I retired when I was thirty-eight years old.
Well, not really. To my mind, “retired” means I stopped working, and I certainly didn’t do that. My work means a tremendous amount to me. Being idle isn’t in my blood. I am reminded of a quote I cited from a blog post I did back in the days when I used to do really amazing posts…..
Finally and above all else, he was marvelously alive; and mankind, dreading boredom even more than anxieties, is grateful to those who make life throb with a swifter, stronger beat
What I mean by my “retirement” was that I was financially independent. I had, single-handedly, 
gone from being pushed out into the world at the age of 17 without any financial support to having the choice to never need to work work again.
As I say, though, not working isn’t really my thing. On the contrary, I think my desire to work and create exists in such abundance as to make me miserable, because if I’m not actively creating, I am very unhappy. I find myself in that state quite a bit.
To counter this, I have, in my life, spent quite a lot of time creating products which satisfy my soul but don’t really go anywhere. I made dozens of products at Prophet that never really captured anyone’s imagination except for my own and now, with virtually no engineering resources at my disposal, I still manage to conjure up a new invention from time to time that, more often than not, doesn’t do much more than satisfy my need to create.
Most recently, for example, was SocialTrade VR, which I made with complete awareness than the target market was about three people on the planet. The universe of active traders that use charting is much, much tinier than you think. Cross-reference that with the population of people with access to good virtual reality goggles, and the resulting group could comfortably fit inside a Mini Cooper.
I have been doing a lot of soul-searching lately (which, again, I do far too much of, particularly at a still relatively young age) and briefly reached the conclusion that I just shouldn’t bother anymore. In other words, that there wasn’t any point to all of this creating and inventing. It’s sort of liberating in a way to embrace sort of a nihilism about the entire affair, because there are so many people with so many great ideas……….and SO much more access to engineering resources than I’ll ever have. I mean, look, I’m basically on my own. So why bother?
For better or worse, though, I can’t stay with that conclusion. For reasons that will eventually become apparent, I have been actively considering whether or not to create a charting platform of my own. It’s tempting. And I might just do it. But it’s a reach, and I know that I’ll have to rely completely on myself for the ideas. Back in the day, I thought I could just ask my readers what they wanted, because they’d know, right? Well, if you are ever in a position to create stuff like this, what you’ll swiftly find is that your target audience has NO idea – – NONE – – what they want. You have to figure it out for them. It took me literally decades to realize and accept that fact.
Anyway, you didn’t pay me your good $0.00 to read me engage in navel-gazing. I did want to at least say to my beloved readers that I find unallocated time far too agonizing to not create, so I’m going to still keep at it……….unless a delicious bear market comes along that can take creation’s place to keep me out of trouble.
