my journal 2

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here with my friends...

... having a very hard time relaxing. After several years of non-stop work on both office and automated systems, i am having a very hard time relaxing. It's the time to relax, during these two weeks I have the opportunity to relax and instead I am so unused to it that it's making me stress out even more. I can't even sleep by how nervous/excited I am. I don't know if i am either nervous or excited to go on vacation for 2 weeks.

I skipped work today because after a heavy dinner i was unable to sleep last night.

I will probably skip the whole day or most of it tomorrow, because once again I am sleepless.

It's not my fault. I always told the guys at the office to allow me to take vacations only one day at a time or I'd have a hard time dealing with it, but hell no, they said Italian law now requires them to MAKE me go on vacation for at least 2 straight weeks, thereby entirely disrupting my work schedule and rythm.

So here they have it, the consequence is that I started relaxing/stressing out two days earlier (as my friends came here two days early) and I skipped work as a consequence. Probably they won't even give me a hard time about it, but the problem is that I totally feel guilty about it, and yet i shouldn't, because i simply can't sleep and that is so because I simply worked my ass off for the past several years and now a vacation of 2 weeks feels like a big problem.

Work is simply a bad thing, and vacation makes me come back to life, and when I come back to life I don't want to work anymore, and that is why I always had wanted to avoid long vacations, but hell no the state forces me to take it, so the hell with everyone, the state and the office, and myself. I can't help it. I can't sleep and I am skipping work tomorrow as well. Next time they'll make a law that doesn't force me to go on vacation.
 
Hi

been following your journal for a few weeks now and I have to say I really look forward to your posts. You have a lot of ups and downs and I think it makes interesting reading. You 'come across' in your writings as a very nice person; another human being trying to make the best of things..Anyway I see you sometimes receive criticism, not always fair or reasonable. All I can say is that it's the easiest thing in the world to criticise someone and to be wise in hindsight. Personally I take my hat off to you and wish you well in your life and tradings..

By the way I never have problems with vacations/holidays in that it's never long enough!

Good trading..

Big Al60
 
Oh, thanks for these very nice compliments. It's one of the best feedbacks I've received so far for my journal, in the top #5 of all feedbacks. I've always wanted to be a writer and to have a reader who told me the things you wrote.

If you don't have problems taking a vacation, it means you're not afflicted by a compulsive personality (like me) and probably won't have all my problems with trading.

Now I even have the problem that I cannot sleep on vacation, as it's been for the past 2 days (actually I had to go to work, but I told my colleagues that I am taking two days off since I couldn't sleep).

Change has always stressed me out. These ridiculous two-weeks vacation in the middle of a five-year work period are a grotesque joke. It would be like having, as a prize, to live one day with a millionaire. I would rather not do it, because it would **** me off and disrupt my life more than give me pleasure. But they forced me and here I am.
 
on vacation

I am on vacation with those people and today i let them go on a trip by themselves, so I could take a break, because I am not too social and being too much around them was stressing me out.

But the vacation is working and I found out that today I slept 12 hours. Very good for me. I hadn't done it in years.

So I just woke up and opened up the EUR and I noticed it has fallen a lot more in the meanwhile:
http://futuresource.quote.com/charts/charts.jsp?s=DX&o=&a=D&z=800x550&d=MEDIUM&b=CANDLE&st=

Quite rare to see such falls (rises on the Dollar Index chart above). If it hadn't blown out my account ten days ago, it would have done it last week for sure, because I would have kept on trying to pick a bottom, and would have doubled up if I had been proven wrong. That's a sure way to blow out your account: you just double up when you're wrong, and sooner or later you'll be wrong enough to lose everything. Even better: you bet everything on every trade, and you'll blow it out. I basically employ trading methods that ensure financial ruin. I have a tendency to do that. Even once I find methods that don't do that, I revert back to the old methods.

Anyway, today I am home, sleeping, but not just because these guys were tiring me with their company (they're quite easy to get along with, but they still tire me). Yesterday I started running like an idiot while going down some hills near the lighthouse, and I fell. It made me realize that I am not a kid any more and my legs aren't as quick as they used to be. So I now have a scratch near my elbow and something in my knee. Nothing broken. So that's a second good reason to do nothing. From now on, I'll skip the hiking and just stay at this house near the beach, the house where I had always planned to live. Of course in two weeks I'll have to go back to work.

The weather this year sucked so I am not sure if I am ready for a swim yet. I can barely sleep at night by how freezing it is. The water will definitely be cold, but maybe not freezing (not meant literally). That's the question. I can take 20 celsius degrees and a little less, but not too much less.
 
