I have a confession to make: I broke a commitment to myself today. I was supposed to make a phone call and chose not to follow through due to fluster. Every direction there is to go, I have been pulled into today. Some days it’s like that at my job, the heat turns up, and usually I get pretty scattered. Not that I handled it perfectly, but I definitely went against my normal behavior of allowing everything to stress me out. I just kept reminding myself to not rush, keep myself focused on the task at hand, and recognize that I have enough time for what I need to accomplish. It felt unnatural, but I’m surprised at how good I feel now. Usually, I would be so drained at the end of a day like this, but I still feel sharp.

Part of this scattering has been me questioning if I go live with the first post. After editing it, I found myself wondering: do I really want to give out that much information? It’s how I ended up in the mess - sharing too much about my successes, plans, connections, and resources. I forgot the impact that my energy has on people. It seems like they are drawn to me even though I am very much an introvert. Then there is the element of shame. Genuinely, I feel embarrassed for what I’ve gotten myself into. At the same time, I was questioning my intention. I find trauma can make you behave in funny ways. I honestly wasn’t sure if this was some way for me to vent while trying to create this narrative of “poor me.” Each step of this process, my intention hasn’t wavered. I created the concept while thinking about documenting lessons. I wrote the first post with that in mind, edited it with the same vision. So, as a follow-up to that, here’s a switch from the victim narrative and a recollection of how I ended up here in the first place. And I figured that would be a bit easier to derive lessons by inspecting the failure path.

Student Loans

When the college application decisions started coming in, I immediately focused on the cost. I could feel the stress in my parents and their disappointment in themselves. My dad kept hoping that next year his business would take off and he could help me pay for school. From my perspective, the next thing to do was to go to college. And if loans were the path forward, then I guess I had no choice.

I didn’t understand interest or realize how expensive my education actually was. Unfortunately, I think we had one of the highest costs in the US at that time. The consensus was that we paid Ivy prices, without the Ivy prestige. However, I am so happy with my education and wish I had appreciated it more when I was actually in school. That didn’t soften the blow from the shock I felt when looking at the total for the first time post graduation. A coldness filled my body, and I froze. I will be paying these off for the rest of my life.

Side note, but I just felt like I should include this, I switched from using Obsidian as the place where I type these to VSCode. It feels like the best place for me to be writing these. Very authentic.

Anyways, I got my first salaried job, refinanced my private loans into 1, luckily at a very low interest rate due to COVID, and paid the monthly payment while painfully accepting its duration. I have spent a lot of time working through the emotions I feel around my student loans, but they eventually became a pretty neutral space for me. It was a reasonable payment, not suffocating (at least while I was employed).

Credit Cards

I thought it was the coolest thing in the world to have a credit card when I was a kid. I loved buying unique things from random shops on the internet. My assortment included a 99 color eyeshadow palette, random custom horse jewelry holding the names of animals I adored, and lots of nail polish. As soon as I turned 18, I was so excited to open my own credit card.

While I was in college, I was so stubborn about riding. It took 17 years of praying for me to finally own a horse, so I was going to make the most of it. Horse showing was something I never got to do growing up due to the cost, but for the first time, it was almost affordable. And I think what I really should have done then was try to win some prize money, but I was honestly just happy to survive, so it all went onto my credit cards. I got a free stall, training, shipping to the horse show, and a little bit of money each week. Every dollar I made went into gas, food, and competing.

I convinced myself that my lack of horse show experience made me less of a rider, which led me to really push myself to do it at unreasonable times, like when I was scared or not in the right headspace. But at the same time, I’m glad I did. It turned into experiences that I absolutely cherish. I didn’t bury myself too deep and ended up paying it all off fairly quickly, but that debt left a mark. From that point, I started carefully budgeting and tracking everything to the cent. Never holding a balance on any credit cards. I was definitely credit-maxxing.

Intermission

Writing through this has already been very insightful. In my head, it’s a huge, dramatic history, but actually auditing it all shows that it was just a few poor decisions. I’d like to say that I have learned from them - but only the future can tell. This next tangent is something I think is worth expanding on a bit more. I’m not sure how explicitly I’ll lay out the context here, but it does tie to this general theme and touches a few of the mentioned experiences.

Today, I recognized that certain people fragment my energy more than others. There was one individual with whom I didn’t have any contact for a bit after a very complicated and dramatic relationship. I received a text from them on Sunday, and we planned to speak sometime this week. While this is quite embarrassing to unpack, my goal is to be authentic. This person was someone I valued a lot and held in very high regard. After some misalignments, there was a bit of friction, but I always had appreciation for them. The negative opinions stayed hidden in my journal. I went into that conversation looking to amend that, even if it concluded with the understanding that the distance was the most beneficial thing for both parties. All I’ve desired a point of mutual understanding and respect. Particularly because in recent months I’ve been reflecting on how grateful I am for their influence. There are a few people who I will always hold in appreciation due to the timeline they launched me towards. This person is/was, honestly, not sure anymore, one of them. The conversation could not have strayed farther from my expectations. I was faced with a familiar personality. The conversation went this way: I opened up about my finances and how our combined business venture got me here, they spent the rest of the conversation bitterly complaining about life, then told me I should put my horse down and that was it.

