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Paul’s Journal


Paul A.

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Less than a week into learning how to code, and I'm already starting to doubt myself. Learning to code is hard! The whole world of computer programming and software engineering is so vast that it's a bit overwhelming. Even after posting that I want to learn front-end web development, I have no idea where to begin! (P.S. I'm not enjoying the Codecademy front end web dev course so far). It feels like there's so much room for error; that if I don't figure out what I want to do right away, I'm going to fall flat on my face. I know this isn't true, but it sure feels that way. I wish I had a reliable resource to share my concerns with, but at the moment I don't so I'm just venting it all on here. I sure hope this stuff gets easier with time. I certainly don't intend to give up, but I'm just feeling a bit overwhelmed with everything right now. I may end up going back to learning how to make games like I initially intended, or I might forge an entirely different path altogether. But I'm gonna need a lot of help to do it. I think YouTube tutorials are going to be my best friend. If only I had the patience to sit through one... In any event, no one said this was gonna be easy. After all, nothing worth doing in life is easy. I guess I'm gonna have to muster up some grit and keep pushing. I'll use this forum as a way to keep myself accountable as well. Hopefully I can leave all this overwhelm behind as time goes on.

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Day 7 Game-Free

Diving deeper into the world of computer programming. After messing around with Python some more and getting frustrated, I decided to stick with front-end web development. From what I've heard (and learned for myself), it's the easiest way for a beginner to break into the field, especially someone who's self-taught like I am. I was able to chat with an old friend of mine who's studying computer science, and he also gave me some guidance in this area. He confirmed what I'd learned from YouTube, that front-end is in fact the easiest route to take. He noted that if I apply myself, I should be able to get a job as a front-end web developer in about 6 months. His advice motivated me to take my programming journey seriously, and it reassured me of the possibility that I can break into the tech field without a formal education. Ever since about the 11th grade, I've had a tough time sticking it out in a school environment, so the fact that I can break into such a lucrative and respected field without a degree is really exciting (for context, I've dropped out of school three times, specifically post-secondary institutions). For now, I'm focusing on learning HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, as these are the fundamentals I need to learn for front-end web development. I'm excited to keep learning!

I spent most of the day going through a front-end engineering course on Codecademy, even while at work. Work has been very slow recently; I hadn't made any sales for an entire week up until today. Ever since I discovered programming, my enthusiasm for work has dwindled, because it cemented in my mind that I don't want to stay in sales forever. I never intended to stay at the job long-term, but my newfound love of programming has only made that more clear. This job is only a stepping stone to put money in my pocket while I work towards my ideal career in tech. Not to say that sales is a bad career, but my heart's just not in it. I'd rather work in a field that I genuinely enjoy.

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Day 8 Game-Free

I slept through most of the morning. I’m not sure why, I just didn’t really feel like getting up. It wasn’t fueled by depression or anything, I think it was just laziness. Either way, my morning was fairly uneventful save for a psych appointment and a bit of learning web development. I went off to work in the afternoon, no sales today. I made some appointments but that was the highlight of my workday. I progressed through my web dev course while at work as well. I’ve fully immersed myself into the world of software engineering at this point. When I’m not actually learning web dev/software engineering, I’m watching videos or otherwise consuming content about the subject. Its pretty much taken the place of gaming in my life. When I wasn’t playing games, I was watching gaming videos, even at work. Now it’s the same with software engineering. While it’s not the best thing to be studying programming while at work, I think it’s much more productive than watching game videos. Besides, a lot of my work day entails me sitting around waiting for customers. I might as well make the most of all that time.

Edited by Paul A.
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 Nice! As a person who has tried several times and failed at trying to learn a computer language I feel your pain. It's awesome to hear that the energy you used to put into video games is now directed to learning coding. I hope in the future I can get to where you at. I'm curios about your Journey and hope that you stick with it! 

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Day 9 Game-Free

Fairly unproductive day today. Unfortunately, I caved to PMO last night. No excuses, I just didn’t put the proper safeguards in place. I need to be more cognizant of when that time of the night rolls around. Once the desire for sexual release kicks in, it’s almost impossible not to get swept up in it. At the very least, I’m not acting out by spending money on escorts and sexual partners like I used to do. Fortunately, I’ve been able to keep that under control. Now the real threat is pornography. I’m gonna have to find creative ways to limit my access to it and otherwise abstain from watching it. But I’m sure I’ll figure out what works for me in time.

