Six Sigma

Friday, one in the afternoon. I haven't eaten. I slept until ten because I spent the night watching a chart that didn't come back.

On Thursday the market did something it is not supposed to do. No news, no warning, volatility asleep at sixteen, and then it simply let go — four and a half percent on the index, and no rebound. Not at noon, not at the close, when the people who usually buy the dip always buy the dip. This time they sold too. Somewhere, funds that had leaned too hard on the same bet were unwinding it, and I was standing where they were unwinding.

That's the sentence I kept repeating on the walk. A year of progress. The plan had a milestone next spring; I was, by my own math, halfway there. Now it's three years out, maybe more, and the word I keep using is survival.

I'm going to the gym anyway. That part is not a decision anymore; it's the one thing I know works.

Let me go back to Saturday, because the week didn't start with a crash. It started with a mosquito.

It's fifteen degrees outside, it's been raining for two days, and somehow one mosquito found my room. I woke at four, lay there until nine, slept again until noon. Half the day gone. I went for a walk in the rain because walking is what I do when the day goes wrong, and I talked about the thing I'm actually excited about: the video workflow. Half a terabyte of footage from the bike trip, copied to an SSD, timestamps scrambled, a 360 camera that rolled around on the handlebar and filmed mostly sky. I sold that camera. Once this trip is edited, there is no more footage. That's the deal I made with myself: finish it.

On the way to the gym that evening, a young guy stopped me in the parking lot. He held out his ID card before he asked for anything. His mother had died, he said, he needed to get home, four hours by train, he was so cold. I played dumb. I said I didn't have any money. He kept asking, do you understand, do you understand, and something in him started to tip toward aggressive. I turned my body toward the gym door and walked. He took half a step after me, then changed his mind.

It ruined the evening. Not because of him, exactly. Because of the question it left behind:

I danced for two hours. I couldn't let go; no energy for the follow-up moves. The sauna was empty, though. On cold, dark, rainy days, nobody comes.

Sunday the sun came out, and with it the thing I'd been trying not to think about.

That same weekend, for once, I didn't go to the gym alone.

Monday my mom told me, again, to go find a job in Switzerland.

I left the kitchen before it went deeper.

Tuesday was supposed to be a good day and the market was down overnight, so it wasn't. I'd registered for an AI meetup at a university campus, organized by the local search engine company. I almost didn't go. Being outside meant not watching the charts, not monitoring the live stream, not spending my AI subscription for four hours.

I went. There was coffee. There were sandwiches. A company explained how they fine-tuned a model to speak our language properly; a man talked about agents paying each other; a woman from Cambridge talked about security and I thought: not my game.

What I noticed most was how it felt to stand in that room without a job title. Last year I came to events like this on a company email, and I liked that more than I let on. Now I understand why some people stay home.

On the way back I counted. Eight months out of the corporate world. And I said the thing I'd been circling for weeks:

The trading, the AI, the stream, the bike — I did the things I'd dreamed of doing for years. The grass isn't greener. It's a different landscape.

Wednesday I had nothing left. The mosquito came back to life at night; I killed it, but it cost me the sleep. Two coffees at the meetup didn't help. My knees hurt. I've learned this rule the hard way: any interruption to the routine costs a full day of recovery, sometimes more.

The midterms happened, and I hadn't even thought about them. AI stocks — the ones I hold — went through the floor in pre-market.

And still, on the walk to the sauna, when my mind turned to one of the projects, something lit up. Not the money side of it. The big questions — where the world is going.

I don't know what that says about my career. I know what it says about me.

Thursday I took my mom to the dentist. I translate for her. The news was bad, and the weeks until it's fixed will be hard on her.

On the way home, my right leg started to vibrate — not shake, vibrate, the pain itself humming. I think that's what old people mean when they say they feel it in their bones.

I'm glad I started lifting ten years ago. I can also see the curve from here: fifty, sixty, steep. I don't have a plan for that part of life. I thought I'd enjoy video games. I don't. Competing against people isn't my game either. So what else is left? The closest people. And I know what I did to the one relationship that had a chance to last.

I read that day that a YouTuber who cycled around the world — sixty-one thousand subscribers, last video six days old — was killed by a truck. I've ridden my share of roads on a bike. I don't know what to take from that, except that the only time my priorities ever get clear is when I'm on a long road, far from here.

Then I tested that project against the best in the field. It lost, badly.

I decided to enter the competitions anyway.

I'll learn. I'll write about it. If it fails, it's one more thing crossed off the list — "It's probably the last thing I would want to cross off"

Then the market opened, and it fell, and it kept falling.

Which brings us back to Friday.

I lifted. I tried to dance and couldn't, because I was overthinking. The sauna at three-fifty on a Friday is the quietest hour of the week; I had it to myself. On the way home, with nothing in my stomach, I said something that surprised me.

The loss should make me more careful. Stay home. Pause the travel dream for a few years. That's what the numbers say. But one door closed on Thursday, and instead of shrinking, the thought that came was the opposite:

Start traveling now, cheaply, on the bike, making content while I move — before I'm sure, before it's safe, at the risk of running out and going back to a job later.

Or wait for a quiet day, when my head is clear, and see if I still believe it.

I asked it out loud, twice, to nobody: What should I do?