Tag: Rambling

Gambling with stocks

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Describe a risk you took that you do not regret.

I’m not great with money, but I’m not BAD with money either, I’ve just chosen priorities that don’t allow me to live an excruciatingly frugal and bland life. I like to have fun and enjoy my (occasionally expensive) hobbies. Sometimes, though, life throws something at you that you can’t pass up.

Aside from the odd lottery ticket here or there when the jackpots are enormous, I don’t typically gamble. No video lottery or keno, no bingo, no casinos, etc. The risks involved in gambling just aren’t worth it. I have my retirement savings through work that are technically stocks/funds, but I consider the stock market to be gambling. Unless you have a shit ton of money to spread around and still live a comfortable life, it’s not a viable source of income because there is too great a chance of losing it all. So, for a long time now I’ve never really put much time or money into the stock market. Until the GameStop craze happened a few years ago.

I missed the window in January of 2021 to get in cheap right before the huge spike in the stock price for GameStop and some of the others that were in the same boat, but I kept watch and found an opportunity to jump in somewhere in the middle. Initially I was going to just be a spectator, but then I got my income tax refund.

Now, I didn’t jump all in with my refund money. I used some of it to chip at some debts and only used a relatively small amount toward the stocks. I invested enough that, should I catch another spike, I could see a decent gain and sell. Then I waited. June rolled around and the spike hit well enough that I decided to not gamble any further and sell. I made enough money in that short term gain to basically equal one of my paychecks at the time. I knew enough about capital gains to know that I would have to declare this on my taxes the following year, and rather than have to worry about it later I just made a payment directly to the IRS for what I believed to be the tax on short term capital gains on the small amount I had “won” from this gamble, and then I was truly done.

It wasn’t a huge risk because I could still financially survive and not worry about incurring losses, but I obviously don’t regret it because I made a little extra money. Not life changing money, but money I didn’t have before. That’s all that mattered.

FOMO, inaction, and regrets

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Write about a time when you didn’t take action but wish you had. What would you do differently?

I have spent a good chunk of the day ruminating over this prompt, letting it sit in the back of my head while I work and occasionally returning to it to see if any new thoughts come to mind. My dilemma, I’ve decided, is that I have reached a point in my life where the things I don’t take action on I don’t regret. There are plenty of choices I’ve made in my past that have fit the bill but I no longer worry about them because I’ve deemed them as “expired”. Of course, I should clarify, I am referring to important things that no longer matter in the grand scheme of things, or that after a long enough time I realize it was probably for the best anyway.

So instead I’m going to mention something a little more silly.

Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast have been running their Magic: The Gathering releases HARD for the last several years. Some of the products they’ve introduced, specifically their Secret Lair products, have had mixed reception. Some are really good and others lackluster. I’ve only ever purchased one of them because I missed out on the initial release of a particular card (“Atraxa, Praetors’ Voice”, the one I totally didn’t 3D print a figure of to paint.) There have been others that I look back on and wish I had just sucked it up and pulled the trigger on buying. Not many, but there have been some. Honestly, though, it’s just more money spent and I have to rationalize whether it would have really been worth spending on to get cards I may never have played. That’s how I’m getting around the FOMO.

Additionally, the reverse is true for video games. There have been games I bought because of that FOMO that I ended up not playing much. I don’t really regret the purchases, but I definitely could have done something different. Like not buying a game that my friend was all hyped about only to end up barely playing with them at all and moving on to the next big thing.

FOMO sucks. Inaction that leads to regret also sucks. Such is life.

Being nervous

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What makes you nervous?

For a long time I used to be nervous about a lot of things when I had no idea of the outcome. Uncertainty can be brutal on the nerves for the naturally anxious.

At some point in the last five years or so I got to a point where I couldn’t afford to waste the time or energy worrying over things outside of my control and to just let things happen as they will (not in a “Jesus take the wheel” kind of way) while focusing on the things I can directly change or control.