I didn’t spend as much time on web development as I would’ve liked to today. Call it laziness or procrastination, probably both. I’m getting to the stage where I can’t be carried by motivation alone. I’m gonna have to rely on a bit of discipline. Whether it means setting aside some time each day dedicated to learning web development, or just making sure I study a bit each day, I’m gonna have to incorporate some discipline into my learning. As more and more people are getting hired at my workplace, I’m more motivated to get out of there as fast as possible. I don’t want to compete with other salespeople for customers. My heart just isn’t in it. There was a stretch of about a month where I was incredibly motivated, but that motivation has long since dried up. Either way, I want to leave that sales job as quickly as I can so I can transition into web development. But in the meantime, I’m gonna have to stay disciplined with my studies.

I moved some money back into my brokerage account. Right now, my dad is receiving half of my paychecks and putting them towards savings, and I get the other half. I figured it was time I learned to be more responsible with my half. After many failed attempts at saving money, I learned that I’m just no good at it. If there’s money sitting in a readily accessible savings account, I’ll spend it, without fail. But what I am decent at is investments. I used to take investing very seriously, and I educated myself a lot on the subject. I once had a lot of money tied up in crypto, and I even made a decent profit off it (I lost it all due to market volatility, but I digress). I bring all this up to say that I respect the value of investing money as opposed to saving money. If I have money tied up in investments, appreciating and growing in value, I’m much less prone to spending it frivolously. That’s because I find investing a lot more beneficial and a lot more exciting than saving. In a sense, my investment account has become my savings account. Don’t get me wrong, I still want to have a bit of money in savings (I’m sure @Ikar would kill me if I didn’t, haha), but I’d rather keep the bulk of it in investments. I’m excited to grow my account over time. I’m already planning to contribute half of what I receive from my next check straight to investments.

I apologize for the wall of text today, I just had a lot to share. I applaud if you made it all the way to the end, haha. I’ll be back tomorrow

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4 hours ago, Paul A. said:

Day 9 Game-Free

Fairly unproductive day today. Unfortunately, I caved to PMO last night. No excuses, I just didn’t put the proper safeguards in place. I need to be more cognizant of when that time of the night rolls around. Once the desire for sexual release kicks in, it’s almost impossible not to get swept up in it. At the very least, I’m not acting out by spending money on escorts and sexual partners like I used to do. Fortunately, I’ve been able to keep that under control. Now the real threat is pornography. I’m gonna have to find creative ways to limit my access to it and otherwise abstain from watching it. But I’m sure I’ll figure out what works for me in time.

I didn’t spend as much time on web development as I would’ve liked to today. Call it laziness or procrastination, probably both. I’m getting to the stage where I can’t be carried by motivation alone. I’m gonna have to rely on a bit of discipline. Whether it means setting aside some time each day dedicated to learning web development, or just making sure I study a bit each day, I’m gonna have to incorporate some discipline into my learning. As more and more people are getting hired at my workplace, I’m more motivated to get out of there as fast as possible. I don’t want to compete with other salespeople for customers. My heart just isn’t in it. There was a stretch of about a month where I was incredibly motivated, but that motivation has long since dried up. Either way, I want to leave that sales job as quickly as I can so I can transition into web development. But in the meantime, I’m gonna have to stay disciplined with my studies.

I moved some money back into my brokerage account. Right now, my dad is receiving half of my paychecks and putting them towards savings, and I get the other half. I figured it was time I learned to be more responsible with my half. After many failed attempts at saving money, I learned that I’m just no good at it. If there’s money sitting in a readily accessible savings account, I’ll spend it, without fail. But what I am decent at is investments. I used to take investing very seriously, and I educated myself a lot on the subject. I once had a lot of money tied up in crypto, and I even made a decent profit off it (I lost it all due to market volatility, but I digress). I bring all this up to say that I respect the value of investing money as opposed to saving money. If I have money tied up in investments, appreciating and growing in value, I’m much less prone to spending it frivolously. That’s because I find investing a lot more beneficial and a lot more exciting than saving. In a sense, my investment account has become my savings account. Don’t get me wrong, I still want to have a bit of money in savings (I’m sure @Ikar would kill me if I didn’t, haha), but I’d rather keep the bulk of it in investments. I’m excited to grow my account over time. I’m already planning to contribute half of what I receive from my next check straight to investments.

