A Friday for the Future

How do I feel today? A lot more balanced since yesterday, more positive and hopeful. Yesterday was full of all sorts of strong and hard emotions and I did EMDR each time something came up. First it was on abandonment issues and relationship trauma and I ran the gamut on that one. Then ehat came up, that I did not realize is so connected to these relationship issues, is trauma around my father. I processed a whole lot of fear of him and then certain traumatic memories with my mother came up too. It was a combination of a scared heart and wanting to scream and numbing out. At the end of that I was scared of future grief and so I did a session on that. It was either before or after that, I did a short 15 minute or so meditation which seemed to balance everything out a lot more, and then I fell asleep. I think it will take some tike to assess the effectiveness of EMDR but I feel like a whole lot of stuff got processed in ways that make me feel hopeful that I can feel normal and not governed by so much trauma.

It also helps that today was a climate demonstration. It was the coldest day since we have started and since last week most of the trees are bare. There is an oak in the front yard here that is lagging behind pretty much every tree everywhere and seems to be, not only noy exfoliating (is that the word for losing foliage?!) but it is still mostly green. Today the negativity we received, that I witnessed, was not in the form of a gesture but of two prople shouting out their windows, “Trump 2024!” I am so nervous about this upcoming election cycle that I am just tuning out about it. I don’t know what to do and the idea of that man being in the White House again absolutely terrifies me. Joe Biden isn’t getting enough credit by far for all he has accomplished and I am scared by the news, though early, that Trump has a small lead in six swing states. Surely something csn be done to boost President Biden’s polling numbers, but what?

One person shouted it was a hoax but was not really mean about it. Today we had a school bus, a USPS mail delivery truck, and a whole lot of… semis of lorries or tractor-trailers or 18 wheelers… there are a whole lot of different word for the same thing. Trucks seem to honk per capita more often than cars do and it is always fun because their horns are usually so loud. Today we had a whole bunch of trucks. There were no kids around though and only one person crossed the street at the intersection the whole time we were there. Maybe they were not in school because of Veteran’s Day? Then we made the traditional stop at whole foods and I had a slice of vegan pizza but they have had the same exact spicy artichoke pizza forever and I am getting a little tired of it. I got some pico de gallo that was normally $7.99 that they gave mr for $4.99 because they overstocked the large containers and ai couldn’t find a smaller one. I ate some of it with tortilla chips and on a bagel.

Oh, since it is getting cold, we stopped at the Goodwill store and ai got some long pants and such. I got a blue hoodie that is a tad on the smaller side but still fits. Anyway, I love it, I can’t help it. It says: “I love you to Durham and back.” That is a hoodie I can wear proudly anywhere. Then Truly, Madly, Deeply started playing. I may be a bad person but I don’t know, I still felt good about my capacity to love… but anyway, the words are on the back but the zip code on the front is actually Durham, NH. A little disappointing but even around here I think most people are likely to think NC before NH when they hear Durham, and hey, it can show my love of New England, too. I just really resonate with it. It gives me the idea to custom design my own t-shirts or hoodies with a similar sentiment.

Today I guess I will look into whether to make a last minute decision about investing in a course on writing on Medium. I don’t want to make a wrong decision and waste money and I don’t have much time to think about it. I will do some more EMDR, read more of my host’s book on physics so I can actually review it before I leave, and maybe watch more videos on options trading. I think I am going to start with debit spreads. I watched some videos on calendar soreads last night and I was confused as to why people would want to do them at all. It is a game of playing with volatility I guess: if you have high volatility (which is one factor that brings up options premiums) but little price movement you can profit on calendar spreads? But high volatility should move stocks so it is strange, I don’t quite understand but I don’t think it’s worth it: you sell an option at a certain strike price on one expiry date and buy one a little further out for protection against premium decay. It doesn’t sound like a very interesting or good strategy to me though. My first trade will probably be a debit spread.

Most people seem to trade directionally, it seems, guessing at which way the market is going to go, but how do you have any clue which direction it is going to go, even in a consistent trend: short term corrections can ruin your options trade! So I really like the strategy of buying options that are already in a strong trend and then buying when the stock pulls back to a support level in ways that do not signify the trend is over. That way you don’t have to predict the market. If I had to do that I’d be wrong 80% of the time. Maybe this way I’ll be right most of the time (and I must remember delta is my friend!)