Unluckiest week of my life

08/12/21

This week was probably the unluckiest week of my life. Thanks to a flurry of social activities for the past few days, I spent up all my energy and amassed a lot of sleep debt. So then two bad things happened:

  1. I lost almost all my money. Being sleep deprived, stressed, and generally not in the best mental state, I fell victim to a (really sophisticated) crypto phishing scam and lost all my crypto holdings. Objectively it's not an astronomical sum of money, but it felt much worse because it represented almost all my net worth. As someone who tries to be cautious and wise with their money, I felt horrified and ashamed to see my savings disappear in a matter of seconds.

  2. I caught a breakthrough case of covid. I've already been fully vaccinated, but I think my sleep deprivation and stress from (1) lowered my immune response to actually catch the virus. Despite taking all the necessary precautions and avoiding the virus over the past year, I finally catch it right after something very bad happened to me. I'm now self-isolating so that I won't be spreading it to others.

I find it so amazingly unlucky to have these two unlikely calamities happen to me, all within the same week. It feels surreal and supernatural. Almost like the universe is trying to mess with me. I feel like yelling into the sky: What are you trying to prove here?! Obviously, I feel terrible. But thanks to the hedonic treadmill I know that I won't be in deep unhappiness for long.

But at the same time I also feel a bit guilty for wallowing in my loss in an almost obsessive way. Unless I'm truly unlucky with covid, I won't suffer some permanent loss from this situation. Probably some teachings in stoicism might help in times like this.

simpsons meme
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A few weird things I felt this week:

  • In the moments that I forget about my predicament, life feels strangely normal. I can almost pretend that nothing ever happened. It almost feels like a mind game.
  • I get the same sense of disbelief as when something truly lucky happens to me - my life feels a bit surreal and utterly arbitrary.
  • The hardest part is to not obsess over the tragedy during the shock of the event. I need to put conscious effort into not being emotional and acting rationally.
  • I feel an inexplicable sense of injustice and try to negotiate with the universe. Why me? What did I do to deserve this? Tacky questions et cetera.