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Re: on vacation

From now on, I'll skip the hiking and just stay at this house near the beach, the house where I had always planned to live. Of course in two weeks I'll have to go back to work.

The weather this year sucked so I am not sure if I am ready for a swim yet. I can barely sleep at night by how freezing it is. The water will definitely be cold, but maybe not freezing (not meant literally). That's the question. I can take 20 celsius degrees and a little less, but not too much less.

Travis, sounds like an ideal place for a trader to live. Post an image, please - or even better:

http://www.gigapan.org/gigapans/most_popular/
 
Yeah, I'll post two pictures my friend took last year:

pic.jpg

pic2.jpg

Eventually I did go swimming, after looking it up on the internet and finding out that the water is about 18 degrees celsius. It was ok. I lasted over half an hour.

The internet connection is the part that sucks. Being this place so isolated, I have problems connecting to the internet.
 
Did that naked lady just pop up from behind a rock or did you know her?
 
It was May, and we saw this photographer shooting pictures of this woman, probably for a calendar. I wasn't even looking but my friend took a couple of pictures, which turned out to be quite good in my opinion.
 
Back home. We're waiting for the fourth alumnus. In the meanwhile the systems are trading and today I made about 1800. Amazing achievement, considering that I was at 2250. Now I am over 4000. Too bad two weeks ago I blew out my account.
 
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Back home. We're waiting for the fourth alumnus. In the meanwhile the systems are trading and today I made about 1800. Amazing achievement, considering that I was at 2250. Now I am over 4000. Too bad two weeks ago I blew out my account.

Travis, I'm confused - you didn't totally blow out your account did you? This is real money you're talking about? Or are you back on simulation?
 
I had brought it down to just 2000 something, then since my cash was all in EUR, it fell down to 1500, I wired another 800 euros, then lost on a trade, it basically was at 2250 today. Then today, while I was swimming and hiking, these two awesome trades that almost doubled my capital in just a few hours (on GBL and ZN). Now I am back above 4000. I wish it were always like this. If that were the case, I could just quit the job and stay here, which was my initial plan. Swimming definitely keeps me away from overtrading. I wish I could do it. Even all the connection problems are solved now.

Unfortunately the situation is quite different, because this clarity will all be gone as soon as I'll be back at work. I will feel oppressed and doomed, try to rush things, overtrade when I get home... blow out my account again. Maybe what I should do is just quit my job even without having the money to do so, or this vicious circle might continue forever, like this:

1) want to quit job and need capital to do that
2) overtrade
3) lose all capital
4) stay another year at job
5) want to quit job even more
6) overtrade even more...

And so on until regular retirement, when of course I'd be able to live here but there'll be no point to trading then. Every year that goes by make my trading and my systems more worthless.
 
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Peachy.

I have another suggestion for you (for you to file with all the others in the trashcan!)

You need to set up an account that you are legally only entitled to trade via an automated trading system.

You need to set up a trust fund for yourself which is invested in an account to be traded only by your system running on a computer in a solicitor's office where you can only log in physically at the workstation and where you are only allowed to do admin to keep the system running.

You fix the paperwork with the solicitor beforehand to prohibit yourself from making any trades from anywhere else in the account, in fact you could get the solicitor to keep the login details secret from you.

And all your withdrawals from the account have to be countersigned by the solicitor, to keep you from siphoning off funds for your discretionary trading.
 
Well... this takes a lot of resources, but thanks for the advice. When I'll have the energy and resources I'll do it this way. The first problems that I see is that it might stop even my positive changes, such as fixing the systems when it doesn't work and similar. I think it will always be a good thing for me to have full control of the systems. The only thing that makes me abuse that control is a burning desire to increase my capital. But 99% of the other changes I make are good. The problem is that 1% of changes (discretionary trading) that causes me to blow out my account. Another problem I see is all the paperwork and costs by having other people involved in my trading in the way that you suggest.
 
friends, responsibilities, growing old, other ideas

Here I am. It's past midnight. In yet another city, with my three friends from highschool.

One of them is leaving tomorrow morning at 8 am. Which means we're all getting up at 5 am to take him to the airport. On top of all this bad planning by him, he even kept me up until now by talking to the other friend. Another friend will be driving and he tried to sleep but who knows if he managed.

Tomorrow this guy will leave and we'll meet again in 20 years.

