Good post. My gosh, the commuting hassle alone is worth it to trade from home. (Philly area, horrible traffic ! Home of PennDot, worst state transportation entity in the entire USA)
Phila has nothing on Atlanta, I work for Fin Svces soul sucking corporation as well. I leave tomorrow to trade full time. Bankruptcy here I come. The social skills of disenfranchisement, misleading statements, and lying and climbing your way to the top are the problems with corporate america. Social bonding can be accomplished through volunteer work and your reward will be much greater than shit wages.
i have the old ladies in my hood that i chat with while landscaping to keep me up to speed on the gossip .... thats all me needs
GMILFS? The only social life I need is my wife and daughter...All the rest tend to dissapoint anyway.
I started volunteering at a childrens hospital here once and sometimes twice a week. I't usually from 2 pm to early evening and so it works with my stay at home trading schedule, but the main thing is it brought me out of a shell so to speak and the reward of helping is unmeasurable ( to me anyway). The first step to actually do it is prob the toughest as is anything that is unselfish and non-self benefiting, but that was the point to start with I guess. Hope this helps. -GT
It got to me so badly that I quit trading and went back to medical school, which is the other extreme. Now that I am older and married with kids etc I enjoy the solitude but I couldnt do it when I was young (20s).
I think you've pretty much given the sensible answer - if you are concerned about the withering away of your interpersonal skills you have to construct outlets to exercise those skills. Joining a club or doing non-profit work in your spare time is a good way to interact with others, any kind of community work would be good too. Ideally you could do something investment related - like perhaps volunteer to teach personal finance at a community college. That will build up your public speaking skills and confidence in dealing with a crowd.
for of you [us] who have to be careful of the side effects of spending so much time at the computer. . . trading. . . emailing. . . reading. . . doin' research. . . playing chess. . . listening to music. . . whatever. . . and how it can de-socialize you to some, or to a big extentt. . . one antidote is volunteering. . . community work of some sort. . . anything to get out of the ego bubble that is so easy to get into trading commodities online. . . especially gold. . . m-m-m-m-m-m-m. . . go-o-o-l-l-l-l-lld. . . .