I apologize for the wall of text today, I just had a lot to share. I applaud if you made it all the way to the end, haha. I’ll be back tomorrow

I think we all have days like those (and actually need them sometimes to recharge)  - I've had some days where I just can't face writing or doing much, and that's okay. You're doing great and try not to much too much pressure on yourself. One step at a time 😊

I've been the same as you with money in the past. I have to put all spare money straight into a joint account with my partner so he can tell if I've withdrawn anything.

Best of luck with your continued journey 😊

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4 hours ago, Paul A. said:

As more and more people are getting hired at my workplace, I’m more motivated to get out of there as fast as possible. I don’t want to compete with other salespeople for customers. My heart just isn’t in it. There was a stretch of about a month where I was incredibly motivated, but that motivation has long since dried up. Either way, I want to leave that sales job as quickly as I can so I can transition into web development.

I can relate, I had this kind of employments too. What's funny is that what I always questioned about English teaching what not whether I was capable of doing it or whether I liked it (that was just given) but whether I could make money from it. This however was in the incubator for a long time, since I left the army in summer 2018 (started uni again in fall 2018) until I started making enough money to be cash-flow positive in autumn 2020. People are generally OK with university students taking their time to do something useful, so I wasn't under that much pressure. Regardless, I found out through the many jobs and internships that I don't prefer to have a love/hate relationship and strong emotions at work; maybe in my life overall. I'm pretty convinced at this point that one of my core life values is stability.

4 hours ago, Paul A. said:

But what I am decent at is investments. I used to take investing very seriously, and I educated myself a lot on the subject. I once had a lot of money tied up in crypto, and I even made a decent profit off it (I lost it all due to market volatility, but I digress).

I realized I don't have the nerves, the knowledge or the interest to be an active investor, so I am just putting everything into low-cost world stock ETFs. I think anything with +10% return a year (consistently!) involves the need to get educated on the topic more. I don't like having strong emotions when it comes to investing either, so no crypto for me 😄

4 hours ago, Paul A. said:

I bring all this up to say that I respect the value of investing money as opposed to saving money. If I have money tied up in investments, appreciating and growing in value, I’m much less prone to spending it frivolously. That’s because I find investing a lot more beneficial and a lot more exciting than saving. In a sense, my investment account has become my savings account. Don’t get me wrong, I still want to have a bit of money in savings (I’m sure @Ikar would kill me if I didn’t, haha), but I’d rather keep the bulk of it in investments.

You are right we need both saving and investing to build wealth. Personally, 90% of my money is invested in the market. 10% is cash and savings to get me through a few months of no income. I'm feeling fine, even if the markets aren't 🙂

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On 10/1/2022 at 3:46 AM, Ikar said:

I realized I don't have the nerves, the knowledge or the interest to be an active investor, so I am just putting everything into low-cost world stock ETFs.

I’m taking the passive approach myself. The little money I do have in the market is in a low-cost S&P 500 ETF, and that’s where I intend to put a majority of my money moving forward. I became disenchanted with individual stocks long ago. ETFs, especially those that track a particular index, are just so much easier than picking stocks. With an S&P 500 ETF or total market ETF, you can take advantage of diversification and the growth of the market, all in one simple package. It’s great.

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Day 10 Game-Free

I’m gonna start keeping my phone off. It’s something I’ve done in the past, but I can never make a habit of it. The reason I want to try it now is because I’ve noticed that I try to alleviate my boredom or kill time by checking my phone. Whether it’s by scrolling through YouTube, checking Instagram, or even refreshing the forums here, I check my phone a lot. And I don’t like that I do that. For one, it’s a big distraction for me. I kill my own productivity, whether at work or studying, by checking my phone compulsively. Secondly, it makes me feel like I have nothing going on in my life. I almost always have nothing going on in my phone, which I always interpret to mean that my life is just uninteresting. Of course, this is a false assumption, but I can’t help but make it every time I check my phone and it’s free of notifications. For those reasons, I want to try to keep my phone off as much as possible. The only issue is for when family or friends want to call me (which really doesn’t happen too often), but in that case, I’ll just call them back when I turn my phone on.

