The Artist Journey

After attending the 3rd Annual Square Foot Exhibit last night, I woke up this morning realizing that my journey as an artist hasn’t stopped. I wasn’t pleased with how my photographs turned out. I shot close to 800 pictures. I still haven’t mastered a few technical aspects of shooting things in motion and lighting. It’s back to the books. I realized my classes only took me so far. Photography classes and my photography mentor can only guide me so far. Point me in the right direction. It’s up to me to get take the action and have the experience and grow. I must continue to study and take pictures. I understand now what they mean by success being the journey and not the destination.

Writer Journey 

As I was writing about the event last night, I found myself stuck for word on describing the experience. My writing journey has stopped. I must continue to develop that as well. Descriptive writing. I didn’t even explore or find out what type of instruments were being played. Was I a photographer at the event just observing? Had I forgot that I’m also aspiring writer/blogger too? I must have.

Mrs Fields Cookies, Forex Trading  and my Music Journey

Today is going to be my last day at Mrs. Fields Cookies. I must focus each week now on replacing the $33.00 I earned for working Saturdays. I must accomplish this through Forex trading. In addition, it’s forcing me now start performing as a street performer. That means committing to spending $100.00 for the licence. That means committing to practicing each day songs, and my singing. It now is becoming work. Hopefully I’ll enjoy doing it. Isn’t that why I started the journey in the first place?

Tonight I attended the 3rd Annual Square Foot Show, a exhibition of local artists at The Galaxie. I was invited by New York-born artist/photographer, Tracy Ann Simmonds. She was apart of this wonderful exhibit of artists, musicians, and performers that entertained hundreds of guest throughtout the entire evening.

Artist Tracy Ann Simmonds at the 3rd Annual Square Foot Exhibit

Artist Tracy Ann Simmons talking to guest about her artwork

I decided yesterday that I was going to focus on studying candlestick charting to help me with my trading.

 I took another gamble last night with an account balance less than $25.00. It paid off as the EUR/USD ran up almost 100 pips. I had a feeling about this two days ago but I was two days too late.  This is the reason I need to study more technical analysis.

Today I came home after work. I reached out to a few models on Model Mayhem to start a photography project. I wanted to start building a portfolio. I figure I could start with some head-shots and market to the acting community. I sent emails to about 12 models. None have replied back yet.

I’m going to take yet another risk soon. I’m going to apply for my street performers licence.

I did it again. Got greedy and got wiped out. Down to the bare account balance minimum. To be able to write about stop loss and still not put it in place is called insanity. In fact, I had two trades going. One I had a stop loss on (smaller 2k trade) and a large trade without a stop (10K) which is the one I got wiped out on. One of the more ironic lessons is that I listened to a webinar given by my brokerage on successful trading. I learned a lot, however all to late. What lesson did I learn? My trades were over leveraged for my account balance. Had I had enough money in my account, it would have been a profitable trade when I woke up this morning. Unfortunately, I got stopped out last night.

Back to the drawing board. I will say that the lessons I learned I’m certainly going to put in place. It’s going to take a while to build my account back up but I’m going to be studying in the mean time.

There is much to learn in trading the Forex. I was able to test my system. It seems to be working. I still need to learn a lot more.

Yesterday I went to an auction to bid on items to sell at a storage facility. It seemed so crooked. When I was ready to bid on an item, all of a sudden the manager tells me that the lady came back to get her things and it’s possible I couldn’t bid on it. The other red flag was that the manager told me over the phone that there were three units that were being bid on, but when I got there, she only showed me two. The other had documents and file cabinets in it and she felt there was nothing of value to bid on. Possible for security reasons, that seemed legitimate.

After I got home, I found a Meet-up group for film makers. I’m going to be a production assistant for a 5 minute indie film. I’ll get a chance to be a part of a film, possibly get credit too. There will be food provided the whole day, an after-party, and everybody will receive a DVD copy. I was amazed to hear the producer say that the budget for the film was only $300.00. I might produce a film.

I’ve got my hands in a lot of things. Now it’s time to produce some work. Here are a list of things I would like to accomplish as projects.

• Develop a body of artwork to start showing to exhibit
• Learn three songs to start playing and singing as a street performer
• Start building my wine consulting business

My life should now start reflecting in my blogging. I’m going to make sure that I blog everyday. This keeps me accountable to myself.

I wanted to start this diary seperate from my own personal diary entries.

Trading without Stops

I’ve heard, read, and have lost thousands of dollars from not applying this golden trading rule. Well, yesterday was my last time.  I want to state my emotional reasoning behind not using it to help others avoid this costly mistake.

First, I thought I could be saved by the overall strong uptrend in the EUR/USD. I also didn’t think the market would lose 200 pips. I was only going after 10 pips. I did have a limit placed on my trade. However, 10 pips never happened. I entered at 1.4019 and wanted to exit at 1.4030. I thought that it would eventually retouch and try to go even further (1.4100). Because of this, I stayed in the trade until I got a margin call and got closed out of my position. That was a $250.00 lesson on trading without stops again.

Mornings seem the best time to write for me. I’m not too tired at the end of the day, I’m reflective of the previous day. The only thing I that works against me is time during the week that I have to leave for work. With that being said, I shall reflect on the week that has past.

I think I’ve come up with a profitable trading system for the Forex. I’m going to starting testing it this week. My starting balance will be the profit I’ve made so far.

Life 

Even now with me being out of school, I’m finding there is only so much time to accomplish all that I want. I rode my bike to work yesterday. It took about an hour. I took two hours to get back home. That was because I woke up at 4:00 a.m. and couldn’t go back to sleep. I was so tired I took two naps in the grass along the lake. I fell asleep for an hour when I got home too.

Investments

When I got home, I had made $200.00 in the forex. I closed out my position and withdrew my initial $250.00 that I had put into my account. Now I’m trading pure profits. I almost got closed out on that trade as the market before running up 100 pips had reversed almost 75 pips. This was a great lesson for me as I realized my money management was out of whack. I’m now only going to expose my losses to 5% of my account value per trade. This has been difficult over my last few trades as my account is so small.

Creativity

Wednesday I signed up for Improv classes at Second City. I’m excited about that. I’m going to start the following Sunday.