2017 Year End Wrap Up
What Poker Has Meant to Me
Have the fondest memories of growing up active with mathletics and chess in elementary school. After school, our teams would visit other schools in the district and have little tournaments - and then at the end of the year there'd always be ribbons and trophies. Was always ever the only girl for miles and miles in these things, but every one was always super welcoming, and we would all have the best time.
When those activities ended at the start of junior high, wound up a little lost without those hobbies had come to love as an outlet. Started collecting baseball statistics for a while of all things, until finally just settled in on becoming more of a typical girl. Was always kind of known as the sweet one, and many of my new activities did wind up following along those lines - was the neighborhood pet sitter for several years, then looked after children as a camp counsellor, and then wound up trying to help people find flattering jeans at the Gap on weekends. Wasn't exactly unhappy in my teen years, but there always seemed to be this nagging feeling that something was missing from my life?
And then online poker came along - and it felt like that love of puzzles and games had managed to find as a child, had been found once again. And funny thing, but it was like poker was filled with all the same people there were in math and chess club!
Never managed to become very good at poker, and never made too much money. But the journey and all that's come with it has been a blast - having the chance to play a fun game with all sorts of people from all around the world, and learn new things. And then there's been fun stuff like railing live streams of tourneys with big payouts, with everything from Phil Hellmuth antics to Qui Nguyen wild racoon bluffs.
Really found myself again through poker, after feeling like had lost a part of myself for all those years - and for that, poker's been one of the great joys of my life. Do still play every once in a while, but not nearly as much as before now that it's gotten so hard.
Poker in the Decline, and Starting Investing
Change can be hard, because it requires us to leave our comfort zone of the familiar, and start anew. Even when things are no longer such a great fit, fear of the unknown can so often wind up leaving us frozen in place, unwilling to take those first steps. Wish it were possible for me to be able to say that trying out something new was an act of courage - but after tens of thousands of hands of breakeven poker over the course of several months, perhaps desperation and little else to lose besides my pride was all that was left standing in my way of trying something new.
My expectations were pretty low going into investing - after all, had little else but a couple of e-snippets from Warren Buffett to guide me on my new path. But that's how poker started for me as well. And just like with poker, my timing for getting started with investing appeared to be good, as the market was running super hot thanks to the campaign promise of fresh tax cuts.
Also tried keeping things simple while learning, although did go out on a bit of a limb by investing in individual stocks rather than an ETF. But studying all the different choices and putting together a personalized portfolio is the part of investing that reminded me so much of poker, and so this year's been as fun as poker used to be back when there was still money to be made even for a fish like me. Also wound up finishing the year off with over twice the return of the market - not sure if maybe investing may be a little bit softer the way poker used to be? In any case that was a pleasant surprise!
From Setbacks and Failures, to Learning Opportunities
With anything new though, perhaps it's natural to have a certain amount of ongoing self-doubt - oftentimes found myself wondering throughout the year if the gains had made were just variance at play, or if was actually making any progress?
My FANG stocks did wind up doing well last year, although there were also some stumbles. Bought gold while the price was running high, only to have it drop 10% the very next day. Also tried shorting SNAP and wound up selling it after the price started to rise. It's since dropped over something like 100%, so would have wound up making a huge profit if had just held on. Then wound up doing something similar with bitcoin, selling at $10k while the price wound up going all the way up to $17k in a matter of days. To make matters worse, there were haters in the bitcoin thread who were gloating over my opportunity cost - while at the very same time, my friends and family were treating me like a rock star for having bought bitcoin at $3k in the first place ("I feel like such a failure" ... "What? You did
amaazing!"
)
My loved ones meant well, but my bitcoin sale nevertheless wound up leaving me feeling quite depressed and alone in my disappointment. It's perhaps the possibility of setbacks that prevents so many of us from trying new things in the first place, so eager we are to avoid having our fears materialize? And here they were materialzing for me. It can sometimes seem like when the worst finally happens, things don't feel nearly as bad as it seemed like it might? But in this case, was feeling pretty bad lol.
