The first 30 days of the 90 day challenge. Part 1/3

 

It was a typical Thursday night and I had called my friend and tax man Lando Gtz to go out for a few drinks.  I was in Brownsville for pretty much all of July and drinking through out the week was the norm.  That night we had gone to Chili’s and took advantage of the late night happy hour and chugged down a few beers and later headed towards to the Toucan lounge.  My friend hadn’t ever been to Toucan’s but since we were a bit buzzed after Chili’s,  he said “fuck it, let’s go” and so we entered.  For those that never been to this place, Toucan’s is like one of those bars that you don’t want to be caught dead in but once you’re inside you kind of forget what people say.    We had a couple of beers and chugged down a jager bomb and took off, at this point we were both pretty buzzed but the alcohol was talking to us and we wanted to kept on drinking so we went to the bar known as “The Bar.”  Inside the bar, they had a couple of shot specials for $3.00 each with names I never heard of, but they were cheap so we ended up trying them all.  At this point, I was pretty drunk and drove home. Along the way I recall having double vision, I had to literally close one eye to concentrate.  Once I got home, I passed out and woke up sometime in the afternoon with a huge hungover and thought to myself that I was lucky to be alive and that I didn’t end up killing somebody.  It was at this point that something clicked inside my head and that I needed to change my life for the better.  

I recently started studying day trading, which is the buying and selling of stocks throughout the same day and in one of the books that I read the author talks about self-control and to challenge yourself for a period of a time and I decided to challenge myself into not drinking alcohol and stop drinking sodas for a period of 90 days.   I knew it was going to be a challenge, especially on the sodas part because let’s admit it, when you’re from south texas who can say no to an ice cold coca-cola when eating tacos or with a nice juicy hamburger.  Since I want to set realistic goals I also decided to cut my sugar consumption by half.   Every time I drink coffee in the morning, I use at least two tablespoons, but now been using one tablespoon.  Whenever I drink sweet tea, I mix it with half of regular unsweetened tea.  I started drinking more water as well, usually about 4 bottles a day and it’s been making a difference in the short amount of time, especially when I feel hungry I’ll drink some water to help me get by my food cravings. 

I had mentioned above that I started studying day trading and this is something I had looked into about 6 years ago but it was literally overwhelming since there was so much information and I didn’t know where to start so I just left it at that.  About 3 months ago while watching videos on youtube I randomly landed on a video about a day trader making some serious money and I started getting interested, one video lead to another, and by the end of the night I had determined that I really needed to get on on this and study this particular trade.  I researched a couple of respectable day traders, many of whom have published books on the subject and I was able to buy some of them on amazon for a discounted price and I’ve also enrolled in some webinars.  At this point I can say I have a good basis of foundation on how it works and the next step would be to actually fund my account.  

Not sure if many of you know this but I’ve been working at home for about 10 years now with my last job being at FAMSA / Edelsteins, I actually wrote a blog post about legitimate work at home jobs which you can find by clicking here.  Even though I’ve enjoyed working at home and the flexibility that it has given me to spend time doing the things I love doing, it’s time for a change and that I’ll never be able to expand my career if I stay home all the time.  Because I wasn’t going to wait for things to change at my current work place I ended up applying for several jobs that day. I also needed to start making money immediately so that I could fund my day trading account as soon as possible.  I had driven for Uber slightly in early 2015 for a few months until I broke my hand and I realized that I should maybe give it another go.  Lyft is a competitor to Uber and because of strict regulations that the City of Houston placed on ride sharing companies they had left the city but recently came back so I decided to try my luck with them.  It didn’t take long to get driving on the road and on that first weekend I made close to $500 dollars, but don’t get me wrong it was a lot of driving and long hours that I was really considering if this was worth it, but then I thought sometimes sacrifices have to be made to accomplish the things one wants.   I got a call from a staffing company during the middle of the week asking me about a possible position to come work for a Fortune 250 company.  After talking with the technical recruiter about my qualifications I got an interview with the hiring manager and they offered me a salary of pretty much double than what I’m making at my work at home job.  The reason they reached out for me is that the company is looking to hire a system analyst that speaks Portuguese to help out their staff in Brazil and Angola and since I speak Portuguese my resume was one of the first to reach their desk.  I was a little bit nervous at first during my interview over the phone, after all it’s not often that I get to speak Portuguese on a day to day basis but it’s like riding a bike, once you learn how to get on it just takes a bit of practice to get the hang of things and after a few minutes in I was conversing with one of the Brazilian team members.  The call ended well and about 10 minutes after the interview, the hiring manager called me up and offered me the position and that I would start on August 28th.  

Nobody knew how much devastation Hurricane Harvey was going to bring to the city, after all it was just projected to dissipate after it hit Rockport but sure enough it moved north and it just decided to take a chill pill and dump over 50″ of rain in a 48 hour period and all of Houston was underwater.  So the new job that I was supposed to start didn’t happen and I couldn’t drive for Lyft either because the majority of roads and freeways were closed.  Fortunately the part of town I reside in stayed relatively “dry” and water didn’t get inside the house but for other people elsewhere, it was really tragic.   

I picked up a new book called “Awaken the Giant Within” by Tony Robbins and this has been a great read so far.   I highly encourage anyone who is looking to change their life to pickup this book and give it a try, I’m only in Chapter 4 so far and I’m discovering things about myself that I didn’t know before and that I’m applying now on a day to day basis.   I got an email today from the company I got hired and that my new start day will be next Monday on the 11th.  Things have definitely changed around in literally 30 days and I cannot wait what the next 60 days will bring. Today I decided to take on another challenge, that I will start waking up early at 7am, this is going to be tougher test than saying no to alcohol and sodas because all my life I’ve always had trouble sleeping early but I need to commit myself to this new change if I am going to move forward with everything that I’m doing.  I believe that I can be successful day trader, if I really put my heart and soul into it, and I would like to take everything that I’ve learned and share it with everyone.  I’ll update everyone about this journey in the next 30 days in Part 2.

The road to success is never easy, but always worth it.