I lose track of days lately... I think today is Saturday (ok, I just confirmed on my calendar haha). I basically only know whether the one night I have off from work is coming up. The best way for me to keep track is counting how many I have worked so far so that I know I've reached 6, and the next one is off. 13 hour workdays (or nights, same thing by now lol), mostly very active with sometimes not enough time to eat or drink. Sometimes people turn on each other due to the environment there, which is destructive. It's stressful. Then I come home, work on FreeCompliments stuff, do some trading, and sleep a couple of hours. In totality, this takes up well over 100 hours per week.
This is simply not sustainable in the long term. It's building up chronic stress over the course of years.
Chronic stress makes our body produces constant streams of cortisol, which is known as the stress hormone. This creates a downstream effect which affects many of our other hormones. Chronic exposure to cortisol can cause long-lasting negative effects on the body. It's quite difficult to reverse, and if we manage our stress perfectly, it can take years for us to get back to a more normal state.
For many people, finances are among the biggest sources of chronic stress. Learning basic financial knowledge at a young age would be a huge benefit for a lot of people. However, even those who are well-set often want more and more... At what point can we simply say, "that's enough?"
At any rate, it's important for us to learn to manage our stress during the times we have it because reversing it is much tougher than keeping it at bay in the first place. I have to give myself the responsibility of making a bit of time out of the day to do some meditation, which is incredible for stress management. Even if it's just a few minutes - it all adds up.
I'm going to be finishing one of the most difficult parts of my career (residency training) in June of 2025. I want to ensure that I have some healthy habits established by that time so that I can carry them over to the rest of my career, which will have a mixture of easier times, as well as (intermittently) tougher times. If I can maintain these habits now, then they'll be even easier when I have more time.
Fortunately I have found that I'm able to maintain more healthy habits during less time-consuming portions of my training. That does give me hope that I'll be able to continue to do so in the long-term. The tricky part is maintaining it while I'm putting in well over 100 hours per week between my job, travel, Hive, and trading. Haven't succeeded there just yet, but I may as well begin. You know the saying, and I strongly paraphrase: "The best day to plant a seed was a yesterday. The second best day is today."
Let's plant this seed of health.
