Paul Kasaija

7/2/2021

1:10 P.M.

 

Thurgood Marshall once asked, “What is the quality of your intent?”. My answer is “the best quality that I can produce”. With that said, I would like to return to writing about the intents of others; it has been a quarter-year hiatus and it is about time for me to pick up the pen.

 

To put a stamp on what I have been doing from April to this quiet start of July—small-time trading. While rather unsuccessful in the actual practice of trading (investing in stocks), of which the purpose is to profit from the “buy low sell high” strategy that everybody knows, I have still learned a great deal about the nature of investing, the nature of investors, and what “not to invest in”.

 

Practice makes perfect, is what some say. Idioms have a penchant for removing the actual grit of life’s challenges, and so does this one in particular. In truth, I would say that practicing and then failing, then researching how to overcome the failure, then practicing some more, and then repeating this process ad infinitum, can help one grasp a better fraction of perfection. So if I look at these trials of investing as practice, then the goal is not “perfect”, but to have a modicum of investment and trading knowledge that puts in perspective a greater goal of real perfection.

 

Besides investing, I have definitely improved my culinary skills. With tribulation comes experience, and oh man, was the pandemic of 2020 a “tribulation”. With some personal tribulations and ones that are commonplace to every family, it has made us post-pandemic families become more self-reliant apropos to the independent and trailblazing settlers during the birth of this country.

 

Cooking, cleaning, these are assurances that families like ours take for granted, with the habit of eating out, using dishwashers and possibly hiring cleaners. Well, when your dishwasher and car break, and it is a rough time in the post-pandemic world, these assurances go out of the window. I mean, I always helped out my family with such things beforehand, but it is a whole new level of responsibility these days.

 

I cook for the family most of the time using groceries delivered from one of the grocery apps that are abundantly used nowadays, and I would say that I’ve gotten a lot of experience cleaning everything that food lands on. I enjoy cooking, and I’ve put in effort to improve my culinary skills and make “out of the box” food with the goal of matching my favorite restaurants in quality.

 

However, when I’m not helping with the self-reliant mechanisms of the post-pandemic family, I’m not doing much else. I will start the day planning to do something interesting and by the time I want to do so the time has already passed. I would say that this is my "personal tribulation". Doing helpful things will inevitably take a cut out of my time available during the day, and without a will to do productive activities and the ease of having everything planned out (like college) it has made me feel like I’ve quit doing the right thing.

 

Nurturing curiosity, putting work in on my diet and exercise routine, making miniature discoveries and putting them into writing, learning about new activities… I need to get back to showing an “intent” to doing the right thing. All I can say is that with time, I’ve regained an intent to fill in these gaps.

 

All is—still—going well, and I hope that to all other college students, workers, families, and all you other people during this summer of 2021, you can regain an intent to do the things that make you happy.