Learning To Breathe Pt.2

Although the bottom was ugly, the actual experience was somehow detached, like watching a videotape in slow-motion. I knew what was coming, I'd seen this movie before, there was nothing I could do to prevent it. The funny thing was in the weeks prior to that event, I had already realized that I drastically needed to restructure my entire trading schema, if you will. How I viewed the markets, my capital, and how risk connected the two needed a complete reworking from the ground up. I had begun to actually sit down and investigate what my ideas on trading really boiled down to, to physically collect and collate the evidence (not just spreadsheet figures as before, but actual folders of printed charts and annotations -- modern-day charting by hand, I suppose). I began reordering my trading ideas under different criteria, focusing on the specific differences between each setup, as opposed to just categorizing for the sake of categorizing via mundane areas such as time frame or market. All of this was progress, but old habits die hard, and mine seemed determined to throw one last party before I could wipe the slate clean. So I let that part of me have its way in venting all the frustrations that had collected over the years, with as much capital to expend as needed, because I knew if I were to go on trading this vindictive child inside would have to go. For good.

I wasn't left with much capital to work with. I'd been desperately impatient to reclaim what I'd lost over the years even before this latest blowout; now the idea seemed completely impossible to even imagine. Yet wasn't that the point of the whole experience? Wiping the slate clean on all accounts seemed the only way I could build a new base from which to start over, to continue reconstruction of my entire perspective without the rubble of the past to impede me. I mentioned earlier that I didn't really want to retread this whole experience, but to tell the truth it was hard to get this second part out without really sitting down and thinking it over. And I'm glad I did, because it's quite clear to me now in retrospect.

It was all about releasing that which could never be restored, a forceful letting go, however painful and involuntary, and letting the dream die. The ultimate loss realized. For so long I'd been blindly focused on reclaiming some former glory that nothing short of complete redemption would suffice. I realize now that it was this self-inflicted pressure, this war cry of "all or nothing, all at once" that had become both the primary driving force behind all my efforts as well as the source of their complete undoing. I'd lost all sense of perspective in being obssessed with wasteful regretting, and this tainted my reasoning right down to each individual trade. A waste of time, time running out, got to get it all back now. These thoughts and impulses all shared a singular source. The entire time it was as if I'd envisioned myself running an entire marathon in a single breath, my impatience deluding me into the belief that there was no atmosphere to breathe, no oxygen to spare, when in fact there was plenty of air. Plenty of time. When the dust settled, it became clear there was really no race at all to begin with. The path was one I'd have all to myself, with no one to compete against. I could jog, I could walk. And I could breathe, at my own pace. Inhale. Exhale. Letting the pressure go.