Hands Shaking

I still remember the first time I bought an individual stock.

My hands were literally shaking. I’m not exaggerating.

I’d been studying for months. Reading financial news every day, learning a whole new language of numbers and charts and earnings reports. I wrote about that already.

But sitting there, about to click the button and actually put my own money in? Totally different feeling. Theory is comfortable. Action is terrifying.

I bought PayPal (ticker: PYPL). A company co-founded by some of the biggest names in the business world. Based on the company’s performance and the situation at the time, it felt like a solid pick.

For a regular PE teacher, it was a pretty bold move.

But the specific stock wasn’t really the point.

The point was that I actually did it. I took something I’d only read about and turned it into action. And once I did it once, the fear got a little smaller. Not gone. Just small enough to keep going.

Seeing Differently

Here’s what I didn’t expect: investing changed how I saw everything.

When I was only studying, it all felt a bit abstract. Numbers on a screen. Articles about things happening somewhere else.

But the moment my own money was in the market, everything snapped into focus.

A policy change in one country would affect markets in another. An inflation report would move interest rates, interest rates would move stock prices, and stock prices would shift how people spend in their daily lives. Everything’s connected. You pull one thread and something moves on the other side of the world.

I already knew this in theory. But when it’s your money on the line, you pay attention differently.

I started watching earnings calls. Checking economic calendars the way I used to check tournament schedules. Listening carefully to what the Fed chair had to say, what CEOs were signaling on their calls.

There was this strange feeling of living two lives at once.

From morning to evening, I was with teenagers. PE classes, casual conversations at break time, after-school club activities.

At night, I was at a cafe or my kitchen table, going through the latest news on my laptop, reading through press releases. The two worlds never crossed.

I never talked about investing with my coworkers. Or my family. I kept it to myself the whole time.

It wasn’t that I was hiding anything. I just didn’t feel the need to bring it up. And I could easily imagine how people would react. Because I knew exactly how I would have reacted, not that long ago.

So I kept quiet, and kept going.

I wasn’t a pro or anything close to it. I just liked knowing what was happening in the world and where the markets were headed. That’s all it was, really.

But the news I’d been half-listening to my whole life was starting to come into focus. The numbers were beginning to mean something. What they indicated, what might happen next. Little by little, it was making sense.

I remember one morning, listening to a podcast in my car on the way to school, and suddenly understanding what the host was talking about. Not just the words. The context. Why it mattered.

A small moment. But something definitely shifted.

That “new antenna” I wrote about before, the one I got from reading? Investing gave me another one. A bigger one.

And something else happened. The more I learned about global markets, the more interested I became in the countries behind them. Not just their economies. Their cultures. Their values. How people live.

I’d started studying finance and ended up getting curious about the whole world.

From Tool to Bridge

By this point, English had already become part of my daily routine. Reading financial news, listening to podcasts, checking earnings reports. It was all in English, and it had been for a while.

But somewhere along the way, I started wanting more from it.

I wanted to talk to someone in English. Not about stocks, not about the economy. Just regular stuff. Life, hobbies, whatever.

I wanted to go somewhere overseas and actually connect with people, not just get by. I wanted to watch a movie without subtitles and catch the jokes. Read a book in its original language and feel what the author actually meant.

None of this was planned. I didn’t sit down one day and decide, “Okay, English is now my thing.” It happened gradually, almost without me noticing.

I can’t pinpoint exactly when it changed.

But at some point, English stopped being a tool.

It became a bridge. A way to reach the world I’d been reading about.

The Noise

Looking back, investing taught me a lot of things. How markets work. How the global economy is connected. How to think about money in a way that actually makes sense.

But the biggest thing it taught me was about myself.

I’m the kind of person who can’t stop once I get curious about something. That might be a flaw. It would be so much simpler to just be satisfied with what I have.

But somewhere inside me, there’s always a voice.

“Yeah, but what’s over there?”

It all started with reading. Investing made that voice louder. English brought it closer to reality.

I was still a teacher. I still liked the work.

But the noise in my head wasn’t going away. The world outside was getting too loud to ignore.

I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do.

But I knew one thing.

I couldn’t keep looking away from the question.