An Overdue Letter To Myself

In 2017, I made a promise to myself that I would write an article every single week. It doesn’t matter what the article is about, as long as the topic is about something I’m keen in. I’ve written an apology letter to myself, my hopes and dreams, the recipe for love, human relationships, business and all the way to cryptocurrency. There were small pauses, especially towards the end of every year. The Novembers and Decembers were the periods of my life when I felt the most. I wanted to just sink in, soak it all, and so I did.

I kept writing for five years till one day I stopped in June 2022.

Writing isn’t the only outlet that allows me to pour my soul out. For more than a decade, I had someone to talk to — my best friend. Much like how my articles would leap from Craig Ferguson to Connor McGregor, from the psychology of investing to learning to be young again, we would talk about anything and everything under the sun. We would practically talk every single day, and every conversation that we had, in one way or another, leads to being a better version of ourselves. We wanted to run faster, to be physically stronger, to be a better friend, to be more charismatic, to earn enough for our desired lifestyles, to be more present, to be more understanding, and to always seek the next level of who we can be. I’ll be honest.

I’ve always imagined that the ultimate end goal of my life would start and end with him, and it isn’t necessarily the case that it can’t or wouldn’t happen anymore, but the inevitability of life hits me slowly; then all at once.

All of a sudden, but not quite really, I soon realized that my dear friend isn’t gonna be quite as present as I’d like him to be. No one is at fault. Life simply happens, isn’t it? I discovered that I was gradually distancing myself from everyone and everything in life. As I began to be less present in life, I stopped writing. I was afraid to face my inner emotions; still am really. I was scared to hear the truths that I write of. A few months later, my closest work buddy left too.

She has never been one to show her vulnerability till that very night when she called me.

She told me about her plans, her insecurities, and the songs she was gonna sing to me. She sang halfway and her nose were blocked. Tears started flowing down my cheeks. I knew it was coming. She mattered to me. He mattered to me too. I was very intentional about expressing gratitude, not to take them for granted, and appreciating every moment we had. What I didn’t know was that no matter how much you’ve told yourself that you’re ready to let go if something like this ever happens, you’ll still never be able to prepare for an event like this — both announced or unannounced.

These incidences became the undertones of my life and they set the stage of how I muddle through in the later months. I wasn’t happy per se. I was empty. I wasn’t feeding my soul. I started to see the world the way I treat rational, numerical, spread-sheet driven ideas. There were cost-benefit analysis, a feasibility study, an ROI research, and so forth. It wasn’t sustainable. It didn’t last long. I needed to give myself time to grief for the future that I’m unlikely to have. Akin to the ghost of defeat, the pain is visceral.

This is the part when I start to be both rational and emotional at the same time, to produce perhaps a sentence along the lines of — economics fail to understand that something is a function, not only of its amount, but also its meaning.

You’d think that life will gradually start to become better in 2023. I thought the same. You get out of your own hole and begin to envision the awesome stuff you’re gonna conquer in the next 300 days, but life hits you like a truck. One moment you’re up and bouncing, and the next you’re lying in bed with your survivor mode on. Emergencies happen, and you wonder — why me? Soon, you’ll realize that you’ve got no time to wonder, and all you’ve got to do is to put your next foot forward and respond to the doom and gloom. One problem at a time. One day at a time. An endless parade of volatility, mania and panic — very much like investing into crypto. I guess this is the sneak peek to my next article. We’re gonna rise back from the ashes like a phoenix, my friends. We all have our ups and downs, but it is up to us to maintain the higher lows, and strive for our next ATH. Bu-fking-lo — the man from parts unknown.