Hey guys, It’s been a while. My last post was November 17th, 2016, and today, it is February 9th, 2020. What a wild ride. If my memory is correct, when I sent my last post, I was living in Portland, Oregon and with my last girlfriend. I’m working as a research assistant at OHSU and unsure about my future. One of these is this still true.
Packing up my bags, I drive 20 hours down the I-5 through Oregon, California, and eventually ending up in Phoenix, Arizona. Since landing in Phoenix, so much has happened to me that it is hard to explain but I’ll try my best to. Initially, I worked as a personal trainer at a local gym and began selling stuff on ebay. I was really into entrepreneurship and I eventually met some business partners and decided to start an e-commerce company with them. We were selling massage oil on sites such as amazon, eBay, and Etsy.
While I enjoyed my time starting a business while working full-time in a lab (I have a biology degree), something didn’t quite feel right. The more I worked with my business partners, the more i realized we valued different things and had different opinons on choices. I also didn’t like sharing ownership of the company and wanted to run my own show. At the same time, cryptocurrency became mainstream and the three of us, being business and money-interested individuals, all paid attention. We all at varying levels became involved in cryptocurrency day trading, me showing the most interest. I eventually left my fulltime job to trade full time while working with the company.
I thought about leaving the company for a while but stuck with it. I made a committment and wanted to see it through. I have a history of abandoning ship in a lot of my projects, and looking back I don’t quite understand why. When I realized, or thought, I could be more successful as a day trader than a business owner, was when I decided to leave the company. I have high moral standards and I didn’t want my partners to “get rich” even if it meant me getting rich as well (we all owned equal shares of the company). And as always, I followed my gut/intuition, and left. It was ugly, but we eventually hashed out the legal details and I gave my share of my company back to them.I was initially bitter because I felt I was the workhorse of the company, finding the key parts of our bottle, but I really shouldn’t be. I worked hard and my partners did as well. I wish them the best in the their future endeavors.
So the next few months, I began day trading cryptocurrency full time. All day, every day, trading in my 2 bedroom apartment. I started with $500 so I needed to build my capital before taking money out to pay for living expenses. With no income coming in, my savings slowly evaporated. This coincided with an increase in credit card use. This, coupled with the newfound freedom of trading and going out with my friend, let me to rack up bills that would have my ancestors rolling in their graves.
I was moderately successful at trading. despite bitcoin dropping signifcnalty while trading, I still grew my accoutn and 7X my coin in 3 months of full time trading. I knew I needed to get a new job and trade less to pay my bills. I also still felt empty despite achieving my goal of trading, working from home, and living my life. I didn’t know what it was, but I felt like I should’ve been doing something bigger with my life. To be a day trader, and to make tons of money would have been amazing, but it wouldn’t have been enough for me. I wanted to make a significant impact on this planet and I think that’s the reason why I eventually stopped trading. In hindsight, I could’ve continued trading, made a comfortable living, then used the free time from a high trading salary to pursue my “passions” or whatever you wanted to call it. But oh well.
So I was back to square one. To the day I graduated college and was unsure of what I wanted to do. To my last few posts here 4 years ago. What a fucking ride. My 25th birthday was nearing, and I felt more lost than ever, almost giving up hope on what my purpose is and how my life will turn out. Thankfully, I have this youtube addiction which meant I spent hours a day on youtube watching videos. My videos would include sports, philosophy, learning, education, and entertainment (movies, vlogs, whatever). I happened to stumble across a video with a lecture by Jordan B. Peterson. I had no idea who this guy was but noticed he had a ton of videos on youtube already. I watched the video, and whenever I hear someone speak, I usually look up their bakcground to see who they are and where they came from to see if their words have any merit. He was a psychology professor at Toronto and previously Harard. So I listened. Dr. Peterson spoke about the meaning of life, and how young mean today struggle with responsibility and existentialism. Specifically, he spoke that the meaning of life is to “pursue the highest good you can conceive.” This was a different take on the questions I struggled with. The meaning of life, the purpose of my life. His words resonated with me on a deep level. I thought about what my highest good was, and what I thought was possible. I thought about this for a few weeks, diving deeper into more of his videos.
