Pete and catdaddy.............
Both of your stories are inspiring. For me, it's what my MSW wife calls "resilience." Social workers do all they can to help the disadvantaged assimilate meaningfully. This means the idea is to engage in an ebb and flow process wherein we give, we're compensated. For me, personally, the most important element has to do with how we choose to assess and spend our blessings.
Buying units of ALDW at good prices yesterday was exciting as I believed that prices paid would soon reveal profits. Seeing yesterday's closing price to be above my new unit cost was slightly nice but not more than that. And now, seeing it still higher is---well, again, nice---sort of.
It is so easy to look out my office window at home and view the prettiest 16 acres in the world! The corral, barn, shelters, horses and donkey, bunnies and doves and a flock of guinea fowl---these are joys. Yet it is through our stewardship that any of this can even BE!
As portfolio managers, each of us bears responsibility if only to preserve capital. So we read and share ideas and information here. We examine our results and scour the universe searching for other opportunities, should the sky fall in on this particular planet.
Each night I tally...a spiral pad tells me each day's closing net value. Fridays I do a weekly reconciliation so that I can always tell how effectively I'm managing things. And in this fashion I can compare the latest numbers with those of previous weeks and months. It keeps my ego at bay and me honest.
But behind all of this is an indisputable reality: I am so incredibly lucky to live in this! I'm in the environment I've wanted all my life with the right woman who is my wife and chief resident farmer constantly adding flowers and shrubs; on land awesomely beautiful with acres and acres of gorgeous green native grasses snuffing out sunflower-like weeds. This land will soon feed the sheep I'll be buying and sheep stewardship will nourish my soul.
There's a balance to be appreciated when life's stormy nights give way to breathtaking sunrises. I don't try to explain things beyond my comprehension but I know when I have an awful lot of reasons to be thankful. So I have to say, then, that I'm thankful to be alive and able to share such life experiences with you.
This has been quite a moment we've shared. I hope others here will join in without fear or even forethought. We're all in this together, no question about that. And we share that sense of responsibility to help one another prosper. I doubt that it's much about the money, it's the sense of balance deep down that tells us it's OK to be happy...to laugh, to love and best of all---to be.
