Robinhoodz
For many,
the belief that our choices are right is the default mindset.
Maybe it's narcissistic.
Maybe it's evolutionary.
Maybe it's both.
An ex-mentor of mine once said,
"...be careful when you think you're doing too much good, because doing good work should be hard. It's easy to lose your identity while seeking positive feedback."
Though I wasn't a fan of his leadership style, I learned a lot from him. I believe we were the minnows, and he was the shark. In turn, he was the enemy that he warned us about. Ironic maybe, but giving others their wants over their needs don't always coincide. People rarely need money. They need a situation to change. This may appear as a privileged perspective, but I challenge you to give it a shot. If you teach someone to fish...
I didn't like my teacher, but that day, I learned how to fish.
My general confidence wades like the tides, sensitive to the words and actions of others. Nonetheless, I thank my shapers like my family and friends who taught me how the mind is a goldmine if you dig it. The battle with self is uphill; we find ourselves struggling to choose the best long-term decisions over the short-term triumph.
The first pillar to build is honesty. Normally, I'm pretty detailed about the feedback I give, to those who request my service (free). There are few relationships in which I believe attention to detail is reciprocated. My interpretation: those who do not give attention to detail regarding your work either don't care about what you're doing, or they don't take you seriously. It's easy to blame the other party. For a long time, that's what I did. Now, I improve my consistency.
As it relates to a craft, my attitude toward what I do is changing. I see myself as a cog in a very big machine, constantly applying for an upgrade. By seeing my physical self as a tool, and mind as the puppet-master, I find it easier to grow from failure. In the case of this blog, failure looks like not generating traffic to my site. Failure is not getting feedback on my craft. It's hard not to take the apathy of others as a personal attack. I do. The key is to use that pain as motivation.
Every day at work when I am counting money, I listen to Bird in the Hand x Ice Cube. The money isn't mine, but as just a cog in the corporate machine, it's can be hard to conceal bitterness toward a corporation you work to make rich. The control of them is deeper than appears, in part to Citizen's United v. Federal Election Commission, one of the most pivotal court cases of the Digital Age. I won't get into details yet, but the precedent set is a part of the reason NFL owners have so much leverage in the kneeling vs. standing fiasco. If this government shut down has shown us nothing else, I learned that big corporations that can absorb the blow can successfully cut their respective noses to spite their own faces, to the sole detriment of those with less power.
On the job searching front, my pursuit did not go as planned. I fell on my face, and until about three months ago, I felt like I was free-falling. I realized that if you don't do for yourself, people will do for you. You won't like it. I'm sure those who flipped properties in Dumbo, Brooklyn felt like they were Robinhood.
Maybe they were Robinhoodz.
The neighborhoods changed, and those who created the area's culture did not benefit the same. Perhaps those benefactors thought they were doing too much good. Here’s a playlist encapsulating the sentiment.
Everyone isn’t from Brooklyn,
but the ones that aren’t were carefully chosen to complete the curation.
Average Value of condos, co-ops and one-to-three family homes. ($1000s)
I believe in fighting back.
For my baby portfolio, I use a neat app called, "Robinhood." It totes commission-free trading. What this means for someone who doesn't understand the jargon, there's effectively a middleman missing. The middleman is the broker (simplified).
I believe in fighting back.
Robinhood is a way to democratize investing. You can learn quite a bit if you pay attention to the app, though I would take the articles shown on it with a grain of salt. I'm not sure how the articles are chosen. Simply put, articles have a sharp effect on investments. The Digital Era should make humans skeptical of
e v e r y t h i n g.
I've taken enough of your hard earned time with this post, so I'll save some for the next time I talk about investing, where I'll discuss my portfolio & some of the tactics I have.