I built my first simple website today using HTML and CSS. I copied an example site provided by Codecademy, but I wrote all of the code myself. Granted, I needed a lot of help from the Codecademy forums and Stack Overflow to fix issues I didn’t know how to fix, but I still did a bulk of the work unassisted. I found myself wanting to do more after I finished the site. The process of writing the code and styling the site was a lot of fun, and it’s definitely something I want to pursue as a career. I would’ve progressed further along in the course I’m working on today, but I was at work and I didn’t have the time to watch the video lesson. Fortunately, I’m off for the next 3 days, so I have a lot of time to work on the course.

I’m finding myself getting more and more into finance. I’m watching more finance-related videos on YouTube, and generally have a desire for more money. Not because I’m lacking money, nor is it because I want to spend the money, but simply to have it. The feeling of having money and KNOWING you have money is very liberating. It’s the assurance that you have choices. Money doesn’t buy happiness, but it does buy choices. No money, no choices. More money, more choices. I’ve experienced both ends of this spectrum. There was a point in time I had more money that I knew what to do with, and unfortunately I made the wrong choices with said money. There’ve also been plenty of times where I didn’t have any money, and obviously I dealt with the consequences of said lack. I don’t want to be wealthy so I can blow a bunch of money on stupid stuff. I want to be wealthy so I can have choices. The feeling of having choices is a unique kind of high. I want that high.

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Day 11

Today was my brother's birthday, so the whole family went out for brunch. I also had off work today. Pretty relaxing day today. I made some progress in my web dev course, but beyond that I've just been watching YouTube videos, mostly about personal finance and investing. I could always be more productive, but I'm not one to stress myself out for productivity's sake. If I wanna goof off and take it easy, I'll goof off and take it easy. As long as I'm making steady progress towards my goals each and every day, that's enough for me. It's one thing if I don't even touch my web dev course for a week because I get sidetracked watching YouTube, but it's another thing if I make a little bit of progress each and every day towards my goal. I'll take the slow and steady approach over the "productive", unsustainable approach any day of the week. In a week's time, I'm 14% of the way through a 350 hour course. That's pretty good if you ask me.

Today is the first of 3 days off I have this week. It's the first time in a while I've had more than 2 consecutive days to myself. Today was an easy day, but I plan to apply myself towards my web dev course a bit more tomorrow. If I can spend two hours total tomorrow working on the course, I'll be satisfied. I'm just hoping I can stay consistent with it. I've noticed myself consuming less and less content related to software and web dev, and more content related to personal finance. Not like this is a bad thing, but it's just an observation I've made. The world of personal finance is nothing new to me, but it's always exciting to dive back in, especially now since I've discovered a different approach to achieving my financial goals. I find myself wanting to learn and consume as much content as possible about the subject. This isn't exclusive to personal finance; I've done the same with many different subjects over the years. But, the fact that I've delved into personal finance multiple times in the same way is quite telling. I have a feeling that it'll remain a crucial element of my life for years to come. Speaking of which, I set up a recurring investment last night; $5 every market day into an S&P 500 ETF (for those who don't know, the S&P 500 is an index that tracks the 500 biggest companies here in the United States). That equates to about $100 every month automatically invested, on top of the money I plan to contribute manually as I get paid. To me, it's really exciting to automate my investing in this way. It also forces me to be a bit more responsible with my spending. If I can't find $5 extra to fork over for my financial future every day, I'm doing something wrong!

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It's great to see you making so much progress! 14% of a 350 hour course is definitely nothing to sneeze at.

I also love how you allow your productivity to fluctuate for the sake of making steady progress, instead of burning out in a week. That's a great example all of us in this forum.

Keep it up!

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Day 12

I’m starting to experience a good deal of boredom. The passion I initially had for computer programming and web development has been replaced by a passion for investing and a desire to make more money. Unfortunately, there’s not much I can actually DO to make more money at the moment outside of working… so I’m in a bit of a dilemma. I barely spent any time on the course today, and when I wasn’t watching YouTube videos about investing, I found myself not doing much of anything. That’s a relapse waiting to happen. For the first time in a while, I was entertaining the thought of playing video games again. Like Cam mentions, if you don’t find activities to fill your time when you quit gaming, you’re bound to get bored easily and start gaming again. This is what I’m starting to experience.

Fortunately, I have a solution. My gaming laptop has been sitting around collecting dust for the past week or so. I think it’s time I dusted it off and got back into game development (NOT gaming, haha). I initially bought that laptop to use for game development, but as I shifted gears and got more into web development, I stopped using it as much in favor of my old MacBook. But now that web development isn’t as exciting to me, I need another activity to fill up my time. Watching YouTube all day just won’t cut it. So I’m gonna get back into game development as my main source of entertainment. I’m not giving up web development by any means, in fact I’m still gonna dedicate a bit of time towards it every day. But to make sure I stay on the right track, I'm gonna devote more time to game development than anything else.

