While I have been very much enjoying airing out the history of my past failures, we’re going to take a bit of a detour. Right now I’m in Montreal for a few days on a work trip. My company has an office here, and this is my 2nd visit. I’ve been in this role for almost a year, and it’s honestly been life-changing. I know that probably comes off as a bit cliché, but this job feels like a quantum leap. I have already had the most incredible experiences, learned from some of the smartest people in the industry, and it really opened me up to a world I may have never been part of if I had found success on my previous path. It’s really rewarding when you can start to see how the failures were simply re-direction.

I’ve only been “job hunting” twice in the past. Once when I was searching for an internship, and again when I was looking for what I was going to do once I graduated from college. Each time it was surprisingly easy, which I honestly credit to my manifesting abilities. When I interviewed about where I would end up interning, I remember hanging up the call thinking: “I really want to work for them.” I originally didn’t even get the internship; it was given to someone else. While I felt a bit confused because I was so sure that was where I was supposed to be, I released that and accepted reality. A few days later, an email showed up in my inbox, and they were actually going to offer me an internship in research! I eventually transitioned to the trading team and started learning more about quant trading.

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Even though I had an offer out of grad school from that company, I decided to see what was out there. One night, I was on the phone with a friend of mine, and he told me I should be asking for a low six-figure salary. I thought how incredible it would be to make that much money - my body got a bit cold just hearing the number.

There was a company I really wanted to work for. I messaged the head of recruiting on LinkedIn, and that was my way into the interview process. That company was trading billions of dollars a day. All I kept thinking about was how cool that would be! Somehow, I got in touch with another recruiter who put me in the interview process at a different firm, a crypto gaming company. While the first had all the prestige, I really enjoyed the team that was working on gaming. And it seemed like there was more upside: I’d be coming into a startup and receiving equity, also getting to work remote. Working remotely was something I valued a lot at the time; I’m indifferent to it now. The other options were to go to an established firm in NYC or accept the job offer and move to Bermuda. I chose the gaming startup.

One of my favorite parts of this story is that my salary ended up being the exact number, down to the dollar, that my friend had mentioned on the phone. I thought to myself at the time “Wow, this manifestation stuff is so easy.” It was a bit shocking, but there was such concrete evidence. From that point, I started a gratitude journal, which then led me to the place I’m at right now. The job was exactly what I wanted, especially because I was working in crypto, which at the time I felt really strongly about. That’s back when I thought crypto was going to change the world. I also received equity in the company. It’s now worth $0, I think, but at the time I was very excited. (Side note: I received a very good piece of advice from a former manager: “I count my equity as $0 until there’s a market and someone to sell it to.”) And for a while, the job was exactly what I needed. I learned so much and worked on a lot of interesting problems. But then things began shifting, and before I knew it, 2 years had passed, and there was no progress! Honestly, I think everyone stopped working for a while because there was really nothing we could do. We had built all we could before actually scaling, and there was no written approval. So we waited.

The environment is really critical. It has an impact on everything in my opinion, even if that’s just a ripple from the subconscious. I found myself incredibly frustrated because I saw the goal and the steps to get there, yet I couldn’t. As someone who is very driven, the one thing that I really find challenging to sit in is stagnation. As soon as it feels like there’s a lack of progress, I often panic and shake the energy up, something I am working on being more intentional about. And it could be a trauma response from this, actually... but anyway. I started thinking that a salaried job meant a trap. It meant you could no longer be creative, pursue meaningful work, or solve interesting problems. It meant you had to move slow, wait on others while they dragged their feet - therefore missing opportunity. I was desperately trying to get out of it. I knew exactly what I wanted: to be trading, writing quant algos, and riding. I figured that would create 3 streams of income, which would help diversify.

I went and did all of that, and faced the challenges first hand. I felt so discouraged, and it was a really confusing time in my life. Particularly because I had so many people giving their opinions and telling me what I should do. I didn’t know who I could or should trust anymore. I started to think that things may not work out towards the end of January 2025. At this point, I was 7 months into the horse business fiasco, and it felt like a complete failure. All I was doing at the time was trying to keep my head above water. I could stay afloat until the end of Florida, which was the best shot at success. Then the last month of Florida began, March, and I finally made the decision I had pushed off for so long. However, I didn’t think it would be difficult to find a job once I had declared it was time to start looking. I spent so much time building my own trading system that I felt like it had given me enough experience to step into a role at a real fund. Even if there was a learning curve, I knew I would step up - I always do.

I had planned the conversation with the lender, who I also was building trading algos for. Integrity is important to me, so as soon as my priorities switched I let them know. I was met with them trying to convince me to keep trying with the algorithms, saying in the worst case scenario they can get me a job with their friends. (Spoiler: they put me in touch with those friends who ghosted me. Then later on, the lender said that one of them had been shady in the past.) This left me feeling incredibly confused. Here’s someone who has been mentoring me for a while; I have relied on their guidance for many decisions. I was sitting there saying I couldn’t pay my bills, and they wanted me to keep just making no income and working for their benefit. I also felt a bit blindsided. Did they forget how encouraging they were? I am a very honest person; I would say I’m too honest actually, so I was sure I had been transparent about my situation. I felt like this person, whom I had trusted, was showing a different mask. Instead of the priority being me getting back on my feet, I had to keep attempting to create value for them. It wasn’t even something I was doing successfully. This is when I first started to pick up on real patterns of control - there had been glimmers, but I never fully recognized them.

Since I had a month left of Florida, I decided to half take the lender’s advice. I did continue the work I was doing for him, but only until the end of that month (March). Part of the reason I had continued was that I was hoping I would strike gold still. A horse would get sold, and I’d have runway for a few more months. And I wasn’t stressed about applying for jobs since he told me he could help me with that; I was a fool to believe it. I experienced the ghosting incident weeks later and then figured it was time to really start job hunting. Surely I would find a job before the last of my cash was used up - this was just the universe testing me. That’s where I was mistaken; the universe really does have no chill. There’s nothing off limits. I was thinking I could force my way through self-destruction.

I applied to jobs with a similar strategy as before, except for the first time in my life, I spent hours each day doing so. I iterated over my resume, searched for any quantitative trading firms I could find to ask about open positions. I kept building, knowing it was useful to discuss in the interviews, but also still hoping I would have some success that would buy me even more time. Even after I had lost it all, I was still hoping for a way to make it work. Then I hit a wall. I had no traction with job applications, no traction with quant trading, and no traction with the horses. It felt like things actually kept getting worse. I didn’t understand why there was such a huge money block. Even the unemployment I had applied for was delayed. I ended up borrowing money from my mom. It made me sob for a while, sitting on the velvet blue couch in my boyfriend's and my living room. Feeling like such a failure. And not seeing any way out either. I had used up every last dollar I had. It was terrifying. Nothing was coming in either. No interviews; horses didn’t get sold; I still struggled with the trading strategy. I was questioning absolutely everything.

Living this made me realize the answer isn’t to just put your head down and work non-stop. I thought it was. I thought rest was evil - stealing time I could be using to make money and make my dreams come true. I could not really have fun because there was so much pressure on me all of the time. So many people are demanding from me. From my perspective, I was expected to sacrifice myself to pay everyone’s bills, and I did. Then it turned me angry, bitter, sour, and desperate. And I was questioning everything. Particularly because the previous times I had been job hunting were so easy, this wasn’t. But I ended up landing the absolute best job. It was worth the wait. And I now get to wake up each day with excitement.

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