Emotional Swings, the other way

Your heart beats faster, your breath gets shallower, you feel a little dizzy and light headed.
It's a natural high, and it feels GREAT. I only get that experience through a few things. Computer games, making a shitload of money, truly helping people in tough situations, accomplishing a lot in a day, getting through a sticky situation, doing a perfect negotiation, kayaking and conquering a river I have no business being on, taking a jump shot over the biggest guy on the court, climbing to the top of the wall.
It's all about peak experiences. These are the ones I will remember for the rest of my life. Who I was with, and when it was, and the circumstances of that great feeling. Like you're on top of the world.
Today, I dealt with a bad situation with 28th st, and Lindsay. Lindsay's the big score, raking in 25-30k.

Emotional Swings

When I thought I landed an awesome 30 unit deal, I was incredibly ecstatic. $15k/unit in an area surrounded by $23k/unit. I thought that was just awesome.
Now after I talk to a CPM in the area, I find out that it's a piece of shit property and I'm overpaying by 2k. It's a good thing I found out about it during the due diligence period.
But it really took a lot out of me. I was feeling pretty bad for a while. And I still do feel like I got punched in the stomach.
I tried rationalizing it by saying to myself, "Hey, it's ok that this is not the deal I thought it would be. It's ok that I feel foolish now. I can justify all of this because I took my shot, and I learned a couple valuable lessons. First, if an area is losing population when the general area is gaining population, that area sucks ass. Second, I get really emotional when it comes to deals, so I'll try to learn to control it as much as possible. Third, I learned that I can pull the trigger quickly when I recognize a good deal. Fourth, if I keep on looking long and hard, the deals will present themselves. Fifth, I picked up a very honest CPM on my side, and a property inspector.
So eventually, I'm going to overcome this bad feeling in the pit of my stomach, get back up, and keep on submitting offers. Submitting offers is the only way I'll be able to keep my eyes out there, continually honing my sight, and eventually I'll get one. Brokers will see that I'm serious, and I will continue to build my support staff.
DFW, I'm going to conquer you and make you my bitch. I hope that discomforting feeling I get when I think of when remembering good deals passing me by will never completely go away. Remembering that sting will keep my taste buds sharp.

obstacles

I'm facing a lot of obstacles to get to my goals. I'm currently dealing with Bob Steele, and he's not returning my phone calls. This is important to me because I need to know what's going on, and when things will happen.
I see a lot of discrepancies with what I see in the market, and what Dave asks me to use. Why should I use 7% when going interest rates are ~5.5%? Why should I assume 10-15% vacancies when the current vacancy is 5% or less? It's frustrating that I need to turn down properties because I think they are deals and Dave does not. However, I did expect something like this to happen. Looking back at SFHs, in the beginning, everything looks like a deal.
I guess this is the learning curve that everyone needs to go through, and I'm not an exception to the rule. As long as I keep on marketing, analyzing, and making offers, I'll get through this learning process and start finding good deals. I am a winner, and I do what it takes to achieve my goals, and I keep going on where most people stop and quit.

Winning Mentality

I am a winner. Always have been, always will be. I've noticed this even more so as of late. I take a look around, and see myself surrounded with intelligent and ambitious friends. Pretty much all of them are, and it's pretty interesting to compare them to people I know, but do not really associate with. Like the people I hang around with the most, Bin, Anson, Brad, Dave, Harman, Dmitri, Anatoliy, Ab, Emily; all of them do well.
I compare that to some of the other people I hang around, like Zoo, Bridgitte, Wai, that don't do so well.
Success attracts success, and I find that completely fascinating. When I listened in on Ravi speaking, it reminded me a lot of important facts.
I do whatever it takes to succeed. I remind myself that if it wasn't challenging, it wouldn't be worth doing. On my path to greatness, I'll encounter a lot of bumps along the way that separate me from everyone else that tries. I remind myself two times a day that I'm a winner, and winners go for it all and learn from their mistakes.
I am a winner.

