Cashing Out: When To Move On

Early Voting has begun in many states, including where I live. I received my ballot for the General Election, and I've since filled it out and sent it back. Since I sent my ballot in, my interest in--my emotional investment in--this election dropped like the Hindenberg. I recognized what happened, which I will describe in casino terms: I cashed out.

Having done the one last thing I can do to influence this election in legal terms, what remains is persuading others to do as I did. Quite frankly, several others I follow are far better at doing this than I am and I hate reinventing the wheel. So, rather than do something I really don't want to do, I'm taking the return from my emotional investment and putting it to new investments that only I can (or want to) do. Writing 10,000 Pots is one of them. Finishing The Burning of Hugo and my other fiction projects is another. Playing my games of choice is also part of that.

In short, the principle behind financial investment--seeking a profitable return some point later--applies to human endeavor in general. You leave relationships when they take more out of you than they give, as you do with jobs and other things you put time and energy into in order to seek specific benefits from in return.

This is one of those skills that can only be mastered by doing it. You have to know when to move on, regardless of if what you move from was a good or bad thing for you. Experiences are living things, and living things inevitably die; thinking that a thing endures as the mountain, seeming for eternity, is a fool's game. Your father dies. Your dog dies. You will die. So will your job, your marriage, your status, and all other things in one's life; they grow, they wither- they change.

Staying in a situation where you cannot benefit or be of benefit helps no one and only makes things worse. That is when you move on. So, cash out your energy; take your emotional profit, or eat your loss, and move on. Go do something else, invest elsewhere, and begin anew another cycle of life.