I had just turned 25 and my friend and I were out celebrating my birthday. To me, 25 was a big deal because it was the first quarter of my life, and I felt optimistic that I still had time to make something out of my life, despite the last 2 and a half years I had just squandered. For some odd reason, a video of Jeff Bezos came to mind when he spoke about how he makes decisions. He states he puts himself in his future, older self, and asks whether he would regret going down this path over another. I used this same idealogy in my mind. I imagined myself on my death bed, at a 100 years old, surrounded by my family. I thought if I stuck with trading, how my life would turn out, and whether I would be happy with it. I thought I would be happy, but would regret that I had not used the gifts god gave me to do something better. I then asked a following question: what would I need to do to not regret anything at a 100. Medicine immediately came to mind. This goes back to Dr. Peterson’s question about pursuing the highest good you can conceive for yourself. For me, medicine was the highest good I could conceive for myself. Although I was afraid, and naively believed it was too late or too hard for me to get into medical school (I was also convicted of a DUI misdemeanor which significantly lowers your chances of acceptance), I decided that I will go for it.I still remember that night. My friend and I were shooting pool at a favorite bar of ours, and in between shots, took deep breaths, and told myself “Alright Alden. This is it, you’re going to do this.” Although I struck out later that night, as soon as I got home I ordered a Kaplan 7-book MCAT prep set on Amazon.
That was August 2018. Man what a fucking ride, and were not even finished yet. Once my MCAT study books came in, I began studying. I had been out of college since May 2015 so I had a lot of catching up to do. I also began looking for jobs, and ended up as a lab technician for a non-profit blood bank. I worked full time and studied on the side. From 6:30am -3:00pm, I would process whole blood into its seperate components to have them shipped to hospitals. After work, I would head straight to the library, or a nearby starbucks and hit the books. Some days I got only thirty minutes in, some days 4–5 hours. I knew that I needed to play the long game since I had bills to pay and didn’t want to set aside dedicated MCAT time.
Looking back, I was a stubborn kid. I should’ve asked for help from my parents for 2–3 months and go all in on MCAT prep. But I had this stupid masculine, manly idea in my mind that I’m responsible for my own bills and I don’t want to ask for help from my family. So I struggled along, learning all the topics covered on the MCAT. This included physics, general chemistry, organic chemistry, biology, biochemistry, psychology, sociology, and varying degrees of microbiology, molecular biology, genetics, and immunology. To put it another way, I studied by 4 years of college in 9 months.
A few months passed, I eventually got a higher paying job which I thought would be better than my lab technician job but wasn’t. It payed more, but I worked with an asshole and my manager was also an asshole. I was not happy there, and eventually was fired. They gave no reason for my firing, but it was probably due to me going home early one day? I worked my ass off for that company, and it was my first firing so it definitely hurt. I learned a valuable lesson from that experience. People will not like you for being you, and it’s okay. its a reflection of their own insecurities or whatever. I would tell them I’m going to medical school and they’d be put off by it. I also realized the grass isn’t always greener, and the people you work with can have a huge impact on your happiness. I miss my coworkers from my blood bank job and they were all amazing.. it saddens me that I left them. I truly regret it, and I dearly miss them.
Being released, I had two months to prepare for my MCAT. Two full months. I was ready to achieve my goal of scoring a 520. I envisioned 8 hour study days, like a athlete training for the olympics. This was not the case. It was more like 2 hours per day, maybe 4–6 at best. Some days I would study 30 minutes just to keep my “streak” alive. I really fucking blew this opportunity to score amazing on the MCAT. I wasted way too much time on YouTube, procrastinating, and messing around. I eventually did good enough. The next year will be even harder.. but the light was clear. I’ll fill you in next time, but this is good for now. Until then, take care.
Aldo
