DO YOU SUCK OR ARE YOU AWESOME?
There's a certain freedom that comes along with not caring. I'm not talking about not caring in a self-destructive sense, where you end up on a street corner with a crack pipe and a $20 hooker. I'm talking about having a sense of detachment from the results of whatever you're doing. There is some real freedom in that frame of mind.
I have a difficult time caring for any one business or venture for more than a certain period of time. I become quickly bored as soon as I see that I am successful or even have the chance to be successful.
And it's not just my own ventures. I've worked for a couple different Wall Street firms. In the first year at both firms, I was either going to be heading up a new division or being promoted to higher position. In both cases, I ended up becoming disinterested after achieving some level of success.
I started an internet advisory service (I guess you can call it that, the word blog hadn't been invented in the late 90's) that became pretty successful. At its peak I had a few hundred members paying anywhere from $60 - $200 per month. The website is here thanks to waybackmachine.org (if any of you know me from this site, holla at me). It was a cool experience that probably could have become a lot cooler if I hadn't become bored with it. There wasn't much competition back then. It's not like the jungle of charts, opinions and blogs that are available on the internet today.
I was getting pats on the back from traders around Wall Street. They were my members. They really appreciated me and what I was trying to do with the site. Lots of people did well. I would get "thank you" emails all the time. One guy wrote me to thank me for allowing him to start a business of his own due to his trading profits. That felt good. It didn't make a difference...I still ended up bored.
And then there was my hedge fund. I made my hedge fund into the #1 ranked macro hedge fund in the country as of the beginning of 2004. Right after achieving that ranking and being showered with praise, cash and investors fighting for a position within the fund, I suffered two down years in a row that made me hate my life.
Even my hedge fund (my supposed life long dream) became burdensome to me after a period of time. The pressure of having investors breathing down your neck. Having personal relationships with a lot of them and wanting to make them rich beyond their wildest dreams in order to validate yourself to them. I almost did it for them, until I couldn't.
I wished during that time that I had the luxury of not caring. But I cared. I cared mostly for selfish reasons. But what isn't classified as selfish when you are in the business of managing money? Being selfish for the sake of profit is what I did on a daily basis. My investors didn't care about my selfishness, as long as it proved profitable, which it did....until it didn't.
Guys like me don't know where it is that we're going because no matter how good things get I can find a way to become disinterested. One of my investors once told me that I am so good at predicting what's going to happen a few years out that I forget to look at the here and now. I think that's because the here and now always seem uninteresting.
I look at guys that have been doing the same thing for years on end, I admire them in a way, but at the same time I feel sorry for them. It must be cool to have that intense focus and be a good finisher. I'm only a good starter...I've never finished a race well. What does that mean anyways? Do you ever "finish a race"? I think we keep racing. But do I want to be racing until the final minute of the final hour of my final day? How do I know when to stop? If I start I'll just keep going...maybe that's what I'm afraid of...keeping going.
I have this intense need to create. I am always in the process of creating. It may just be that I enjoy creating something from scratch and making sure it is viable. As soon as the process shifts from being a creative endeavor into something that feels like work, I begin to lose interest. Maybe I should just paint? I'm not very good, which means I would probably have to be an abstract artist.
I've enjoyed putting together this site in the couple months that I've been doing it. Not sure how many members I'll eventually end up getting. It would be cool to have 1,000 members. I would feel good if that happened. I just hope they don't bother me for stock tips or advice on their uncle's 401K. I'm sure if I got to 1,000 members it would prove burdensome in more ways than I can count. I would, at that point, find something new to create and lose interest in this. 1,000 members would dwindle to 100.
Unlike my past ventures involving the financial markets, I have a primary source of income outside of what I'm doing here. That gives me a lot of freedom to, as one example, post blog entries like this. I think it's good that I'm unlike the myriad of other financial bloggers out there who depend so much on their blogs for validation of their identity as "a wall street professional" that they can't be themselves. They can't tell you that they suck and they can't tell you how awesome they are. Either of those expressions would be too extreme. Being too extreme is unprofessional.
They can't tell you about their destructive side, about their defeats, their weaknesses...all the things that make us into human beings, as opposed to robots that wear colorful ties around our necks. Telling it how it is, with full honesty included isn't good for business. And when this business is your only way of getting by, you have to play the part...yeah, I get it. I'm glad I don't have to play any parts.
I suck when I become too successful at one thing. I become careless and lose interest when buckets of money and praise are showered upon my head. Up until that point, I'm awesome...really awesome actually.
Moral of the story: I'm awesome.......for now.
