Blended Living

• its cold its warm its snowy then sunny the market is up and down
• we are on a sideways ride
• bad news isn’t so bad, and good news doesn’t particularly linger
• the winter is taking its toll on me
• I can sense the weakness as I shop online for things I don’t need
• and daydream about vacations to far away hot places
• with beaches like the ones in the pictures I was sent in email
• with a kangaroo, yes, a kangaroo that seemed to swim out into the ocean
• and I found myself envious
• a first for me – to be envious of a kangaroo
• which makes me think of the story about the origins of the word
• when the white traveler asked the pygmie and he answered what sounded like ‘kang a roo’
• which meant ‘I don’t know’
• so I’m envious of –I don’t know– what
• which is neither here nor there
• and this stream of thought seems to be mired somewhere between winnie the pooh and Dr Seuss
• yet I haven’t had a drink today
• or maybe that is the problem or the solution…
• just rearranged my 4x trading charts layouts
• and I like it but the first trade is agin’ me
• as I lose 8 cents in my pursuit to reinvent the trader in me
• and am glad 4x allows for microtrades
• as 8 cents is cheap to pay for the lesson I just (re)learned about trading ranges, simple moving averages, and the fractal nature of time and prices
• which makes me think just like a kid on a swing
• its easy to see the turns closer to their apexes as well as take a non-blurry photo of them being so into their present moment
• just that the pendulum of trading has so many participants
• and I only have a handful of kids I’d photograph
• and usually just one at a time
• yet the market reveals itself in moments just like a girl you are enamored with and you just know exactly what to do next.

My daughter remarked to me the other day that time is running so fast for her now.  I realize that since she is now officially a teenager, and that her life is full of High School applications,  Algebra homework, and the end of her Middle School years, I said without thinking, “It just gets faster as you get older.”

I almost regretted telling her that, but its the truth.  For most people those younger days are looked upon with a strong sense of nostalgia and wanting.  Is it the innocence that is lost, or the skill of being in the moment the way a child so naturally does?  We fill our days with more distractions to not feel that wanting.

If being in the moment is a skill brought in with our births, shouldn’t we practice it so that we don’t wake up some night and wonder where all our time has been lost?  In “Time Shifting”, Stephen Rechtshaffen writes about the concept of a time retreat.  A chance to be in the moment, to create time boundaries, to honor the mundane, so that we can create some spontaneous (unscheduled) time, a chance to do what we want in our own little time retreat.

“That’s so selfish!”,  you might say.  I’d rather think of it as enhancing our lives, for ourselves and for the special people in our lives.  If I were to practice meditation, or some form of a time retreat, perhaps my answer would have been different to my daughter.  I would have been a different Dad with a better answer.  If I can blend in some silly self time, some time to take some deep breaths, what wondrous things might I think, and say and do?

Is it possible to take time to make time?  Can I actually step away from the fast paced rhythm, to shift into ‘me time’ and come back refreshed and accomplish more?

[Photo taken in Riverside Park, NYC by John]