When it comes to learning new things, it can be easy for some and a bit difficult for others. I remember many years ago when I tried to learn how to play the piano, I tried and tried but it just didn’t work for me. I went to lessons and used my church’s keyboard to practice, but I never really got past the basics of being a pianist. Eventually, I got tired. I just figured that the music industry wasn’t for me.
Meanwhile, one of my classmates in secondary school, a very good friend of mine is a good pianist. And he didn’t learn from anyone. He started at a young age when he was in Junior Secondary school and he taught himself the basics. When he finally got an Android phone, he had access to more tutorials online. As time went on, he saw the goldmine that was YouTube and used it to finetune his skills. Today, the guy who started with a simple keyboard can now play a grand piano with ease. And he was never taught formally.
So, I guess things are just like that for people. For me, one thing that’s easy for me to learn is maintenance. And I’ve noticed this about myself from a young age. Right from when I was young, I was always curious, and when we hired electricians or mechanics to fix our lights or generators, I always watched them closely. Many times, they didn’t explain to me what they were doing and I had no idea what part served what.
However, I always remembered what they did. As a result, when the generator or the wiring in my house developed the same fault later on, I could always fix it myself. As long as it was something I had witnessed before being done, I could always replicate it. This was how I learned how to fix so many things in my house, and for a long time, we didn’t call electricians to come to fix stuff. As for the generator, I learned how to service it through this method, I learned how to fix it when it floated, and I even learned how to change some key parts of the engine.
The only periods I end up calling the professionals are when the problem is bigger than me and it’s not something I can easily handle. And also when I don’t have the time, as it has been lately. The rate I’ve been fixing my stuff lately has reduced drastically because I just don’t have the time. It always feels faster to hire someone to fix it, because the time that I’d spend fixing these things will be used to more profitable ventures. Like making money.
And then, there are things I also had a hard time learning. The chief of them is trading. Any kind of trading at all. Be it crypto, forex, stock… I’ve been interested in trading right from when I finished secondary school and decided that I wanted to be financially independent, I saw it as a means to get the kind of money I was looking for. And during that period, crypto wasn’t really the rave, stocks, and forex were.
I went to classes all over Lagos back then, I went to classes in Ikeja, Lekki, Ikoyi, and so many places. They were all teaching trading and how they could do this and that for us to become millionaires. As if all that wasn’t enough, I bought books. Majorly ebooks and I read them all. I read about candles and hodl, and when crypto finally became widespread, I tried to jump on the bandwagon as well, I even learned about the bloke that sold his 10btc for pizza. I learned.
But sadly, all of that got me little to nothing. All I got were the theoretical aspects of trading, but applying them in real life was where it was all hard. I found trading to be really difficult and I couldn’t make moves unless someone else suggested it.
And that’s why till today, even when I’m heavily involved in crypto, I still don’t trade. I know there are people who are trading and making big bucks off it, but I just don’t think it’s my ball court. Thankfully, there are other things one can do with crypto, and that is what I’ve been focusing on. Just because you’re a crypto holder doesn’t mean that you must trade it. There are other ways to invest them and make profits that have nothing to do with trading. That’s what I’ve been focusing my efforts on.
Now, this doesn’t mean that I’m totally forgetting about trading. I’ll give it another chance later in the future, maybe when I’m done with school and I have more time. But for now, I just want to keep doing what has been working for me and see that it keeps working out.
So, these are the two things that were both easy and hard for me to learn. Talking about them has really helped me, especially about accepting the truth about this trading of a thing. I’m glad about that, and I look forward to what more the future holds in store for me.
