Zero Pain Tolerance
Yep, name of the blog as my subject. It's something I've been thinking a lot about. I'm currently experiencing a period in my life where it just feels like certain activities that once dominated my life now have an assymetrical pain/pleasure skew to them.
There's three in particular I'm thinking about: trading, pool and sports. I don't know if this is the result of me getting older, weaker, or too comfortable in my life. I feel scared and timid too often, like I'm afraid the bad outcome will just crush my soul. My brain wants to catastrophize every small thing.
When the Dodgers lost 5 straight games in a row, capped off a game where they were one out away from a no-hitter and somehow turned that into a walk-off 4-3 defeat against the Orioles, I just sat there, soaking in this horrible feeling, wondering "why do I have to feel this way right now????? ". At the same time... they won the World Series last year and they're still in first in their division. It's not over. It's not nearly as bad as it "could be". I could have been an Angels fan. I know this but in the present, I just soak the pain and let it dominate my mind. Even as the pain subsided, I do consider that Orioles loss maybe the worst regular season loss I've ever witnessed in my 20+ years as a Dodgers fan. Horrendous. Hopefully we can laugh about that one when the season is over with a great playoff run.
I feel tentative and reluctant to day trade right now. I'm scared of trading impulsively or on tilt. The stink of a bad trading day lasts until I wake up. It prevents me from sleeping soundly and then when I do sleep, it often infects my dreams. "Ugh, why did I do that today? Randomly lost $20k like an asshole, fuck me" When I make money, I just feel like I didn't make enough. Or that it's expected. There's zero joy in this for me. It just doesn't feel worth it. It impacts my focus and my work ethic too. I'm so disgusted at the idea of trading that I often don't want to try too hard. Maybe that's a signal to step back but IDK, I might have to risk $100k shorting this OPEN at $15 tomorrow. Whatever.
The last time I played pool competitively, I think it was 3 weeks ago. I started to get in my own head. I stepped into shots feeling too scared of missing or making an error. This mindset completely destroyed my joy for the game. I kept thinking something must be wrong with me. I'd slink in my chair and sulk. I should just drink a beer and enjoy my meaningless low stakes hobby with my friends. Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with me??
Anyway, that's just what I'm going through. I wish I could write the second arc of this where I have learned to heathily cope with stress and not catastrophize everything, but I'm not there yet. It's not a big deal. My family is healthy. I'm physically healthy. Long-term portfolio is at all time highs. Sure would be nice to feel like I'm enjoying myself though, considering how lucky I am.