August Update

Hello there.

It’s been awhile.

Despite having a ton of free time due to COVID, I’ve not been writing very much. Even worse, the few moments I have sat down to pound away at the keyboard have left me grossly unsatisfied with my own work. Today, I am forcing myself to write, making myself get something out, ANYTHING out in the hopes that I will set myself down the writer’s path again.

A lot has changed in my life and today I will be sharing with all of you good boys and girls some of the details that I usually keep private.

First up: work. In April of this year, I started to work in a big box store specializing in construction equipment and materials. I took the job because I was becoming increasingly miserable at the prospect of staying locked up inside, becoming ever more unproductive wasting my time with videogames and YouTube.

It was quite an eye-opening experience, particularly in regards to pandemic countermeasures and the general populace’s ability and willingness to follow said measures. One of my very first realizations I had when working was just how impossible social distancing truly was to maintain at work. Many of the working spaces were designed for efficiency of space and therefore, made it impossible to be more than six feet away from coworkers and customers. Even worse, many customers were horrible at gauging distances and routinely were closer to each other than the government suggestions.

Back in April, information about the virus was even less certain than it is today and so many still thought that the virus could propagate itself easily via contact. Everyone entering the store was required to disinfect their hands and cashiers were supposed to disinfect their payment terminals between every customer. I say “supposed to” here because more often than not, customers and employees would pantomime washing their hands and few cashiers were ever bothered enough to use their spray bottles and brown paper towels.

I saw customers cough and sneeze, most of them not even attempting to cover their faces. This was before masks and face coverings became required, back when they were merely heavily suggested government guidelines. It was around this time that I began to feel very lucky. Lucky that we had dodged one hell of a bullet: that this disease was not more deadly than it actually is.

Speaking of lucky, one area where I was lucky during the pandemic was in my investment portfolio. I have been consistently putting aside money over the last six years and while some of my investments tanked hard with the economic shutdown, many others went threw significant growth, in particular Bitcoin and my collection of Magic: the Gathering cards.

The growth of my collection was so good that it has allowed me to start selling parts of my collection off in order to gain the capital required to start operating my own card flipping side hustle where I try to buy cards and collections on the cheap in order to sell them to someone else at a profit. Another important part is that the profits I’ve realized have enabled me to begin buying into reserved list cards, many of which are cards that I’ve been dreaming about owning ever since I started playing.

For example, I can now say that I am the proud owner of my very first Mox, a near mint condition Mox Diamond.

I’ve even started thinking about doing the work of selling other people’s collections for a commission as a way of further increasing my revenue and bypassing the reluctance of many people when it comes times to selling their cards at realistic prices (it is very difficult to sell cards at their “full” price when you don’t own a physical/online store of your own).

On that note, if any of you out there are looking to cash out of your Magic: the Gathering collections, feel free to contact me. I am very interested.

In June of this year, I quit my job at the big box store and started working for a renovation contractor and I can honestly say it has been one of my favorite jobs to date. I absolutely love the often physical demands of the jobs: moving materials around, demolition, and operating heavy equipment as well as the problem-solving that come each day. For example, I have yet to see a perfectly rectangular room which means that certain things like flooring must be done with the idea that at some point, you have to work out some solution to making your rectangle materials fit the trapezoid room.

I have loved learning about different tools and the techniques to using them, learning about differences in material types and their intended purposes. I have thoroughly enjoyed seeing a project advance and be finished, seeing the happiness of a client with my work and their enjoyment of the finished project. That being said, I have now come to one hell of an obstacle, one that I’m truly facing for the first time in my life: not enough work.

As the rookie in the crew, I knew that I was going to have some days off due to not being needed for certain steps and I get it. My boss is a business man and he has to make sure his team’s production matches it’s cost or else everyone is out of a job. I knew that I would have time off between jobs sometimes and that I would just have to find things to do.

What I didn’t expect and I cannot tolerate is my boss’ lack of organization and foresight in running the team. More than once, I was told late at night that I wouldn’t be working the next day. Worse, I’ve now experience several times not working one day, being told that I’m working the next day only to be told that I have the day off on the very same day. I can accept not working some of the time but what I cannot accept is not even being told to expect that I won’t be working.

Suffice to say, I am now forced to start the arduous process of searching for my next job. The real tragedy in all of this is that renovation was the first job I’d worked where I was excited to work and continuously hungry for more. My boss could have profited off me and my willingness to work hard, my professionalism and my desire to learn. Instead, he’ll have to find someone else willing to put up with his crappy organization and who’ll work as hard.

I think that’s enough to share with you all for now but before I go I will just leave you with this nugget of wisdom I stumbled upon during these tumulteous times:

Stay hungry and aware for opportunities around you. You just never know how amazing they might be if you give them the chance and put in the work.

FINAL NOTE: Thanks to all of you who subscribed, my OF is now in the top 29% of all accounts. I’m so impressed by you all and I appreciate it very much. You’re all my very good boys and girls!

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If I have earned it,

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