26 at 26: G for Gambling
Living Reasonably Far From the Edge
Late last year, I turned 26. So, in the tradition of the great panel show QI, for the first half of 2014 I will be running through an alphabetical view on 26 things in my world so far.
For the last few months, I’ve taken regular trips down to the local record shop. (Since I’m lucky enough to still have a local record shop.) They have a section of “skuf” CDs, beat-up used albums sold at a buck or two a pop.
So I’ll go and grab a dozen or so. Initially, it was one-hit wonder albums, stuff to fill the random small gaps in my collection. But lately, I’ve been flipping through and just grabbing albums that looked interesting. Don’t know the artist? Don’t know the genre? Sure, go for it.
That is about the extent to which I am able to take risks.
I don’t gamble. My parents have actually taken me to a casino, given me money, and told me “go wild”. I did not go wild. I didn’t even go feral. Somehow, I managed to disappoint my rather risk-adverse parents by not wanting to take risks.
Now, if you knew me beforehand and aren’t just getting to know me through these posts, you’d probably think “…you moved 3,000 miles to a totally new city! That’s a huge risk.” I know it looked that way, and people have given me a bit of praise for taking what appeared to be huge risks any time I do one.
But they’re calculated risks. Heavily calculated. I plotted every detail of my cross-country drive for months beforehand. I knew how every stop would look, courtesy of Street View. I even planned where to eat lunch and dinner. And it took a bit of convincing to change those plans, on the occasions that they did.
Similarly, I haven’t taken enough advantage of Portland’s massive count of restaurants. I spent about two weeks exploring new places and taking risks on what to eat, and once I had a workable list of places, immediately stopped looking. I didn’t go to Elephants Deli until I lived here for six months, and by “here” I mean “across the street from it”.
I think my risk aversion is the main reason I haven’t made any more progress with entrepreneurship. All of my projects stay as side projects, never graduating to a real business, because business is risky. I could apply to incubators, try to go full-time with my own thing. But, risky. I keep hesitating to jump in until I know for absolutely sure that I’m going to have a parachute.
It’s one of those things that I get grumpy about, since it kind of gives off the “no true entrepreneur” sensation. I hate when people in the startup scene get cliquish about personality traits. But this time, I can allow it. It makes sense that being a risk-taker is helpful for starting companies, and being risk-adverse would make you miss opportunities. It doesn’t seem like cliquish limitation, it seems… practical.
I wish I had some kind of positive affirmation to end this on, but really — changing behavior is hard. Hence why there’s so many projects in the productivity domain. I’ve been so risk-adverse for so long that jumping out of that mindset is a massive challenge. I know it’s to my advantage to take more risks, explore more things, be braver in general. I also know it’s to my advantage to diet and exercise, and I still haven’t gotten around to that.
…But I do still buy Powerball tickets from time to time. $2 for 1 in 175 million odds at $300 million? I’ll be bad at math and take that gamble.
And now, a moment of zen:
“Why not go out on a limb? That’s where the fruit is.”
