My Indolence in Quarantine

From age 50 to 61, under the full force of life's un-quarantined pressures, I embarked on a process of self-ed for reasons that only Richard Dreyfus in "close encounters" might understand. Even though I'd had a full career and a very old MBA with special recognition in finance, it was not enough. I don't know if it was intellectual boredom or insecurity or the need to feel challenged that drove it but I powered through stuff like this below, which is all I can remember. There were no doubt other topics. There's always something. Here is what I remember, though:


Forex trading theory - hedge fund mgr
Financial Theory - OpenYale
Financial Markets - OpenYale
Game Theory - OpenYale
Quant Retirement Finance - general self study
About 1000 research papers - self
Comp and data sci refreshers, self/MOOC
R Programming - self and google
Probability theory and combinatorics - MOOC
Trading options on Commodity futures - self
Backward Induction and stochastic dynamic programming, twice - self
Fragments of the math of longevity, mortality, aging. Discrete and continuous -self
Macro Econ: selected utility functions and certainty equivalents - self
Macro Econ: expected discounted utility of life consump. - self
MVO refresher along with MV resampling methods - self
Multi period geometric return analysis and portf choice - self
Intro to quant finance - Selected Meucci materials
Kelly criterion and optimal bet sizing - self
Continuous compound interest refresher - self
Intros courses for trig, calculus and statistics - MOOC/self/books
Decision making under uncertainty - self
French - self/tutor
Reinforcement learning and AI in personal finance - self

I'd pitch the idea that this is at least as good as a credentialed grad level program in ____?_____. Maybe even more than that. Idk.  It was a "quest" with origins that are both known and unknown and a destination that is obscure. I am probably better for it though I have noticed that my curiosity has waned a bit after years of this stuff.  Maybe I'm just taking a breather.  A lot of this was pretty hard and both kids and girlfriends were more or less "wtf" most of the way through.

Now add to this above: 2.5 years if high intensity resistance training starting at 58, 35 pounds of weight loss, some material amount of muscle mass gain, a precipitous drop in body fat and we have a full life, full court press effort going into Covid. These are things I didn't really appreciate until now when I have more than enough time to reflect on it.  And reflect is what is on the table right now.

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On the other hand, here is what I have achieved during quarantine for COVID when I have all the time in the world on my hands:

      - nothing

I think maybe I have this self improvement thing backwards. Everyone else seems to be tripling down on self improvement while restricted. I have it the other way around. Sleep and a good American Rye seem to be the proper response for me. A little weight lifting now and then, too.

When the quarantine get's lifted, if it ever is, my guess is that I will not dive back into the self ed pool.  My goal is to move in three years and I have some stuff to do in order to make that happen.  If I have any money left to do it.