New Year

I can’t believe that we’re already four days into 2020, and I haven’t written a thing since Dec 30th. That’s not a very good way to start the New Year, that’s for sure. My vacation is officially over, as hard as it was to go back to work today. I don’t have fuck you money yet, so I still have to call it in every day. We’re close though. Last time I wrote, BTC was at twenty-nine thou, and in the days since it almost topped thirty five, bounced back to twenty-seven, and is now already back almost to thirty three. Oh, and ETH is at eleven hundred dollars. So we’re looking really good. Just a simple 2x from here outta do it, promise.

New Years was fun. We bought thirty dollars worth of junk food and party favors from the Dollar Store, then tuned in a YouTube feed of a countdown clock to ring in the new year along with Germany, so that the kids could celebrate it here 6AM local time. Friday we drove up to Missus’s dad’s (FIL) house up at the ski resort. The weather was bad, so we didn’t plan on skiing, although we did gear up the kids and let them putter around by the ski lifts just to get acclimated and comfortable for about half a hour. We’ll come back up in a few weeks when they’ve got some fresh powder, the man went crazy and stocked up on skis and equipment, with close to two dozen pairs of skis and half as many boots. What can I say, the man does nothing half-assed.

FIL asked me “how was work”, and I unloaded on that one, I tell you. A load of shit that I deal with when I’m not doing the stuff that I really want to do. The same story I tell myself, that I’m just there to save up as much money as possible so I can quit in the next couple months and do something where I don’t have to deal with the same trivial-ass problems that are other people’s emergencies.

Missus warned me not to “talk about how rich we are” with him, which is ironic considering how the man throws his wealth around. I couldn’t hide it, I had thousand-dollar alerts setup on TradingView, I woke up Saturday morning to thirty thousand, thirty-one hit like an hour later and just kept going. I was in a bit of shock.

Then I found out my dad’s sister died unexpectedly. I’m not sure I even know how to start unpacking all that right now. We weren’t close; I had estranged from her some years ago due to some bad decision making on her part, and I don’t talk to the clan back home very often. I think it messed me up a bit, considering that my dad just got out of the hospital and I talked to my grandmother for the first time in a year the day before. I think I was mostly feeling selfish for the news interrupting what was otherwise supposed to be a relaxing getaway. I called my dad, sent text messages to my cousins and brother, but didn’t call anybody. Couldn’t be bothered to since I was away, and have kept finding excuses since I’ve been back. Last time someone in the family died was my grandfather, over twenty years ago, and it’s not like I can just pack up and drive eleven hours for a funeral in the midst of a pandemic. Everyone back home was trying to be so careful, avoiding Thanksgiving and Christmas gatherings, and then she just drops dead on New Years Eve.

It seems almost absurd to go back to talking about my day and what the markets did and blah, blah, blah, following that, but life goes on. I meditated, shed a tear, then tried to get on with things as best I could for the rest of the trip. Leaving felt like a dream, I was having a bout of hyper-realism when we took off for the three hour drive. And back at the house today, trying to go back to my regular routine, like this is life, this is all there is.

I’d like to do an annual retrospective or review. What did I do well this year? What did I do badly? What do I hope to improve next year? That sort of thing. I’m not sure I have it in me to do that today. I know I increased my wealth by an staggering amount, even if most of it is in an account that I won’t touch for another twenty years, and the rest is something that I dare not sell until I’ve got the balls to do something radical like quit my job.

As if to drive the point home, last night I get a text message from someone. Ex-client, quit us two years ago cause our services were too steep. Is this el? Server down. Need help. I almost said nope, sorry, but didn’t. Bossmang still needs the business, and I still need the job, even if I would rather sit on unemployment for a few weeks, stacking sats and spending more time with the kids. So I took the call, and spent most of the day dealing with his emergency on top of everything else that happened while I was on vacation, trying to maintain my calm while all of that was going on and the kids were doing their best to destroy the house and make skunk-faces at me every time I asked them to do something.

Just another day in the life, I suppose.

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