The preteen girl sits beside her mum in the nail salon, both getting their nails painted. The lady with round-rimmed glasses is watching her drama show on her mobile while walking on the streets. The father frowns over his phone while his son and daughter played with each other in the coffeeshop.
How much of our time are spend distracted? How much of our time are spend wondering about the distant, either a created fantasy by someone else or a reality too removed from us? How often does an existential crisis occur in an individual?
I cut my thumb while washing one of the blades of my mandolin. I couldn’t care less in not using the provided brush to clean off the food pieces stuck in the blade. Instead, I choose to use just my finger and the sponge. Overconfidence, lazy or distracted? I can’t decide among the three.
Just a few days back, I talk about perhaps needing a little bit more randomness in life, as if the randomness in the market is not sufficient. When I move out, I make a promise to myself that I will utilise the time and head space to get to know more about the market. Perhaps, I have overestimated my capability in understanding the probabilities of the market. Now, I’m picking up books that introduces me to basic statistics, stochastic calculus and random variables.
While I have not come close to cracking the market, I’m grateful that I respect the randomness of the market while using standard deviation as more of a suggestion than the truth. As much as a certain group of people like to hawk their wares, an outsized return of a particular black swan year does not justify for poor risk management in the subsequent years or the ability to purport outsize subsequent claims. As much as I try to learn from data, it is not a gospel.
It hurts when I run water down my cut. I’m not sure how deep is the cut, but there is enough blood to cycle through a few band aid.
It has been six months since I move out, one year in my new job and two years since I start trading options and studying for my bachelor degree. Does it hurt? Or is that just general numbness? I don’t know. Unlike the cut on my finger, I can’t see it and I can’t stop things with just a band-aid. And things couldn’t be narrow done to something as simply as a mandolin blade.
Maybe one day I’ll figure out. Maybe.
