall in life.

So when I started to have my worst times in recent years (the ones that, for the first time, I haven’t been able to dig out of), that made the rest of my life worse as well. Beyond anything financially. Not only was there the hurt of losing what I had, but there’s also the shame of being the only failure among my mix of friends and confidants in the trading/advantage gambling world.

I’m not one who spends much time concerned about what others think of me, but this was an exception to that rule. Losing the respect of those uniquely successful people is a hit to your pride. And while only one of them has ever really shown that he thinks less of me now than he did a dozen years ago (and that one, ironically, is by far the least skilled of them all), I know that they’re all thinking it.

How could they not? After all, I am the ONLY one out of that circle who isn’t still a successful person with a better life. The only one who became a screwup. The only one who doesn’t have the freedom to do what he wants anymore.

As you can imagine, that has just fueled my loner tendencies that much more. I barely keep in touch with any of those guys lately. Not only because of the shame and embarrassment, but because I’m not part of their world nearly as much now. They’re the ones still plugging away to make a nice living, while I’m still mostly back at square one.

It’s yet another part of my life that’s worse than it used to be. This downward spiral has taken so, so much.

The only question now is: how much of this lost life can I ever manage to get back?

Work, sabotage, and life. Not a good mix

Given my non-traditional career path, some might wonder what I meant when I referred to my discipline issues in my fields. Here are a few examples (and the destructive common theme):

Super Bowl XVI. I was seven years old. This was the first sports bet I ever made (and isn’t it funny how far back we can trace things sometimes.) The 49ers were playing the Bengals, and I bet my grandfather a dime that Cincinnati would win (nope, I didn’t quite have $1000 yet at that point eh. Literally 10 cents). You’re probably assuming that I’m referring to ANY bet being made, especially at that age, as a trend-setting problem. Not at all:

In the back of my mind, I didn’t even think I was going to win. My instincts, even at that age, were telling my that San Francisco would win that title. But I wanted the Bengals to win. I took something that I knew felt like a bad idea, and it was. SF 26, Cincin 21.

Fast forward to around age 16. I had a baseball card business throughout high school (while most teens were working at a fast food joint on weekends, I was setting up shop at sports card shows, buying and selling.) And I loved it. One day on vacation, dad and I were killing time at the local mall while my mother and grandmother shopped. There was a card shop there, so naturally I had a look. Not much going on, so I decided to spend $4 on a pack of ’82 Donruss baseball cards. The prize for that set was a Cal Ripken Jr. rookie card worth $35, and wouldn’t you know, I pulled one from that single pack. Great, right? Happiness, naturally? Nope…..

You see, the $4 investment was a bad idea, because there was virtually nothing of value out there in ’82 baseball sets except for the Ripken rookie. And your chances of getting one in a pack were about 1 in 45. Therefore, spending $4 for that shot at a $35 card was very poor value (in fact, just about the worst value for ANY old packs of any year). And I knew this full well. Even told that to Dad as we were leaving the store. So why on earth did I buy it? The fact that I got lucky doesn’t change how poor the choice was.

Then, about 8 years ago. I was starting to click some with my market trading again, and had just taken a large futures position on the S&P 500 to drop (the type of trade that I usually only held somewhere between a couple hours and a couple days). These futures trade throughout the night, and by around midnight, my position was off to a great start. I was smelling blood, and thinking how that trade might be a final big step in establishing continued success again.

But as the overnight hours leaked into sunrise, I could see that the market didn’t look like any further downside that I needed would happen then. So while my futures contracts hadn’t turned against me yet, it looked like the trade could turn at any time. Finally, around 7 AM, this started to happen. I still remember watching my screen and seeing the S&P spike up about four points at once, and thinking how that was likely the final nail for this trade’s potential. Time to get out of my contracts immediately, right? And based on what I was seeing, even switch to the other side and buy, of course?

You would think so. But that’s not what I did. I sat there and just watched it. Frozen by unfounded hope for the rest of the trade and by mild irritation, I let the market rebound all day against me. And did nothing. Had I exited my trade at around that 7 AM point, things would have still been in very good shape for me overall. And had I switched sides for the rest of the morning then too (as I knew I should), I would’ve really crushed things that day. Instead, I let a fantastic spot turn into a problem (as I’d done so many times before). And never really recovered afterward.

Why do we do this to ourselves sometimes? Why make these mistakes? In my case, a big part of the answer is that, as mentioned just above, I get frozen by hope sometimes. Or I get bored and seek out a high. But that doesn’t cover nearly all of it. What is the biggest part of my destructive habits? Self-sabotage. Read back up to the top again……hell, I was doing the same things occasionally when I was seven damn years old.

