Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
Those weeks were over 3 months ago. Has the second item been sent out?
Yes, the second item went out. And other items went out. But I have not gotten one item out per week to meet the goal that I set for myself in that earlier comment. Most of those communications will show up as blog entries in future days. So you Goons (and Normals too!) will be able to see who I contacted and what I said to them and how they responded in the event that there was any response.
I wrote about this in a long comment that I put up here about a week ago and that will serve as the text for a future blog entry. I am referring to the one where I explained that I am now attending Al-Anon meetings to develop more effective strategies for dealing with the “disease” of Buy-and-Hold. Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold strategies are addictive. All of the problems that we see associated with addictions like alcoholism or drug abuse or gambling or whatever are present in the case of Buy-and-Hold. And those problems don’t just affect those who suffer from the disease; they also affect those who live among those suffering from the disease. This is why we have gone 36 years since Shiller published his peer-reviewed research showing that there is precisely zero chance that a Buy-and-Hold “strategy” could ever work for a single long-term investor without accepting the reality that we need to permit honest posting re that research. The pull behind Buy-and-Hold is not anything rational — it is pure emotion. So Buy-and-Holders cannot be reached through appeals to reason alone.
It may be that we will as a society become able to overcome our addiction to Get Rich Quick thinking only by first hitting bottom — that is, by experiencing the next price crash, which will bring on a deepening of the economic crisis that began in late 2008. The job today for those of us who love our country (and who of course love our Buy-and-Hold friends we well!) is to learn how to deal with addicts in a loving and yet honest way. I engage in work in that regard on a daily basis. Sometimes it is by attending meetings. Sometimes it is by reading literature. Sometimes it is by going on a walk and reflecting on my interactions with you Goons and on how Normals respond to those interactions.
I am not on a once-per-week contact schedule today. I believe that I will be there within a few months. After I achieve a once-per-week schedule, I expect to up the goal to a once-per-day schedule. It will happen. I would like to give you a target date. But I have learned from hard experience that it is not always possible for me to meet my target dates. We are dealing with tough emotional stuff. And no good purpose is served by me being hard on myself when I fail to meet a target. So I am going to resist the inclination to offer a new target date and just say that I continue to work on a daily basis on the emotional work that I believe will down the road a piece place me in circumstances where I will be contacting the owner of one web site (some investing oriented, some not) each day of the year. This is a numbers gam,. In time those efforts will pay off big time. I am 100 percent sure.
Wish me luck!
Rob
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