Losing Half a Million Dollars is the Best Thing That’s Ever Happened to Me

Was a video idea, may make it but decided may as well post my thoughts

Do you ever wonder if someone else is living the same life as you?

It took me a minute to realize that everything I deal with is ultimately my own doing. My personality, my journey, everything has been and has to be homegrown, even if it goes all the way to something as serious as losing half a million gambling on crypto. There’s no one else here that can truly relate to your experiences and be there for each moment of it. Sure, you can have people by your side, but every majorly important event has to be taken face on, where you are just as at-risk as anyone else.

A close friend once told me a quote back in high school when I was struggling with finding a date for prom. He said something along the lines of, “Imagine yourself as a garden, and you're trying to get people to look at your flowers. Why show them if you’re not even watering it yourself?” It was a wake-up call that I needed to put effort into myself first—into growing and nurturing who I am. I still struggle with this, but the reality is: why would someone invest in me if I’m not investing in myself? It doesn’t make sense to expect others to be interested in something I’m not even working on.

This comes back to my massive mistakes in crypto, where I had started to think about what I actually care about right now. After being attached to prices and charts for over a year, with no true end goal—proven by not realizing anything into fiat—I am pretty lost. Until recently, the feeling of graduating college next year wasn’t anything much at all, since I never truly put my full care into education, rather than building and personal interests. The reality has set in pretty heavily as of recent though, knowing that I only have about a year until I need to get into the real world. The pressure is on. It doesn’t help either that my parents are going to kick me out this summer either lol.

The past school break has come down to a lot of introspection, and looking back at my past year or so of work. I think I needed some time, removed from trading, to just understand that where I was at was just a benchmark of what I could achieve, not the goal. Also, that my true goals aren’t even financial, but off of personal achievement with my creations. That I need to commit to building for the next 16 or so months, fully accepting that this is the last chance I’ll have to use my time in academia, and to understand that the money I lost is gone. I can either work even harder to make it back, or accept the reality and move on.

The thing is, no matter how successful or driven you are, there’s always the chance that you’ll fall. That’s a part of life. Not everyone is cut out to handle the pain, and sometimes, I wonder if I am. I think about my lowest points—times like now where it feels like there’s no winning, when my social life is completely out of whack, when I have no jobs in the space lined up, when my relationship with my parents is tainted and I’m getting kicked out. I can’t imagine being any more lost or disconnected. The thing is though, it’s not like I haven’t been here before. I didn’t learn my lesson from last cycle, and in reality, a lot of my stress is overblown; it’s all arbitrary. Most of it just stems from a sense of regret, or imposter syndrome.

I know this isn’t a competition with anyone else. It’s all about knowing where I’m at in the world, and making sure I’m continuously growing, even when it feels like I’m not where I want to be. The key is pushing forward, knowing that even if I fall, it’s just a part of the process. It’s about watering my garden, even when it feels like no one’s looking.

Everything that I have gone through made me realize more and more, that my life is completely unique, and I have to accept that my experiences won’t align with 99% of people. I have to take pride in everything I do, because eventually, the flowers will bloom, and that’s when people will start noticing.