For all the time I’ve spent in learning about people (both myself and others), figuring out WHY we sabotage ourselves is still often a sticking point. I know a common argument is that it’s a lack of self-esteem and that, on some level, you don’t feel you deserve to win. But I can sure as hell say that wasn’t a problem for me at age 7. So I think there’s a lot more to it than that. Plus, it’s not like I’m always doing these things by any means. Just like I mentioned about my discipline issues before, you seem to cycle back and forth from the good choices to the bad ones. Though in my case, the deciding factor has been how (too often) I let the bad ones cause more damage than the good ones reward me.

All I know is I’d better get to the bottom of this soon, regardless of how difficult it is to. It’s at the top of my list of life stumbling blocks, so I’ll never turn things around permanently if I don’t.

The web of complex addiction from my chosen path

I’ve spent the last 20 years experiencing plenty of success and failure in my career. Most of that time has been spent self-employed (trading in the financial markets and advantage gambling for a living). At this point, my knowledge in those areas is quite vast and I’ve learned extensively about the right paths to take and pitfalls to avoid. Despite that, I have destroyed myself financially too often lately. Why?

These endeavors require many other factors to succeed, and two of the most important are opportunity and discipline. I have always struggled with the latter, but ample opportunities usually kept things going well overall for a long time. But once those dried up a good bit in recent years, my faults started to trump my strengths (and that virtually guarantees failure in these fields).

The main reasons for my work (and life) discipline issues can mostly be traced to my continuous depressive tendencies. I’m not manic or bipolar, but I am damaged enough to usually stay behind the 8-ball about keeping life in order. I also have strong addictive tendencies, and those have created quite the regular conundrums with my work.

How does this happen? I don’t always trade and gamble for the right (i.e. profitable/financially healthy) reasons. Too often, I give in to the need for a gambling “high” and take any number of self-sabotaging risks (crippling mistakes that stem from depression, unhappiness, being uneasy about life, impatience, and lately, the longing to regain my past success before it’s too late).

As you can imagine, this has created the aforementioned confusion in my last blog about my situation, especially with possible therapy. How often have you really heard of an addiction that you need to fight without stopping the underlying activity that supports you? I thought I’d found a parallel once with Overeaters Anonymous and even went to one of their meetings, but my explanation for my presence was met by those “you have three heads on your shoulder” looks.

It’s quite maddening, and I’m not sure if I’ll ever find the answers. But I’ll never stop trying to, and I’m hoping that a step of new progress was made today. I went out this afternoon with the hopes that a certain opportunity was still available at the local casino. When I got there and saw that someone else had already gotten it, the reaction was mild exasperation and (yet again) the urge to throw caution to the wind and do the wrong things. However, I was able to gather myself, spend a short time making some of the right choices there, and then leave without digging into my destructive habits.

Mind you, this was far from a new revelation overall; my pattern has always been to disruptively bounce back and forth between those right and wrong choices. BUT, this was one of the very few times that I ever felt the wrong urges, stopped, and had the willpower to change gears that day. And I’m glad to say that the thought of writing this blog was a part of finding that strength that I usually don’t.

What can I say. Hopefully it’s a start.

Therapy. Three strikes and…

Most people who seek out therapy likely feel that their stories and issues are fairly unique (only to find that their therapist can quickly trace their issues to some common life speed bumps.) In my three attempts to test out therapy in the last 15 years, suffice it to say that I have not gotten that reaction.

Attempt 1 (late 20s): Spent about half a dozen sessions in a local therapist’s office. She listened, listened, and listened. Finally I eventually asked “What do you think of everything I’ve told you? Any ideas on how to tackle my issues?” She stared at me blankly, mumbled something about “maybe control issues” and then (thankfully) time was about to run out for the day. As you might guess, that was my last visit there.

Attempt 2 (early 30s): Chose someone who seemed to have a very keen insights about people (especially family). First session went ok. Got homework. Came back with the homework. While barely beginning to explain the content of the homework, got quickly barked at and told off for “interrupting like your mother would do”, which I’d barely even really done (at minimum, it didn’t warrant anywhere near such an emotional reaction from her). Clearly she was more focused on being offended and (speaking of control issues) her own, rather than actually helping a patient.

Attempt 3 (two years ago/early 40s): Scoured the entire city for the best cognitive behavioral therapist around (as I’d realized that such a results-oriented approach should’ve always been the focus for my situation). After nearly an hour of first learning about me, was told “I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and I can always pinpoint in the first session if I can help someone and am the right fit. With you, I honestly have no idea if I can. I don’t even want to charge you for the session.”

So……now you can see why I’m at the point of self-therapy. Why has my career/past/present/strengths/weaknesses seemed so unusual? Next time