Also, I've got responsibilities: I am the host, whether I like it or not. I can't just say to the others that tomorrow I'll be sleeping and to take him to the airport without me.

What are friends and why are we attracted to friends? Life would be easier without this attraction. Friends don't make you any money, in fact they make you spend money and resources, yet we do it. I wonder. Friends are part of what separates life other than the vegetating part. I've often been accused of living like a vegetable, but it's not true, since I went out of my way to meet friends from all corners of the world. Actually they went out of their way, since I stayed here, but to me getting up after sleeping 3 hours is indeed getting out of my way. This two-weeks vacation will have cost me over 1000 dollars by the end of it, if not more.

In what directions have we grown during these last few years? I don't know. There's two guys take a lot of photographs. I worry a lot about dates, time, schedules, keys and stuff like that. I am accused of being obsessive-compulsive and a control freak, and these guys regularly forget keys, coffee and milk on the stove, don't wash dishes... i don't know. I get along better with obsessive-compulsive people I guess, than easy-going people who schedule flights at 8 am, making everyone get up at 5 am, and keeping them from sleeping on top of it.

Is my desire to be with friends enough to put up with all these problems? Maybe not, maybe that's why I get in touch with the best friends only once every few decades.

After all, I do prefer the vegatable lifestyle.

Tomorrow I'll put this friend on a plane, I'll be totally cranky and I'll ask the other two friends which of these they prefer best:

1) go back to the beach house so I and they can finish the normal 8 hours of sleep

2) come back to the city so I and they can finish the normal 8 hours of sleep

3) they take me back to do #1 or #2 and I sleep at home while they drive around, as I can't enjoy any type of activity unless I've slept at least 6 hours

I found it interesting to meet them after all these years, and good, but also sad in many ways.

Mainly I found it sad because of this: what have we done in all these years? Not much. But maybe what is sad is that I am the one who hasn't done much. I am the one seeing everything in a negative light. They're positive and outgoing.

On the other hand, I am not all bad. In life there can't be only planning and organization, but in the same way there can't be just slacking off, losing things, breaking things. My bet is that one day some accident will happen caused by their carelessness. Actually it did happen already: one broke his camera and one got run over by a wave.

But someone might bet that the most accidents will happen to me and that they will be caused by my compulsiveness.

That is the real question after all: does compulsiveness produce more benefits and less problems than carelessness?

A compulsive person is more efficient in getting things done, but he's also causing many side-effects.

1) he's not enjoying himself
2) he's stressing out and this could cause negative actions - first of all having problems with sleeping, which then causes inefficiency in action

Compulsiveness consists of permanent alertness and frustration.

Carelessness is the opposite, and it is a good and pleasant state of mind, but produces many accidents, such as losing keys, and other things, breaking things, hurting themselves and people, not seeing answers and solutions, working inefficiently.

However, the careless person lives happily, even if maybe with less resources and for less time than the compulsive person. The compulsive person has everything under control and yet he is unhappy and constantly worried - that's the only way to try and keep everything under control.

This interaction with these old friends has made me think about this a lot. There's some carelessness, a lot of it, in two of them. And there's no compulsiveness and organization in one of them. And there's being a control freak as far as the way I am.

I've achieved nothing yet, the other two are doctors, and the one leaving today has a small company. The only frustrated one seems to be me, but that may be caused by other reasons than being tidy and all that.

Anyway. They have put up with me, so I am quite grateful for that, because no one usually puts up with me on vacation without complaining at least once. They haven't said anything instead, so that means they've shown a lot of patience and respect. I can't ignore this nor allow myself to forget it.

Having said this, even if they were the best people I know, I still find it hard to be around people for this long. One dinner per week is more than enough. Living for two weeks with other people is quite tiring. If it weren't for their patience with my impatience for them (they tolerated me but I didn't tolerate them), I would have gotten into huge arguments already, and we would have gone our separate ways. Basically, I am intolerant of anything less than perfection, which means doing everything my way. This leads me to acting like a dictator and trying to have my way directly or indirectly.

I remember telling my friends "you organize the day because otherwise I'll be dictating every single detail", and half an hour later I was asking my friend to postpone his shower until after the hike or else it would be useless. That is shockingly funny and we laughed about it, but it shows the fact that I try to control people, by giving them "advice" and in other ways (just with my facial expression), exactly as my much hated father did with me.