Nowadays, the things that make me nervous are time-related. Not the things that will inevitably happen, but the time I spend on various things or how I plan and coordinate activities around each other. If someone sets a deadline or a meeting time then I do what I can to hit those marks, but I always feel nervous that I’m not going to make it on time. This is also affected by my own internal struggle to procrastinate, which is a terrible habit, but sometimes the pressure helps. This is what happened to me with that NYC Midnight Short Story Challenge. I started on time and did some work throughout the first couple days, but then work got in the way by chewing through my mental energy capacity to put in the effort until the last hour or so before the submission deadline. Something similar happened with NaNoWriMo last year, but it was mostly self-imposed because I did not actually sign up. I just tried to do it and then got nervous when I wasn’t hitting my word count goals even when I was scheduling time for myself to work. I just didn’t have enough energy at the end of the day and that compounded the nerves a bit.

I’m sure there are other things that make me nervous if I think harder about it but scheduling times for things in your life can be a real bitch and has the greatest impact so far.

When I need to unwind

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How do you unwind after a demanding day?

Everyone has their own ways of doing things, but there are only so many options. This means that there is very likely to be a way to unwind that I mention below that resonates with someone.

I guess for me it all depends on what kind of demanding day I had that determines what I feel I need to do to properly unwind. Was the day emotionally/mentally demanding, or physically demanding? What level did it get to, somewhere between fairly and extremely demanding, or maybe less?

I’m not the type to go grab a drink at the end of a tough day, but it’s not completely off the table. It just depends on the circumstances. Otherwise, the vast majority of the time I’ve spent unwinding over the years has been the same.

The days that are mentally draining are the days I choose to check out from reality to some degree. Read a book, binge a few episodes of a show, play some chill farming sim games or something of the like. I’ll probably be laying in bed already for some of these just because then if I start to doze off I’m already where I want to be for the inevitable energy crash.

If the day was physically demanding then I probably am doing two things immediately upon getting home. Eating and showering, but not necessarily in that order. Typically on these days I still have plenty of energy somehow, so I’m able to enjoy more of my hobbies. I know it might sound strange, but physically taxing activities don’t drain me the way mentally taxing activities can. Unless it was a REALLY physically demanding day like the first couple weeks of when I worked the overnight shift at Big Red Circles. Then it’s eat, shower, and pass out in bed. No energy crash like the mentally draining days, my body is just ready for sleep.

Fairly straightforward approach to unwinding, I think.

How I use social media

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How do you use social media?

Social media is very different today from when I first started with Myspace 20 years ago.

I went from Myspace into Facebook during high school, with Myspace being abandoned after only a few years. Facebook was the core of my social media use for the majority of all this time. At first I was using it to seem interesting and garner the attention of my peers (like most teenagers and young adults in college did) while staying connected with them and my family. That has long since changed. Now I don’t even post anything on Facebook, or hardly use it at all, except to stay connected with family and very select friends.

When Twitter (I refuse to call it anything else) came along, I didn’t jump on it right away. When I did eventually start using it I hadn’t yet started streaming on Twitch, but that is what it ultimately became. My connection and attempts at increasing engagement. Just like everyone else. Instagram went much the same way when I finally took the plunge into that territory. The difference being that I had also begun shifting into painting miniatures, so I was trying to share my work while advertising my Twitch channel.

Somewhere in the mix of all of that I also started writing again. I had the grand idea of trying to mesh writing together with all of those platforms. I tried to create engagement with my Twitch audience by allowing requests for me to write something for them based on points. All of that was supposed to be shared here on the blog, and I did good at first but obviously that didn’t go anywhere and I still have a backlog of requests.

At some point I backed off of streaming because of the amount of time and effort it required, which I was struggling to afford when work was taking up a lot of my mental and emotional bandwidth. I tried to continue using Instagram to share my work with painting the miniatures, and I still do that today to a small degree whenever I finish something and feel inclined to share.

