Where are we at?

We’re here! Today the blog post will be a bit of a conversation..

I spent the past two months living in very rural Alaska, 20 minutes through the tundra on a small propeller plane sort of rural. I was there, in Tuluksak Alaska, laying underground water pipe, which in the trade is called “arctic pipe” This new pipe would pump water directly from a new water treatment facility on the edge of town, to 3 or 4 major establishments in the town like the small grocery store, the local clinic, the town hall and the school. This village has no running water besides this and bathrooms are commonly just a 5 gallon bucket in the back room. These buckets are dumped, once full, in dumpsters scattered all over the town, once a week these excrement filled dumpsters are emptied somewhere at the edge of town, make sure you don’t get stuck behind that 4 wheeler in town! Im explaining this just to illustrate the beautiful opportunity running water, transported through the pipes laid by myself and others, presented for this little village… I remember this comment made by one of the more elderly men in the village one day as I worked inside of our 10 foot deep trench dug directly in the middle of the Main Street through town, many people walked by us working everyday, always cordial, but this particular day I had a good laugh when the elderly man yelled down to me “ I can’t believe I might get to see my shit flush away once before I die” as he made a sound and motion with his hands resembling something entering a wormhole at hyper speed being transported to another dimension. “Fffffwwwwwuuuuutttz!” 

Its interesting to see new things, I didn’t know people were living like this is rural Alaska, this is one village of hundreds maybe even thousands like it. No running water, the towns electricity coming from a few generators in the power plant at the end of town. The town looks pretty dystopian, broken down cars, 4 wheelers and snow machines litter the lawns outside the rundown, haphazardly houses that have been fixed with plywood and nails over and over again for generations. Mud covered, bright eyed vibrant smiling kids roaming in gangs throwing mud balls at the packs of stray dogs that follow them jumping playfully at their backs. The kids were always a riot, they loved to see what the white guys were doing in the hole in the street, our trench was always lined with kids accidentally kicking down dirt clumps on to us as we worked as they crouched over the edge yelling questions like “WHATS YOUR NAME?” OR “WHAT IS THAT?” and of course “WHY ARE YOU DOING THAT?” I always indulged the kids answering their questions day in and day out, enjoying their refreshing softness and innocence  in juxtaposition to my grizzly mans man working men coworkers, who often enough would respond to the kids questions with “Get the fuck out of here!”… Let it be known these responses always came from a fatherly place of compassion, in their own special, gruff way they were showing they cared enough about the kids to keep them safe, but seeing how these kids lived, I doubt they needed us to keep them safe. 

The job payed great, all my expenses were taken care of, not to the most desirable standard but absolutely well enough to keep me warm at night and have a filled stomach at the end of the day. I lived in one of those plywood shacks, surprisingly it held heat really well though and aside from its less sexy qualities like mold, a shrew infestation and the feeling it might blow over in the whipping tundra winds, the wave of stale electric heat that would hit my face after a long day in the freezing cold invoked a feeling that screamed “home” 

I had never heard of something called the “Davis Bacon law” and honestly I still don’t know what Mr Bacon did or who he was, but I do know he opened the door for tradesmen and laborers alike to make some really great money wherever his name is spoken. What I understand about this “law” is basically that when someone is working a job where under normal circumstances they’d be receiving benefits such as health care, retirement and such, but for whatever reason are not receiving those benefits, the worker must be paid dollar for dollar what those benefits would be “worth”, so without diving into that too much, the point is it turned my wage as a “plumbing laborer” from a $36 an hour job to $70 an hour.  A typical week was 70 hours, and with overtime pay (1.5 pay of BASE pay without Davis Bacon, so half of 36, an additional 18 an hour) I was seeing $5000 worth of numbers popping up in my bank account on a weekly basis… Im a rich man in many ways but have not ever necessarily been a wealthy one, needless to say, this was an insane amount of money for me to be making all of the sudden and with no expenses and nothing to spend money on in the village even if I wanted to, the numbers just kept going up and up. 