I've become exactly like my father, and like him I say "it would be best to...", "i would advise to...", and I keep on busting people's balls trying to optimize every single detail of everything that surrounds me. Optimization sickness... On the other hand it all seems rational and with a good purpose. If others did it with me I would hate it and rebel, as I did with my father. When people don't follow my advice, I have noticed that I often wish them to fail and pay for not listening to me, even fail at my own expense, like the time my girlfriend was drying my towel on the porch, didn't attach it to anything, and the wind took it away, just as I had predicted. I was happier to be proven right than sad for losing a towel. A couple of days ago, the same happened with the friend who broke his camera. On our way to a place, they were faster and didn't even wait for me. They left me behind by a few minutes and didn't care. On our way back I decided i would not wait for them, just as they had done with me. But then one of them kind of engaged in a race with me, to show me he was faster than me (ridiculous because I grew up here and I know where to put my feet). He didn't say anything, but he was right behind me, trying to pass me again, and most likely leave me behind, as he had done on our way to the place. So eventually he slipped and broke his expensive camera, and to tell you the truth i feel that it served him right, even though of course I didn't say anything, like rejoicing openly.

Now they're all sleeping, and with all my frustration and compulsiveness, despite going to bed 2 hours before them, and I am falling asleep two hours after them. By not worrying about how much sleep they get, they will have slept more than me. The consequence of everything will be that I will ruin their day tomorrow with my conditions.

In a social context, it's better the carefree careless easygoing type of person. In a work environment, you want who does the best job, which is often the control freak guy. You want to have a control freak dentist, who will obsessively try to do the best job he can, and know every single detail about his job. You don't want a careless carefree easygoing dentist or surgeon. The same for every other job. You want a control freak maid. You want a control freak driver, who won't get you into an accident. You want a control freak waiter, cook.

You basically want alert people, and being alert is the opposite of being relaxed. Being intelligent is the same as being alert, and being relaxed in many ways is equivalent to being stupid, unless you're constantly alert about stupid details, which could be the case, while the carefree guy could be thinking about the big picture. I am not ruling that the carefree guy could produce better results than the control freak. However, when the carefree guy. as a consequence of his attitude, lives in a messy house, loses things, like keys and such, i don't see what kind of good consequences from his attitude could compensate those problems.

Anyway. Tomorrow I have to go to the airport. No matter how little I will have slept at 5 am, which is now only 3 and a half hours away. I think i will get in touch with this disorganized guy in another 20 years, once I'll have forgotten about all the headaches he's caused me by being disorganized.

In the future, I gotta remember to stay away from disorganized people, which pretty much leaves out 90% of potential friends. In fact, the most likable people are the disorganized ones. If I want to rest and relax for a few hours, I certainly won't look for a control freak like me. But if I want to live in a house with someone, I want an organized, methodical, precise person. That's the problem: you can meet these friends for a few hours, or go on vacation with them as long as you live in separate houses and you don't have to travel with them.

That's the mistake my father did, by marrying a disorganized clumsy mom: he gets to criticize her all day long, but he doesn't really live a happy family life. On the other hand, the advantage is that he's never getting criticized because she's not like him. He makes her life hell, but no one bothers him. Maybe that's what I tend do with my friends. I tend to choose careless people who will put up with my obsessive-compulsive narcissistic control freak personality, and to whom I will be useful, rather than choosing people like me, with whom I'd be fighting all day long about which way things should be done.

I do have such a friend, at the bank. We spent hours discussing how glasses should be dried: whether on the way up or down. I was washing dishes and he dared to tell me that I should dry them the other way, but I told him "no, I do it this way because otherwise this and that happens...". He said "but this way they dry faster...". And then we went on for days.

All people can be classified according to this spectrum: on one side control freak and on the other side of it careless morons. The best people to hang out with are the careless morons, but the people you want around your property are the control freaks. Don't allow the careless morons to get into your house basically or you'll start resenting them for damage they'll be doing to your property. Break things, reposition things the wrong way, open things without closing them, leaving doors... a lot of damage they do on a daily basis. This time I've got 2 careless morons I have to look after and one good guy, who's not even a control freak.
 
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Re: friends, responsibilities, growing old, other ideas

I've become exactly like my father, and like him I say "it would be best to...", "i would advise to...", and I keep on busting people's balls trying to optimize every single detail of everything that surrounds me.

We all end up like our parents. Fact of life. It's not important enough to change it, even though I hate it when i see myself making the same mistakes my dad did. It's not important enough to make the effort on a continual basis to try to break those little habits.
 
I am better than my dad in this way:

1) I know I am sick
2) I tell people I am sick
3) I tell people to please not let me have my way in my attempt to control them
 
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