Now there are some other social media platforms out there, like Threads, which I have reserved my typical username on but I never really use (just like all the others.) Instead, I’ve been focusing on writing here on the blog and in my private note space for the stories I’m developing.

That should cover my history and current usage of social media. Maybe it will change again in the future, but who knows?

Quick draw thought

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Jot down the first thing that comes to your mind.

Disclaimer: This post is not sponsored by anyone.

“This leftover orange dreamsicle frosty has a really good consistency even after being in the freezer for a few days!”

I said this to myself, at 12:30AM, after having slept for four hours and royally fucking my sleep for the next few days, while checking on my daily tasks…

Anyways, short post today for the daily writing prompt because I have a VERY lengthy post coming later in the morning. (It’s finally time to share my round 1 submission from this year’s NYC Midnight short story challenge!)

Those random positive strangers

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Describe a random encounter with a stranger that stuck out positively to you.

A few months back my Dad decided to tag along with my sister to one of the game stores in town where she could pick up some Lorcana cards. During that trip is when my Dad learned about a tabletop game you might have heard of called Necromunda (part of the Warhammer 40,000 universe.) He watched a couple of guys at the store playing and was instantly drawn in.

Now, that encounter was solely for my Dad as I obviously was not there, but it is the precursor to the events of this past Saturday.

My Dad was welcomed in and the guys explaining the rules along with everything he needed to play. Then the store owner helped him pick out the things he needed to play but he didn’t buy anything on that particular trip. He waited until the next time, when he could ask me to come with, to buy the things he needed. You see, one of the most important things about any of the Warhammer kits you buy is that they aren’t pre-assembled and painted. My Dad knew that I had been dabbling in painting miniatures, and that if he asked I would handle all of that for him. Which I did end up doing.

I had never worked on any Warhammer stuff before, so it was a new experience for me. My Dad wanted me to bring my painting stuff to his house so he could spend time chatting with me while watching me work. I only ever came over on the weekends for a couple hours or so at a time, so it took a while to get things done. (In retrospect, I now know a few things I could have done differently to expedite the process.) It took a few months to get done because there were multiple weekends where we didn’t get together for our usual family gatherings. Sick kids, sick parents, bad timing all around for various reasons.

Anyways, I got all ten of the little guys assembled and painted, and my Dad brought them to the Warhammer store here in town (rather than the original game store we went to) so he could talk to some guys there about playing.

If you’re still with me, this is where MY encounter with a stranger was positive.

My Dad asked me to meet him at the store, so I obliged and headed over. When I got there the store owner was walking my Dad through how to play, and a couple of other guys were assembling and painting their own minis. The topic of painting came up, obviously, when my Dad mentioned I had painted his for him, and we all got to talking and sharing. The guys showed me what they were working on as well as a finished piece (some really cool mech thing with long skinny legs and a rail gun or something hanging from underneath) and I shared some of the things I had painted for Black Rose Wars and the Totally-Not-Atraxa that I had printed and painted.

We had a good conversation all around, and seeing other people work on (and struggle with) painting minis really helped me realize that, even with imperfections in my painting techniques, they were more or less like me in that area. That even if I keep to myself most of the time with this hobby, I am not alone, and not everyone will be as good as the people I see on Instagram.

Making big decisions

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Describe a decision you made in the past that helped you learn or grow.

Have you ever felt like some aspect of your life has caused the rest of it to feel boring or stagnate? That’s kind of where I was before I landed in my current job. The same thing day after day, week after week, and struggling to move forward.

About nine years ago I was working the overnight shift at Big Red Circles Mart when two separate events happened that required different decisions.

The first event was when I was contacted by a third-party head hunting/hiring agency that wanted people with tech experience for a temporary job in my area. In retrospect the job was very straightforward and easy, but at the time I felt some anxiety about whether I should accept the work. I needed the money, what little it offered given the circumstances, and I figured I could add it to my resume when I eventually left that overnight job. The hangup was some irrational anxiety about the risks of what it might do to my primary job. I pushed aside the anxiety, talked it over with my bosses, who were cool with it, and made sure there weren’t any scheduling conflicts. I signed all the required documents and NDA’s, gathered my tools, and set off to complete my tasks. There were no repercussions with my primary job at the time, which made the next part a little easier to handle.

