After working for this political organization for several years I decided it was time to move on. I wanted to find a profession where I worked for myself, could be independent, and be able to eventually give back with starting some kind of foundation.
I asked my father what he thought I should do and he mentioned that financial trading is the last truly financially free frontier if you can master it! After this conversation with my father I gave my two weeks’ notice the next day, sold everything I own to put into a trading account, and moved back home to the Bahamas for peace & quiet so I could study.
With the help of my father I embarked on a journey to study a technical analysis trading course consisting of about 12,000 pages. I studied six days a week for about 10 hours every single day, and then I played on the weekends with my friends on the island. It was invigorating, it was challenging, it was nerve-racking, I was putting everything on the line, and I loved it.
I didn’t know if I was going to fail or succeed, but I was going to die trying in my mind! Not only did I work hard professionally, but I was in killer shape. I would do hot yoga 90 minutes every morning in my bathroom and 90 minutes of an intensive workout called P90X in the afternoon. I would go spearfishing, hiking, swimming, exploring, etc. on the weekends, and engaged in short-lived romances here and there. I was 27 years old and life was perfect!
“Living Island style in 2010 before my injury”
Honestly, I knew how wonderful my life was and I appreciated every moment of it. About a year after living in the Bahamas and finally finishing up my technical analysis trading course I launched into live markets, and started trading real money.
Three weeks into starting my new career I took that fateful little dive that left me a C6 quadriplegic paralyzed from the chest down with some arm function, but no hand function. The day of the accident is so fresh in my memory because I basically had to direct my medical care until an emergency jet reached the island, which was pretty much in the middle of nowhere.
I was so fortunate for my family because they surrounded me like a rock and never left my side. As many spinal cord injury folks can appreciate everything that could go wrong did go wrong. Once I was semi-medically stable I got a new apartment in Miami and started to try and live life. The first two years after my injury were just atrocious … I was self-conscious, miserable, in pain all the time, dealing with caregiving hell, etc.
Fortunately, my professional life was able to continue because I broke my body, but not my mind. My father even brought me my laptop in the ICU and told me to keep trading… He would be my hands and I would make recommendations to him. There were periods, however, where I couldn’t trade because I was stuck in the hospital with so many complications, which was challenging on the soul.
“Working in the ICU”
There are so many blogs to be written about events and things I went through during the first few years my injury, which I will dive about as time goes on.
At 29 years old we discovered a massive cyst my spinal cord. It was ascending upwards and starting to kill me. I was having trouble breathing, but no surgeon in the United States would operate on me for a myriad of reasons.
My father traveled all around the world and finally found a hospital in southern China with excellent surgeons who had performed the type of surgery I needed thousands of times. Long story short, we packed up quite quickly and moved to southern China on my 30th birthday. It was an adventure of a lifetime!