the way to greatness

I attended a talk with Ravinder Dhallan, the Chairman and CEO of Ravgen. It really inspired me to see an honest guy working on a serious problem. He's willing to put his life on the line to solve this one problem, which is really an interesting feat.
How this relates to my life. I see stem cells as being a large part of the future of biotechnology. I want to be able to supply family members with the most viable stem cells for whatever they need them for. This source is umbilical cord blood from newborn babies.
Other companies have solved this problem, and I'm looking for different ways to differentiate. After I find a couple good ways to differentiate, I will cut the cord and go at it. Solving an important question, and a multi-billion dollar payoff, here I come.

My Sassy Girl (spoiler)

Don't read this if you haven't seen the movie yet.
I watched My Sassy Girl for the first time. The director really developed the girl's personality well throughout the movie. She tried so hard to be different and righteous. She tried so hard to act happy when she was sad. She tried so hard to ignore her feelings for Kyun-woo, but attachments to her old bf didn't allow her to connect the way she wanted.
While this is a movie, there were a couple interesting personality matching questions that arose. Can you fall in love with several people in your lifetime? I think the answer to this is most definitely a yes. Love is very much a product of circumstances and a mutual give and take, with some common ground activities and random hardships.
Also, under what conditions would I be willing to tolerate a sassy girl?
What can I tolerate, what can't I tolerate?
The most important thing for me is that the girl has a healthy dose of curiosity. Curiosity is the force that drives people to seek new knowledge all the time. Of course, the girl must take care of her body and not have drug addictions, or self-mutilation habits. I find that I go more for cute, younger looking girls. She doesn't need to be able to cook, but it'd definitely be a big plus. One thing that the sassy girl did that I liked a lot was that she kept introducing Kyun-woo to new situations and new experiences. A girl that will create us a lot of great memories is paramount. Experiences are what people treasure in a relationship. So I'm done droning on and on now. The search continues...

NCAA Final

In basketball, I've never seen such an awesome display of teamwork vs. talent. That was a great game. However, the match up of the two teams was just too uneven. Illinois was full of 3 point shooters, and UNC was based around a great center. The problem with Illinois was that they had no real answer for May. He shot for 11/12 or something really ridiculous because no one on Illinois was close to his size. He simply bullied everyone around and got easy lay-ups, or dished it out to the open shooter.
To Illinois' credit, they had an excellent team, with great passion, passing, and getting the ball to the open guy. They kept the game very close and very exciting. However, in the second half, UNC fed the ball more to May, and Illinois didn't have an answer, while letting Illinois shoot all the 3's they wanted. Simple lay-ups & dunks > 3 pointers, even when they're college 3's.
It always seems like the winning formula is get a dominant big guy, and get some shooters, and feed it to the mismatches created.
I'm not a super sports fanatic, nor an expert basketball tactician, but I've noticed this general pattern over and over again. Center outmuscles other team for the win. When will someone recognize this formula and find a good way to beat it?

first kayak trip in a LONG time

I had my first kayak trip for a long time. I didn't go to a roll session or lead a trip because I hurt my wrist in snow football during the OP leadership retreat in PA. Antietam was running at 4.1ft in the beginning of the day and ended at 5.4 ft because it was raining all day. All the rapids were pretty much flushed out and the dam was running way high. There was only one good wave on the left side of the dam, and I got some side surfing as well as an ender.
It was such a tiring trip because you needed to paddle hard to get upstream back to the dam and it to way way too much effort. Overall, it was a good trip. good thing we went for the takeout at burnside bridge.
Even though it was such a shitty day, and the water was running way too high, it was very fun. I got to get away from my work, enjoy the atmosphere, and focus completely on the river, the animals, the sound of geese, the cold splash of water spraying onto my face, and the feeling that while I'm in control, the river ultimately has the last say in what I do.
Will took some pretty good pictures. It's a great idea to get a camera to do photos. I'm going to get a camera so then I can get my own photos.
John