The second event piggybacks on the first, taking place about five or six months later. A different hiring agency contacted me for a more permanent position. The one I’m in now. The anxiety was back, but I knew this opportunity would be better. That anxiety was easier to deal with a second time, so I made the jump.

It was those decisions to fight my anxiety and insecurity, to take those risks, that helped me get to where I am today.

Where I’ll never go

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What place in the world do you never want to visit? Why?

The world is huge, and there are far too many places for the average person to ever visit in their entire life. That said, even less people will visit places like the bottom of the ocean, Antarctica, the Arctic Circle, and other extreme places.

Those places are not on my list of “never want to visit” (for obvious reasons.) Instead, I saw a clip online of a place I never want to visit where tumbleweeds covered EVERYTHING to the point that a truck with a plow attachment (normally used for snow, or so I thought) was trying to clear the road and they got buried underneath. That place, according to some comments, is South Jordan, Utah. Tumbleweeds suck, and to have them blowing around in the dust filled wind and blanketing everything in spiny, thorny hell? That’s a no from me.

I know there are other places in the world that live on the same list, and tumbleweeds are more of an “inconvenience” than a real danger (on their own) but that’s just where my mind went first because the clip was fresh in my mind.

Family looking out for family

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Describe a positive thing a family member has done for you.

I’ve mentioned in previous posts how my family has had an impact on my life, and in those posts I’ve only really mentioned my Dad or brothers. Maybe I’ve mentioned that I have a sister, but I haven’t shared much of what she has done for me.

The way my family has looked out for each other has changed throughout my life. As a kid, after our Mom passed away, my older brother did his best to help out my younger brother and I while Dad was busy working to provide for us. I don’t want to say my sister was nowhere to be seen when it came to looking out for us, but I’m sure that, outside of one particular event, she was doing what she could behind the scenes, so to speak.

A little more backstory for today’s prompt. Our Stepmom passed away a couple of years ago, and in the months that followed we all did what we could to spend time with Dad to make sure he was okay. He had been the one taking care of our Stepmom the last few years of her life battling cancer. One of the things he did was jump on the opportunity to buy the house next to my younger brother and his family. Not so he could move closer, he fully intended to stay on the farm with the horses, but so that my younger brother could move his family into it. With five kids they needed a larger house, and since our older brother was living with them it made it cramped.

So here’s where I cover the “positive thing” that my sister did for me.

I live over 30 minutes away in a major city. I have my life here. I had no idea any of this house business was going on and it all happened so quickly. My Dad had already made the decision to buy that house when he called me to say he was only considering it and ask for my opinion, as well as ask if I would like to move in with my older brother in the smaller house. Although he was asking if I would “like” to move it was very obvious he was just hoping I would jump on the opportunity. No real consideration for how I felt about it, or the fact that he was dropping this on me out of nowhere. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings so I told him I needed to think about it, and even though he accepted that response over the phone I could tell by his tone he was assuming it meant “yes”. My sister called me not long after I ended my call with him. She had heard what our Dad was doing and talked him down from his assumption that I would want to move. (I do want to move, and get my own place, but I want to do it on my own terms.) As much as we love our Dad, sometimes it’s hard to stand up to him when we know he means well, unless we’re standing up to him on behalf of another. So, my sister, who lived across the State at the time, stood up for me because she knew I was struggling mentally and emotionally with how to handle this abrupt situation with our Dad.

I know my Dad is likely still lonely, even though he got two new puppies last year, but I couldn’t bring myself to move closer to him (or the rest of my family.) Not when my current life would have to change drastically, and I have my sister to thank for falling on that sword. (Especially since last year, due to work, she ended up moving back this way and now shares the smaller house with our older brother.)