I’m single mumming it this week. When I found out my husband was going away I was quite looking forward to it – not because he’s difficult to live with, but because it gives me time to be totally selfish.
I was going to use opportunity to write my heart out. I was going to catch up on some other paid writing work I have, as well as trade the European FX session in the evening. I was going to teach myself to read the tape, and have a look at finding ‘In Play’ stocks in the Aussie market. I was going to read my new trading books, I was going to paint my toenails, and once the kids were in bed I was going to spoil myself with gorgeous glass of red.
It was going to be a Jess-fest, and it was going to be great.
HA!
In my happy little daydream, I neglected to factor in that I had kids. There was no mention of me being Dad as well as Mum, and I managed to sugar-coat the fact that I had to do everything for my little family, from finding a matching pair of socks to cooking their dinner.
It didn’t end well. Rather than dumping my dream and resigning myself to the fact that I was going to be in servant-mode the whole week, I stubbornly mashed my fantasy head on into reality and created my own special kind of train-wreck.
In my wisdom, I managed to create a magical little place where absolutely nothing went right.
Because I was so determined to live the dream, I stayed up late into the night cramming everything in. Because I was up late, the next day my normally sunny personality morphed into something more reminiscent of the Hulk on a bad day. And because I was channelling the Hulk, I couldn’t write and I couldn’t trade.
And when you can’t write, can’t trade and can’t smile, children tend to be rather intolerable.
Which in turn makes life itself become somewhat intolerable. (Temporarily, of course 
)
I Am An Idiot.
I chose to Go Hard when I should’ve just Gone Home. Rather than treating myself kindly and reducing my workload and spoiling my kids while I was single parenting, I upped my workload, upped my expectations and in doing so guaranteed that I would be successful at absolutely nothing. (Except cooking sausages – according to my boys that was my win for the week.)
So yesterday I changed tack. I laughed with my kids. I turned off my laptop before dinner. I chatted with my girl in the evening and managed to work out some pretty major 9 year-old issues. And I put myself to bed at 10pm.
And you know what? Today the world is a better place.
Knowing When To Go Home
There comes a point when you have to pull the pin. Sometimes, you’re just not in a good place and if you continue to trade through a patch like that it will manifest itself in your P/L.
If you’re angry, the market will aggravate it. If you’re impatient, your trading will show it.
You just can’t make objective decisions when you’re looking at your screen through a veil of frustration or tiredness.
You might think you’re really hard-core, that you’ll tough it out and make it happen – but it doesn’t work. All that happens is that you start trading on tilt and market reflects back all that inner turmoil which in turn simply compounds it.
There’s a reason why the pro’s turn to things like exercise, yoga and meditation to get themselves in the right emotional and spiritual place for trading – it’s just unfortunate these things are a bit tricky to implement when you have little voices asking you to tie their shoelaces or get them a cookie every 5 minutes.
So I’m going home. I’m chilling out, and I’m hanging with my kids. We might play Monopoly, and I’ll go hard at that, instead.
Except my kids won’t be smiling, cos I’ll be whipping their butts 
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