By: Cameron MacKenzie
About a week ago, my four-year-old came into the kitchen and announced that mommies and daddies should live in the same house. I told him that sometimes they did, and sometimes they didn't, and I reminded him that his friend Jordan's mommy and daddy lived in different houses, just like we did. My son nodded, seemingly satisfied. Then he walked back out into the den to watch Bluey, and I poured myself a big glass of whiskey.
About two years ago, I got divorced. I've been trying to avoid writing about this, but I don't think I can anymore, because the divorce has led to a massive reset about what I value and how I spend my time. It's forced me to examine old prejudices I didn't know I had, and it's taught me that how I feel is one of the few things I can control.
I have always tried to live lean–and I'm not just talking about money, I'm talking about living a manageable life. Not going to too many places, not talking to too many people, not straying too far from my well-established comfort zone. But there's a great line in No Country for Old Men, where the bad guy Anton Chigurh has captured a bounty hunter that has been chasing him. Before Chigurh kills the man, he asks him a simple question: "If the rule that you have followed has brought you to this, what good is the rule?" I've spent a lot of time thinking about that.
Right when COVID lockdowns started to lift, I went to visit a divorced friend of mine who lives in DC. I hadn't seen him in twenty years, but I was stunned when I walked into his downtown multi-level apartment that he's tricked out like something out of The Real World. He lives right around the corner from the biggest bars in the city, and he's out there almost every night. He knows everyone, he gets in everywhere for free, and the afterparty is always at his place. Now, I'm 45, and so is he, but I spent that weekend acting like I was 25 right alongside a bunch of 25 year olds, who thought it was so cool that a "writer" from the "mountains" had come into town. I broke a lot of the rules I'd made for myself over the last fifteen years or so, and when I got home, I felt incredibly guilty. I'd said stupid things and done stupid things and spent way too much money. So I sat on my couch, and I waited for somebody to walk in and tell me I'd messed up. Guess what? Nobody came.
But still, I thought, my friend is crazy. He's running himself into the ground. He's headed for disaster. The fact of the matter is, he's not. He's doing great. He's making money, he's in great shape, he's investing, he's traveling, he's got a tight group of friends, and he's thrilled with his life. This was a guy who, as a young man, was notorious for his bitter attitude. Now, he's one of the happiest people I know.
A few weeks later I went up to New York to meet another old buddy. He's single, and a banker, and we had a lot of fun in the city, but somewhere along the way, he asked me if I ever tried to read stock charts. Of course not, I said. I'm not a quant, I'm an English teacher. Besides, given the way the market has moved for the last decade, fundamental analysis seemed broken to me. All those metrics felt like part of an old economy that had been superseded by the giants of tech.
He told me I was an idiot, and then showed me a few basics. Stuff like price patterns and volume action and a ton of other things I'd never paid any attention to. When I came home, I looked at the stocks I knew, and I began to see something in Disney that suggested the stock was about to pop. I put down some money and BOOM–Disney took off. I was ecstatic. I had cracked the code. I was ready to quit my job and buy a Bloomberg terminal and a yacht. And then two weeks later Disney crashed, taking all of my money with it, plus a little bit more. What happened? Well, my buddy had helped me know when to buy, but we'd never got to the lesson about when to sell. I wasn't sure if I felt like a genius or an idiot, but it was exciting to get a glimpse of a whole new understanding of the market. It also gave me even more respect for the professionals who watch this stuff every day.
Right at the end of the summer, I decided to take my oldest son camping. I never would've been able to do that when I was married, and taking the time to focus just on him, to the exclusion of anyone else, was a revelation for me. I was able to see how angry I'd been in the past–an anger that I thought was simply fundamental to me but was in fact an anger directed at my life, a deep frustration that manifested itself, principally, as sadness. I had been sad. I realized I wasn't sad anymore. I was happy–happy with my son, happy to be around him, and happy to share my time with him. We made a fire, we skipped rocks, we cooked burgers and ate s'mores and read books by the firelight. We spoke to one another like people.
When it was over, I dropped him off at his mom's house and went home to air out our camping equipment. I didn't have anything to do that day except reflect on how I felt. I felt really, really good.
Opinions expressed here are those of the author and not necessarily those of SagePoint Financial, Inc.