I invested into crypto last year, I had just received an $18,000 inheritance, marking my first time ever seeing anything over $5,000 despite being a hardworking man who has been working since I could throw my back into something, for a lack of better terms 😉 Anyway, I’ve always been interested in “investing” I put that in quotations because I’m not exactly saying what I mean, investing was always a way I could see being create financial freedom, and that’s what I’m interested in, I’ve always known there are ways to play this “game” where finances don’t have to be a defining or limiting factor, how do I know this? I guess thats a good question and the most honest answer would probably have to be because it sure seems like people are doing it! If someone can do something, I know I can too. Maybe these potentially delusional ambitions are just a vice that my lifestyle allows me to pursue and dance with… Regardless 😉 Coming into that inheritance last year gave me one of my first chances to play with money that I knew I wasn’t going to have to use in the next year, a luxury my previous attempts at investing didn’t have. I have been keeping up with crypto since about 2018, watching things move, staying informed enough to see potential but not enough to take action. If you don’t know, the crypto markets fluctuate heavily, yet with mildly predictable macro trends, there is potential to make very large returns fairly quickly, with of course the same potential to lose large amounts. $18,000 was a lot of money for me at that time because of what I’d had comparatively in the past, but don’t assume I was delusional thinking I had any real substantial amount of money.

Einstein is speculated to have said “Compound interest is the 8th wonder of the world” whether he said it or not, compounding interest is a seductive opportunity. If you don’t know what this is, compounding interest in the simplest of definitions, is an avenue for exponential financial growth by reinvesting profit made on capital. So back to crypto, I saw this as the safest way to at least double my money, Bitcoin was very low and I strongly believed, based on history and macro trends in the market, it would rise soon. Why? Why do this instead of investing in myself or investing in experiences or any of the millions of other things I could’ve done with that money? Well, back to compounding interest. We can pretty safely put together a portfolio that will yield 10% a year, and for the sake of discussion let’s take this as a given. I had $18,000, so at 10% a year I’m only making $1,800 a year, then the next year with $19,800 Im making a bit more but still only $1,980. So you see compound interest at work here but not in a way that’s going to blow your socks off. Now for the sake of easy numbers, lets say instead of $18,000, I was able to put $100,000 into this same portfolio, that first year I would make $10,000, after 5 years around $60,000 and after 10 years that $100,000 will be worth $260,000. Maybe this number doesn’t blow your socks off either, but for someone who’s never thought about this, maybe we can agree it’s interesting? 

So back to the point, whatever that is 😉 I wanted more money so I could take a more substantial position implementing compound interest because whether Im going to day trade for 5% a day or hold for 10% a year, doing so with $18,000 didn’t really tantalize me. That initial investment did great, but that’s aside from the point. The point I was intending to make was to inform you that I took my first 3 paychecks and put it straight into crypto. Speculating again on these “macro trends” I’m under the belief that this spring will be “alt coin season”… An “alt coin” is just basically a crypto currency that is not one of the main 5 or 10 that most people can name. These coins are more volatile and fluctuate anywhere between 10% to 100% a day, but this is where insane amounts of money can be made, a place where 10x returns are not necessarily “large” 

My intent with telling you this is to illustrate for you the feeling of the “perpetual spinning of the roulette wheel” in the back corner of my soul. If you’ve ever played roulette, you’ll know the feeling of watching, waiting to see where that little ball lands, it’s a hell of a thrill. Side note about roulette, the book “The gambler” by Fyodor Dostoevsky, is a beautiful account of that thrill and the incessant nagging need to pursue it that some can develop, a short book by an absolute master of his craft, here’s a review I did years ago.  

 Maybe I’m leaving this blog post a bit like a flag flapping violently in the wind, but I guess it doesn’t matter! That’s all for this one, Thanks for letting me pull back the veil a bit. Many more posts to come, so until next time 🙂 

Life and potential are inseparable.

Stay in light, stay in love

Jay Bierschenk