Last year was been a hell of a ride. Its been the year when everything I did seemed to be mistimed. Misplaced. This goes for the topic of this blog - investing - but also in personal life. Its been the year when I’ve tried a lot of things. Experimented with stuff. But its also been the year when I’ve experienced a lot of failures. But I think failure is a factor of trying stuff out. You don’t fail as much if you don’t try stuff out. Its the famous ‘fuck around and find out matrix.’ So this article is going to be a lot of personal mixed with finance. You can spare yourself the trouble by just clicking out at this point. If you do continue, I promise this isn’t a flex. And I’m not asking for help. I’m just unloading to you, a random stranger who could give two fucks.
Anxiety Attacks
I started having anxiety attacks sometime in May, maybe June. This was a first for me, and it was completely foreign. For me, it manifests like a sinking feeling in my chest. Breathing becomes fast, you heartbeat goes up drastically, your vision blurs, and you start feeling woozy. I’m aware of what the trigger was, but I can’t really discuss it at the moment. But it was a mixture of a host of things. I don’t know about you, but this thing called life is fucking scary to me. The wild plans you have, the immense - but probably imagined - pressure to succeed in life, whatever that means. It was getting to me. And this coming from a guy who doesn’t even have social media. I can only imagine how bad it would be if I was constantly scrolling looking at people’s ‘perfect’ lives. The attacks disappeared after a while, and I was super proud of myself for having dealt with my problems by myself. You know, like a man should - again, whatever that means. But they simply turned into something else, lethargy. Or to be more precise, mild depression.
Depression
Its been the year that I experienced depression for the first time in a while. Last time I got depressed was back in 2018, and that involved a whole lot of drinking and wilding out. I look back at the time with both nostalgia and cringe - lots of cringe. And I almost went back there this year. I started drinking a lot more than I have in the last two years. And towards the later part of the year, I was overcome by lethargy. I couldn’t keep up with my schedule anymore. I assumed it was because I was taking up too much. Trying to do a lot at once. But that wasn’t it. Maybe it was due to the fact that I was getting older and slower? Maybe. But even stuff that I enjoyed became a chore to do. And thing is, I wasn’t fully aware of the state until late December, when I was talking to my mum and she mentioned that she noticed it too. I’m supposed to be self aware. At least I think I am. And I hate that it took me until the end of the year to figure out that that was was was going on with me. I could have tried fixing it a lot sooner. But not everything goes how we want it to go, does it.
Financial Pain
I closed the year down around 15% on my investments. As an absolute figure, that is a lot of money to lose. I made a couple of stupid decisions, such as buying highly risky assets without doing my due diligence. I lost a lot of money figuring out how to get into the stock market, and how to play it. I realized how banks make their insane profits - converting to currencies like USD, especially using local banks, is fucking expensive. The margins these guys have between buying and selling prices is almost criminal. I bought into cryptocurrencies, and what a fucking year it has been for cryptocurrencies. While I still have faith in crypto, 2022 has done a very good job at shaking that fear. I bought a lot of stocks that have just been painful to hold. I have to keep reminding myself of the convictions I developed for them - convictions developed after the fact, instead of before. At first I thought myself invincible. The everyday movements didn’t bother me. But I think they did. The stock market, especially for long term investors, is not for the faint hearted. I went from enthusiasm, to obsession, to panic, to despair, and finally, I think, to acceptance.
I’ve only been in the green for about a month in total so far. And the movements mean your paper value - for those of us who keep track at least - can be good in one month, and extremely depressing in another. Imagine doing the math on your finances and realizing in a period of a month, even without spending much, you are worth significantly less. And you didn’t even party or enjoy yourself. If there’s one year where having cash was good, it was 2022. The only saving grace is that the USD has appreciated by like 9% since I started investing back in January. That means that, since I record my finances in KES, I’ve gained, almost passively, around the same amount in my local currency. At least on paper. But the percentage number in the brokerage account is what matters, and it is in red double digits. Not a pretty sight to see.
The question I’ve been asking myself the past few months is whether I should just pull out - no pun intended. Sell it all, and buy the shit I want. Enjoy myself, take trips. All that stuff people my age are actually doing. But I think not. If push comes to shove, I’ll simply pause investing and keep whatever’s already there, there. I don’t really need the money to do all the stuff I just mentioned above. I can manage with what I have outside of it, and what will come in the future. So that amount stays in. I might recycle it into other more promising - or to be honest - safer stocks. But it stays there. That’s a commitment I made. I’m sticking to it. Its the price of education - at least that’s what I tell myself. Its about making less costly mistakes over time. At this age, I can make a mistake, even a costly one, and recover. There’s plenty of time for me - again, that’s what I tell myself.
But something’s working..
With all that said, 2022 has also been a pleasantly surprising year. There’s a clarity that I’ve had in the year that I didn’t have before. A conviction. Maybe it comes from daring yourself to do things you wouldn’t normally do. But its been a year where I’ve had some of the most exciting interactions with people. A year when I’ve connected with people I would never have thought I’d connect to. A year where something just clicks. You don’t even notice it yourself. Its others who do. Maybe its delusion. Maybe I’m just full of myself. There’s some freedom you get by just doing what you want to do, how you want to do it. And I’ve cultivated that for myself in this blog, along with a few other places in my life. And I think I’ll make sure to retain these aspects of my life going forward. I think everyone should. We’ll be good when its all said and done.