And there's the rub, paying them damn bills. I'm 54 and still don't know what I want to do with my life. Let me give you a piece of friendly advice. You best find out what you want to do, or life just has a way of making your decisions for you. Take my word for it, you don't want to be in that squirrel cage. You'll wake up one day thinking, what the fuck happened?Quote from EqtTrdr:
all great suggestionsthanks!!
Problem lies as well in the fact that I need to pay bills as well as enjoy the job. You can have all the fun, excitement and brain stimulation you want, but if you can't pay the rent it will be no fun living on the street
How does one "find oneself"??
- Thread starter EqtTrdr
- Start date
hmmm (I'll trade you lives j/k
I'd be thankful you can make as much as you do at trading; alot better then working the grind.
I'd either try to change your trading style so you can have a outside life; and if you can do that then perhaps you can start using your time for things like sports or hobbies stuff like that.
Or like you said start a new career doing something else ...
Be happy you have a choice ...
j/kI'd be thankful you can make as much as you do at trading; alot better then working the grind.
I'd either try to change your trading style so you can have a outside life; and if you can do that then perhaps you can start using your time for things like sports or hobbies stuff like that.
Or like you said start a new career doing something else ...
Be happy you have a choice ...
This is precisely what I see happening to so many people and why I have tried so hard not to follow in their footsteps. I try and recite "The Road Not Taken" by R. Frost at least a couple times a week 
Keep trading. Volenteer at a local hospital or fire department to satisfy your self worth.
Quote from EqtTrdr:
I have been trading for 6 years now, 4 profitably but can't see myself doing this forever, as to me it's just so dang boring.....
At first it was exciting, but now it's the same routine day in and day out, acting like a machine with no correspondence with the outside world
Problem is I am 34 years old and still have no idea what I want to do with my life.
I have tried and tried over and over again to "find myself" but no no avail.
Do I just go back to the job I left before trading to make the same money I am now? I hated the 65 hour work week and despised waking up every morning to go to work.
Maybe I should just go sell cars? become a real estate agent? Life insurance salesman??
I have no freakin' clue.
I love everything as a hobby, but nothing enough to dedicate my life towards it.
Where do I go from here?
How did you, or someone you know ever find what you wanted to do with your life career wise?
I have a good friend who is a doctor. He would like to do what I do for a living. He is not a specialist and Medicaid, Medicare, malpractice insurance, and HMO's are squeezing him to death. He does some trading in his spare time. He has great rapport with his patients and there are many intrinsic rewards, but there are a lot of demands on his time and a lot of pressure. For me trading is a great job, I started trading full time at 45 and I am now 55. I do not if I could have spent my entire life trading. My other career was rewarding but I was burnt out and left it without regret. Our attention spans in this post modern world may not be capable of doing the same thing happily for much more than 15 or 20 years. I know quite a few people who are burnt out. My father and many from the Depression WWII generation seemed to thrive on their jobs and never seemed to get burnt out.
Quote from EqtTrdr:
I have been trading for 6 years now, 4 profitably but can't see myself doing this forever, as to me it's just so dang boring.....
If your have worked your way up to the point were you can trade 50K shares of QQQQ. Consider yourself a profitable trader.
I do.
I'm sorry to hear your inlaws suck so badly. Do you have kids? If you do, I bet they benefit hugely from you working at home. While those other jobs might get you out of the house more often and have a swanky business card, at the end of the day time with you is the most important thing you can give your spouse and kids. Few professions allow as much personal freedom as trading. Consider volunteering with kids if you don't have any of your own. It's highly rewarding to see a child grow mentally and emotionally from the care you provide. I believe that for most people, professional life is not the avenue through which they give back to their communities or achieve self-fulfillment.
Don't let that shit get to your head. Lawyers are, generally speaking, scumbags who extort money from people who can't afford to defend themselves. I don't deny that some lawyers provide a service to society, but society as a whole is burdened - robbed, even - by the presence of lawyers American style. Banks are even scummier - they're the "house" in the casino of the world economy. Get ahead, go broke, stay in the middle - it doesn't matter, the banks always win!
Quote from EqtTrdr:
How did you, or someone you know ever find what you wanted to do with your life career wise?
Realized I had responsibilities to people other than myself and that 'careers' are really a modern invention and that there's no requirement one derives one's earthly satisfaction from one, therefore you go and do your job - anyone that your ass is lucky enough to get - and 'find yourself' outside of the workplace.
Well, I don't know if that's really the answer to life. But dammit, I searched and I searched and that's the best I could come up with. In all that searching, I never did find someone who could honestly, in private, claim his career fulfilled him. My impression was that people tend to publicly claim their career is it, especially to prospective rookies in that career, but privately, they detest it or are indifferent to it. Think of an investment banker who has devoted years of schooling and 100 hour work weeks. What's he gonna tell some starry eyed graduate? Nah, don't do it, the money's great but the lifestyle's killed me? Of course not. He's gotta protect the public image of having 'made it'. So he waxes poetic about how great it is. But inside, he's in turmoil.