Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me. That’s the statement we all grew up with right? We’re told that the words we say and the words we hear are just that, words. And that they can’t simply hurt us unlike sticks that are hit upon us or stones thrown our way. But the words we say and the words we hear do hurt.
I made a mistake yesterday. I got sucked into the hype of Reddit VS Wall Street. If you don’t know what that is, here’s a handy link. Basically, a bunch of hedge fund billionaire guys were trying to buy undervalued stock in GameStop. The hope was by buying the short stock as it’s called, the value of gamestop would diminish and they could shut the business down that much sooner. There’s money to be made even when business close apparently. Anywho, a bunch of redditors saw this and decided to pump up the stock in order to teach wallstreet a lesson. The price of Gamestop went from 2 bucks a share, to 332 bucks. People who had invested early were making bank and being able to move their lives forward in a super crazy way. One user even posted saying that because of the investment he made, he was able to pay off his student loans. Another said he would finally be able to help pay for his sister’s chemo. For me it was too late to jump onto the Gamestop bandwagon, however the same type of situation was starting to unfold with AMC movie theatres. It had gone from $0.89 per share, to over $20 yesterday. I saw the potential and decided, without telling my wife, to put $200 bucks into AMC stock. I was convinced that the prices would go up again to probably 60 or 100 dollars by the end of the day. Did you see that key sentence? Without telling my wife. Oops.
That’s not what happend. Before the day could really get underway, Robinhood, the online app for commission free trading, the trading app for the people by the people, decided that regular people would no longer be allowed to purchase stock of Gamestop and AMC. The corporation behind Robinhood stopped all trading for those companies and now they are in freefall. My purchases from yesterday didn’t even go through. My desire for a quick buck lead me nowhere. I basically broke zero.
My wife woke me up and wondered aloud “Where is all our money?” Her tone implied frustration and my guilt panic infused voice only made the situation worse. It wasn’t the spending of money that upset her. It was a combination of not telling her and trying to cover my tracks. We had an argument and she stopped talking to me. Silence infuriates me and when she wouldn’t respond to my questions, I got mad. I walked off fuming and shouted “Fine, maybe I’ll just leave!” Oh boy, bad choice of words, especially since we’ve been trying to fix our marriage after the time I ACTUALLY LEFT. My words hurt her. We haven’t been the same since then. And I felt the distance between us. We are working and trying to communicate, but there is still a lot of work to do.
Deeds done in the dark, will be brought to the light. Am I right? It also makes me think about my failure in the stock market. Had I been prepared, ready, saw the signs, I would have been in a better place now. Instead I tried to jump on board when the train had already left the station. In my failures however, I do see a parallel between my own mistake and that of the Lord’s return. We can be awake and attentive and ready for it, or we can be caught off guard and unprepared. If we don’t keep watch, if we aren’t ready… we’ll be caught off guard and unprepared for when he returns.
As for my wife, I messed up there. I should have been honest and communicated with her from the get go. Instead I did things on my own and really, that wasn’t fair to her. Being a good husband involves sharing with your wife and allowing her to be a part of the decisions made to better one’s life. I’m sorry love. I’ll do things differently from now on and always ALWAYS make sure you’re included.
That’s all for today folks. Be smart with your money. Stay safe and I’ll see you next time
– Orthodox Trucker
Orthodox Trucker 
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