In thinking about what to take away from that, I have so many different options. First, it feels important to anchor on that memory when I think about them in the future, which is why I’m kind of glad it’s how the conversation went. A stark reminder. It was challenging for me not to go back to the person I was 1, 2 years ago, having an emotional reaction or allowing it to stir me up. Instead, I focused on being intentional about maintaining a neutral position. Partially because I had no choice, it was lunch time during my work day, and I didn’t have much of a break to process emotions. The other reason is due to my work towards choosing the best version of myself. But that’s not really the focus of this, just worth celebrating. I felt very similarly at the peak of it all, when things were really erupting.

I was a bit shocked by the lack of development in this other person. It was actually quite sad to experience. There wasn’t a sliver of growth; if anything, there was atrophy. My nervous system was shocked to be facing such a potent taste of my past. I struggle to even process the conversation because I don’t quite know how to interact with that energy anymore. Don’t know isn’t really the right phrase.. choose to not tolerate! I actively avoid people who are not working towards improving themselves. Previously, I valued that much less. I looked at someone’s skills and accomplishments, not necessarily who they were.

External Pressure Aligning with Fantasy

I always wanted to own sales horses one day - the key phrase there is one day. And I was okay with waiting for a while. One of the things that I realize now is that at the time, I was so naive. There was a view I held of the horse industry that was from a very sheltered position. My ego told me I knew it all. I also failed to recognize how truly rare it was to do things well and assumed the standard I was taught when I was grooming was held by the industry. Coming from an environment where an individual is extremely good at what they do also makes you forget how challenging the task actually is. It’s not easy to import a horse from Europe and then bring it along. So many things can go wrong in that time frame.

I was riding with a trainer who encouraged the business. When I told her that meant taking on a loan to fund it, I was met with encouragement. And for me, the decision was a no-brainer. It was exactly what I was asking the universe for. I believed that we had all the tools needed to build a successful business, but what I was blind to was that there was so much under the surface. What I should have done was step back and ask myself what the motivation was to encourage, and how they would benefit. Instead I thought how lucky I was to have it all unfold so perfectly. I didn’t even have to tell her what I wanted; she just knew. Things became pretty challenging, and I remember being paralyzed. Unable to make a decision - just thinking about how I would eventually need to. Even though there was some friction I rode that out. Then I got the news that the trainer got a job elsewhere and was moving. It felt like a TV show; the decision I thought I had to make was just made for me!

Timeline Jump

My sales horse was at a dealer barn to get sold, and my personal horse came with me to the new barn. As a quick disclaimer: this is my perspective of the sequence of events. Up until this point I have really tried to remain neutral, but I will not leave out details.

My horse is a difficult one, and it’s not really worth trying to bring him to a horse show. My new trainer knew I owned a sales horse. He convinced me to bring him there so I could ride the horse a bit and then we’d figure out a plan to get him sold. The circumstances made sense, and I was still thinking of the business. Even though the first horse hadn’t had the start that I had wanted, it would be valuable for my skills to ride him a bit. This would then make me better for the horses to come. And I really wanted to support this rider in particular. I thought he had a lot of talent so it was great to have him willing to ride and compete on my horse. The move would save me money, I thought, since the cost of care was significantly less at my barn than the sales barn (which was very prestigious).

We Finally Get Fired

The day I received my severance was one of the best days of my life, or so I thought. I could finally take that leap I had wanted to! I never received a sum of money as large as my severance, I didn’t know what to do with it all. It felt shocking sitting there, looking at the amount on my bank account. But obviously it was a sign to leap. So I did.

I had been building my own trading system as a side project for a few years and was offered to build an algo for an individual where I would receive a split of the profit. I agreed. I was trading at the time, and had a funded account. It helped me cover small bills here and there but all I saw was a potential. And I had the horse business. I was diversified so there’s no way I could fail. It was finally my opportunity, the one I had waited for my entire life. No job, business opportunities, enough cash to figure it out for a few months.

How The Hell Did I Get Access to This?

What is so funny is the mistake I made with the first horse was having too tight of a timeline. I repeated it again within a few months! The “figuring out what to do with the horse” lasted a while. I spent that time riding and even competed a bit. It proved he was amateur safe and brave. My trainer and I began talking about sales horses and his past experiences. Before I knew it - there I was in the same situation. Someone telling me exactly what I wanted to hear without me ever needing to reveal it. We both wanted the same thing and I felt like our incentives were aligned, which is where I really slipped up on the first sales horse. My investor seemed open to it, so why not? This was a lottery ticket to be honest, but there was a non-zero probability of winning big. Except I expanded way too quickly, shattered myself, and blew it all up!

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