In my time of despair, managed to find some resources that were quite helpful in helping me get back on my feet - one of the tips was able to find was that the mindset of feeling like we've failed is not the best way to approach setbacks, when trying out new things and making changes in our lives. Apparently the most constructive way to evaluate a situation like the timing of my bitcoin sale would have been to (1) ask if it was variance? (2) And if it wasn't, what can be learned from this experience?
That shift in mindset has been incredibly liberating and life-changing. After making that breakthough of insight, wound up finding it much easier to take risks in the face of the fears that used to hold me back - and now my learning curve has really taken off. Before, was left feeling like was just not cut out for short-selling after my money-losing experience with SNAP. Now after doing a bit more research into short-selling and with better bankroll management, my short of SHLD is doing well. Still have a lot more to learn and practice with short-selling, but the shift to focusing instead on what there is to be learned from setbacks seems to have helped alleviate so much of the self-doubt that used to prevent me from even trying in the first place. Have also started learning technical analysis, looking for value stocks, and buying options - and now keep a journal of all the things have learned from my investments so far, that should be able to help me make better investments moving forward. Never would have imagined any of this would have been in the cards a year ago, when was first starting out investing in FANG stocks this time last year.
Growing By Taking Risks, and Finding Support
This experience of facing obstacles while trying out new things left me wondering if maybe the world isn't always great about providing us all with all the tools we may each need to really thrive in life. So much of conventional wisdom seems to have been arrived at with the majority in mind - go to school, get good grades so you can get a good job, and buy ETFs, etc. People are so quick to slap risk-takers down with a failure label, it's no wonder people wind up so easily discouraged after sticking their neck out and wind up crawling back into the safety of the familiar, even if the familiar is not so great.
And yet so much of life seems to reward those who are willing to take the risk of putting themselves out there. All the times have been told have inspired someone, it's usually been for doing something that had caught their eye because it was outside the box. And so many of those times, was largely able to get to that point in the first place because someone was there to offer support and encouragement, instead of the opposite. Perhaps it's not always going to be easy to find people who have already taken the journey that we're embarking upon, who have faced the same challenges that we now face, who may be able to provide us with a roadmap and the tools we may need to help us get to where it is we want to go. But perhaps it's worth continuing to search until we find that support, even if it has to come from a youtube video or an e-book? E-resources are what helped get me out of my pit of despair after the bitcoin incident - getting stuck felt much more manageable, when was able to find resources that were able to help me get unstuck and moving forward in better shape than ever.
Poker Life Skills
It can be so easy in life to wind up lost or stuck, feeling tired and discouraged, or bruised by life. Have been there, and it's not always easy to muster up the strength we may need to try new things that may be a better fit for us, and more of what we're looking for in life. But perhaps after playing poker, we'll never be starting right from the beginning of anything?
The mindset shift of being careful to avoid tying one's self-esteem to results and instead only focus on what's new to be learned - guess that's more or less that thing from poker of not being results oriented, where it's better to focus on the quality of one's play? Poker's also taught us all proper bankroll management, so we're always planning ahead and prepared for worst-case scenarios - using those same steps while trying to learn investing has helped reduce some of the uncertainty, which even seemed to help reduce some of my fears. And being used to downswings and tilt kept me moving forward in search of books and other resources, when really wasn't feeling very optimistic about any of them possibly being of any help - and then they were! Also coaching and training sites are such a big part of improving with poker - so everybody's already used making learning and ongoing improvements a habit.
Started working for the family company at the beginning of the year, and have set a goal of trying to double net earnings by the end of the year. Have no idea if it will be possible, but am going to keep reading everything under the sun, and plan on trying whatever ideas am able to find, and see?
Have never been the smartest, or the most creative, or the most wise - but there seems to be something to that idea that there's joy to be found in life from putting oneself out there, and being willing to take chances even if there's stumbles along the way. It kind of feels like am running above life expectation with some of the things am now finding myself doing - but if a fish like me can learn new things, perhaps many of us are capable of so much more than we may believe?