In the meantime, I still want to make more money to invest. I was considering reselling shoes, but I would probably need a car to get around for that, which I’m still saving up for. For now, I suppose I’ll have to rely on my job to make the money I need. I was seriously considering selling my gaming laptop (that I just bought) so I would have some extra money to invest, but I probably would’ve regretted that decision if I followed through with it. No gaming laptop means I wouldn’t have anything to use for game dev, which would leave me without a source of entertainment. I tend to get too excited when I make decisions, without considering how I may feel after all is said and done. I’ve made a lot of big decisions in the moment that I ended up regretting after. I’m glad I didn’t this time.

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Update: I can't get into game development like I thought I could. I just can't follow along with these tutorials at all. It's boring and unexciting. I really just want to get out there and make some money, but I don't have the means to do so. This sucks.

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8 hours ago, Paul A. said:

I tend to get too excited when I make decisions, without considering how I may feel after all is said and done. I’ve made a lot of big decisions in the moment that I ended up regretting after. I’m glad I didn’t this time.

That's a good thing to notice about yourself.

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Experimenting with multiple hobbies or skills you could end up turning into a living is a good thing, congratulations for having the courage to do those instead of playing games all day.

Just beware of jumping from activity to activity too much, every skill, job or hobby is bound to have periods where motivation and enjoyment of an activity faints completely for a while and results are not visible.

Hope you do end up finding what you'd like to do.

Good luck Paul

Edited by Faroe Islander
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I relapsed today.

I started my day feeling a bit off. It was a mix of boredom and a lack of excitement to get the day started. I guess that was my indication that something was wrong, but I ignored it. I tried to do a bit of game development when I got bored, and I had a good therapy session this afternoon about my tendency to jump from activity to activity, but after that, the day kinda fell apart. I started to feel really bored in the late afternoon, and I ended up re-downloading Roblox after a while. I played for maybe 30 mins to an hour, but it gave me a headache and I just didn't really enjoy it overall. Even after only 2 weeks of going without gaming, I found it's just not as stimulating as it used to be. Maybe because I had a bit of a hypomanic obsession with computer programming for a week or so, I found that gaming simply wasn't as exciting in comparison. But instead of going through the whole deletion process after only 2 weeks, I just handed the account over to my brother. I transferred the account to his email address and had him change the password, effectively locking me out of the account.

So, what have I learned in the past two weeks? For starters, I learned a lot about myself. I figured out that I tend to hop from activity to activity really quickly. Probably because of my bipolar disorder, I become really interested in some new hobby/activity, only to lose interest after a short period of time. It's been happening for years now, and I honestly don't know how to address it. Second, it's still vital to find activities to take the place of gaming in your life. For at least the first week, my obsession with computer programming ensured that I was never bored. And third, I learned that I'm still dissatisfied with my life at some level. Even after quitting games, I don't like my job, I constantly check my phone out of boredom, and I have a burning desire to make more money to invest. I even went so far as to look into starting a small business/side hustle. From these three takeaways, it's obvious I have a lot more work to do beyond simply quitting video games.

As far as next steps, I guess I'm starting over from day 1. Relapses are part of the journey, so I'm not gonna beat myself up over it. As far as activities go, I’m gonna start reading a lot more. I’ve settled on reading because it’s a favorite pastime of mine, and I’ve been able to spend long amounts of time doing it, so I figured it’s worth a shot. I also need to figure out how to address these bigger issues in my life, namely the dissatisfaction and my "shiny object syndrome", for lack of a better term. No one said quitting games was gonna be easy, but I'm surprised at how much I've learned about myself because I made the decision to quit. Anyway, that's all from me for tonight. I'll be back tomorrow for day 1 (again).

Edited by Paul A.
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16 hours ago, Paul A. said:

I relapsed today.

