Log In Details

4th of January 2021

LOG 1

Why am I doing this again? To record my thoughts.

Why am I doing this again? To see what I am missing.

Why am I doing this again? To avoid killing myself.

Dramatic. As if I would ever do it. It happened that I just wanted to see if the car would stop in time. My girlfriend saw me from the other side of the road and asked me to go to therapy. So I am doing this for her. She’s happier with me when I seem to know what I am doing.

Keeping a log. Fantastic. Why can’t we just talk on the couch like in the movies? I guess even therapy is paper work sometimes. At least my paper is fine. The black covers make me feel mysterious, in charge. I am telling you; I just wanted to see what the car would do. I am fine. Like my paper.

In fact I have plenty of fine paper. $20,000 left to allocate for today. It’s not really mine, but it’s in good company. My company is a hedge fund. We hedge funds. I am a portfolio manager. I manage portfolios. I manage just well. So did the car driver.

My analyst is new. I don’t trust his recommendations, which is why I took it upon myself to find a different way of allocating this sum. I wonder what the diver would have recommended. In a sense they recommended that I go ahead.

I always go. Not around much. My girlfriend dislikes that. But my Bloomberg has GO on the keyboard instead of Enter. I always “go” to just do. I never stay. I am exhausted. Maybe that’s why I stopped in the middle of the road. Maybe that’s why I want to stay with her.

She knows my password. She knows everyone. And everything. But she doesn’t know how much I wish I knew myself. The driver knew how to stop. I don’t.

I don’t even know where I am going. Dammit. I’ve been wrtiting for so long in this journal that I have to log back in on Bloomberg. Of course I have to log in and press GO.

LOG 2

Same day. Just had lunch. I logged my calories. My girlfriend is a nutritionist. She likes to keep me fit. We are a good fit. I am fit to lead, she said. Am I fit to fire this new analyst? I don’t know what’s about him. He’s different.

Ugh he’s coming back.

LOG 3

God, I hate him. He’s got a quirky mask on as if his appalling sense of fashion will keep the virus away. Offbeat masks are the new cartoonish socks. Every corporate soul wears them as if to rebel against the rigidity of the capitalist uniform. And yet, by almost everyone doing so, it’s just another part of the uniform. I gave up my colourful socks when I saw my boss with the same blue hotdog cotton on his feet. Now my originality stands in breaking the patterns. That’s why I do well as portfolio manager. I just have to be on track with everything but still a bit off the beaten track and bam! Money.

This analyst said the same thing. That’s why I don’t like him. He’s like me. But younger. Less stuck on GO. Makes me feel replaceable and incomplete at the same time. His reasoning is much like my own, so I don’t have to not agree with him. And yet I do, because what else am I going to do?

I think I see the point of a log. It’s very seldom that we catch ourselves in such fragile and pathetic thought patterns.

So I don’t dislike the guy. I am threatened. Maybe I dislike myself. I need “to go” to be. Whereas my intention is to just stay a little.

I never truly found my sock equivalent when I gave up the blue hotdogs. Maybe my investment choices were my blue hotdog. Trading stocks like buying socks. And now this young man is styling them just like I do.

I am probably afraid that without being unique, I no longer need to exist. And if I were too unique, I wouldn’t fit anywhere and thus would no longer need to exist. Breaking the pattern while still being palatable to most is what I do. That’s why I stopped on the road. It’s an act of rebellion. Or was it just being like my dead former coworker. The driver thought I should continue to exist. But what am I to do? Ask every car on the road for confirmation? Why didn’t he continue to exist? He was my favourite analyst. I always trusted his recommendations. I did not agree with him, of course. But he trusted me, I trusted him. He was a different type of different. Very different from my different current analyst. Very different from me. I miss him dearly.

LOG 4

The $20,000. All the other funds allocated. Why is this sum bothering me so much. Where did it even truly come from?

LOG 5

Nevermind, I pulled my spreadsheet. It came from previous earnings. A random stock we found and short-selled. That company would not have survived the pandemic anyway. My job is to make money. I bet on things. In a sense sometimes it’s luck. I cannot tell that to any analyst. Although we all know it. There was a chance this $20,000 could have been a loss. Not a gain. I could have lost my life, just like my former analyst did. It was a bet. Or a sure death wish. I cannot ask him what his was, can I? I am not sure what mine was either. Maybe I hoped I’d know if it would kill me. Maybe I was just doing what keeps me alive: betting my chances on the slight offbeat, but not too offbeat.

My girlfriend is quirky, but not too quirky. My notebook, you’ll notice, is just like my girlfriend. I chose a classic look. Moleskine. Black covers. Nothing to single it out from a generic notebook at first glance. And the first thing I did was to pick a purple pen. Sorry, as this will probably be harder to read, but I assume that as a therapist you’ve seen harder to read people. I am an open book. At least because I was asked to. I need permission to be expressive. Is it a flaw? A quirk? All I know is that I have reached a point where I have become desensitised to my own needs. Was it that I wanted to see what happens if I stop? Or if I do something that I should not do? Or was I seeking permission from a random driver to continue to exist?

LOG 6

Maybe I shouldn’t have brought my notebook to work. I barely did any work today. It’s ok for them. They have who to replace me with now. I don’t hate my new analyst anymore. It’s hard to feel much anyway.

My former analyst was the only one I would have fully listened to. He was so different from me that it felt exhilarating to be engaged in a conversation about different points of view. In the end we used to choose a third option. Not mine, not his, but ours. Something new. A creative act of sorts. He was not my only analyst but the others were like a choir to the main star. And I was in the audience. Deciding how to move forward. It felt like my expertise meant something. Like there was a tension, a game. The wins were satisfying.

When I went to his funeral I remember feeling like I wanted to argue with him. I wasn’t angry. It was his choice, but like most of his choices, I did not agree with him.

I cannot ask him if I had anything to do with his death. And that makes me want to go visit him. But this is not a game you can just do a side quest like that in. You either GO or quit. No side quest to have coffee with a dead analyst. I never even went for coffee anyway. I know nothing of him. He just quit one day. GO, quit, die. I wonder if these are options or a sequence.

LOG 7

Not a game you can do a side quest in.

GO, quit, die.

What would you say if you were here? What recommendation would you give me?

LOG 8

It doesn't really matter, does it? Is this why you stopped coming to work? Why did you quit the game? I need to stop making assumptions. I am just projecting. I don’t really know much about my dead analyst. Even dead, he is my analyst. I don’t want to quit the game like he did. I don’t agree with him. But I don’t not agree with him. In a game, what’s in between GO and quit?

LOG 9

GameStop. This sounds like a perfect company to dump $20,000. By the time you see this, I will have long executed the trades. No one is buying it right now. On the contrary, it’s being shortselled by other hedge funds. It’s an off beat gamble inspired by *my* analysis. Perfect choice. But I am probably losing money. And I will use that loss as an excuse to stop my own game too. It might look like I will be losing but I will finally be free of my own patterns. And I will stop. It’s not like this random stock that everybody else wants to get rid of is going to skyrocket to the moon all of a sudden.