I started my day feeling a bit off. It was a mix of boredom and a lack of excitement to get the day started. I guess that was my indication that something was wrong, but I ignored it. I tried to do a bit of game development when I got bored, and I had a good therapy session this afternoon about my tendency to jump from activity to activity, but after that, the day kinda fell apart. I started to feel really bored in the late afternoon, and I ended up re-downloading Roblox after a while. I played for maybe 30 mins to an hour, but it gave me a headache and I just didn't really enjoy it overall. Even after only 2 weeks of going without gaming, I found it's just not as stimulating as it used to be. Maybe because I had a bit of a hypomanic obsession with computer programming for a week or so, I found that gaming simply wasn't as exciting in comparison. But instead of going through the whole deletion process after only 2 weeks, I just handed the account over to my brother. I transferred the account to his email address and had him change the password, effectively locking me out of the account.

So, what have I learned in the past two weeks? For starters, I learned a lot about myself. I figured out that I tend to hop from activity to activity really quickly. Probably because of my bipolar disorder, I become really interested in some new hobby/activity, only to lose interest after a short period of time. It's been happening for years now, and I honestly don't know how to address it. Second, it's still vital to find activities to take the place of gaming in your life. For at least the first week, my obsession with computer programming ensured that I was never bored. And third, I learned that I'm still dissatisfied with my life at some level. Even after quitting games, I don't like my job, I constantly check my phone out of boredom, and I have a burning desire to make more money to invest. I even went so far as to look into starting a small business/side hustle. From these three takeaways, it's obvious I have a lot more work to do beyond simply quitting video games.

As far as next steps, I guess I'm starting over from day 1. Relapses are part of the journey, so I'm not gonna beat myself up over it. As far as activities go, I’m gonna start reading a lot more. I’ve settled on reading because it’s a favorite pastime of mine, and I’ve been able to spend long amounts of time doing it, so I figured it’s worth a shot. I also need to figure out how to address these bigger issues in my life, namely the dissatisfaction and my "shiny object syndrome", for lack of a better term. No one said quitting games was gonna be easy, but I'm surprised at how much I've learned about myself because I made the decision to quit. Anyway, that's all from me for tonight. I'll be back tomorrow for day 1 (again).

You handled the relapse really well 😊

I completely understand what you mean about the shiny object syndrome, I've been terrible for that in the past too. Gaming was the one consistent thing I always went back to. Other hobbies, activities and even career interests have changed consistently. 

I think I'm in a similar place to you career wise too.

We will get there in the end 😊

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22 minutes ago, Paul A. said:

Thanks, @purpleluke. I’m glad to learn I’m not the only one who struggles with that. I’m sure we’ll figure it out in time!

Definitely! I think the gaming could honestly be a part of it - with the way it affects your dopamine you're always looking for a new rush and new excitement- nothing seems as fun as gaming for long and then you switch to something else and so on. Hopefully we'll see a reduction as we go through this journey 😊

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Day 1

Today was a fun day. I started learning how to trade forex, as a way to kill time and also as a way to indulge my fascination with money and finance. Trading is a lot of fun, perhaps because of the speculative aspect of it. There's certainly a level of technical analysis you need to master to maximize your chances of turning a profit, but ultimately you never know what a given currency pair is going to do. Even though I'm only trading with simulated money right now, I had a blast making trades and learning more about forex. As of the time of this writing, I've made three winning trades for a profit of about $140 (simulated money), which is exciting. I'm probably gonna keep trading with fake money for a while to learn the ropes before I start trading with actual money. It's beneficial to play around and make mistakes in an environment where there's no real stakes. It would be a different story if I plunged into trading with real money and lost it all within a few days; that would probably suck the fun out of it. But since I'm not playing with real money, I'm enjoying myself thoroughly.

I was back to work today after 3 days off. Work was pretty slow, and I didn't make any sales. My sales have been suffering since Labor Day, probably because my motivation is shot. I don't know what happened, but I lost the passion I once had for the job. I don't intend to stay much longer though. Once I figure out what career path I want to go down and the fastest way to do it, my days at that store will be numbered. But for now, it's nice to be making some money to plow into investments and simple pleasures (lots of snacks, lol). Speaking of investments, my automated investment is going well. I've invested about $15 automatically since the start of the week. It's nice to see my nest egg growing, slowly but surely. While the trading is more a fun hobby than anything, my brokerage account is meant for long-term growth. Don't get me wrong, it's still fun to invest (as opposed to trading), but it's a lot more passive and a lot less involved; I can't do much apart from monitor my returns every now and again. Either way, I'm sure trading and investing both will provide me with a solid foundation to secure my financial future. Money is fun.

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