Koh Samui airport was just as Rob had described:  laid-back and unexpectedly charming with food stalls, beanbags, grassy spots, and music that made it feel nothing like a typical airport.  We were able to ride a scooter right up to within meters of the check-in counter;  Sophia barely had to walk to check in.  So much for tight airport security!  The quirky, relaxed vibe of the place was exactly what we needed to momentarily distract ourselves from the emotional weight hanging in the background — the reality that she was flying back to China, and I would soon be on my own again.

It was one of those heavy moments when neither of us really knew what to say or wanted to say it but she was the one who finally spoke: 

“Wherever you are and wherever you go, I hope you’ll be safe.” 

And then she began to cry.  It wasn’t a surprise.  We hugged, kissed, and she walked through airport security.  Her words lingered, weighted with the unspoken acceptance that we were probably nearing the end of the road. Sure, we’d keep in touch, but when she had asked me back at the foot massage near our Koh Samui bungalow — “Where do you plan to settle down?” and  “How often can I visit you?” — my inability to answer those questions or maybe my avoidance had already made it clear that this relationship was slowly reaching its natural close.

At that point, all I could really do was sink into one of those beanbags, take a breath, and keep sending voice messages to ChatGPT.   I was trying to wrap up one of our earlier conversations about why telehealth companies like HIMS are circling the drain despite their surface-level hype.  We’d been discussing how these businesses have become too dependent on a narrow customer base:  mainly entitled millennials and Gen-Z who still behave as if the pandemic never ended, unwilling or unable to even leave the house to pick up their prescriptions from Walmart.  Instead, they spend hundreds of dollars a month on weight loss drugs delivered to their door when they won't consider riding bikes or going to the fucking gym.

But really, all that back-and-forth with AI was just a distraction.  It was a way to keep my mind off the heavy emotional fog that I knew would follow me for days as my mind and nervous system adjusted to being alone again. Eventually, I hopped back on my rental scooter, rode to the bungalows, and caught up on some much-needed sleep.  After some beach downtime, I knew I couldn't spend another minute in that bungalow.  So I checked out then rode over to Amazon Cafe to meet up with my friend Rob like we’d been doing every day.

Not long after, I returned the scooter in perfect condition, collected the 5000 baht deposit, and Rob gave me a lift to the ferries headed for Koh Phangan.  If I was going to step back into solitude, it wouldn’t be on Koh Samui.  It had to be on a different island.  In fact, Koh Phangan was the same place where, just a week earlier in the wake of my disillusionment in Bangkok, the vision for the movement had started to take shape. It felt right.

I arrived at the pier, and sure enough, a boat was just about to leave. I hadn’t even checked the schedule, I simply walked on.  Rob smiled and said

“Looks like your luck is coming back again.”

Truth be told, one of Sophia’s parting comments was, “I hoped that I could bring you some good luck.” 

I didn’t want to say out loud that she hadn’t, but honestly we both already knew it.  The reality was clear:  her constant presence, monitoring me almost 24/7, had seriously hampered my trading.  This was wrecking the mental clarity I needed to perform well.  I’d tried to gently explain this to her at the time, and I think she partly understood.  I even blamed the environment around us.  After all, how could I fully lock into a trading mindset when surrounded by resort staff focused on punching the clock, collecting salaries, fake performances, background music, and endless distractions?  Combine that with all the people on vacation and taking time off from jobs that relied on salaries, this was in stark contrast to myself who needed to rely on asymmetric income for survival over an indefinite time period. 

But the bigger issue was that I didn’t want to disengage from Sophia, especially during key trading windows like the first two hours of the US market open (which happened around 8:30 p.m. for us).  That was often when we were sitting down to dinner:  an awful environment for making sharp trading decisions.  So I pulled back, let trades run unattended, and ended up making poor choices such as leaving a Gold short position running, which snowballed into a $1,000 loss in just minutes.

That was the wake-up call.  After this, I began benching more and more positions.  I realized I would have to pause this for several days, or at least until she left.  The losses kept on piling up to well over $3,000.  And sure, part of it was due to bad market conditions, but mostly it was my own mental state.  Once I crossed that loss threshold, I benched the entire account for a full week, shifting my mindset to pure capital protection. It felt like a return to early March, to the emotional space I was in when the midnight run first began.  

I couldn’t help but wonder:  had all that monumental progress from the past 2.5 months — everything I’d gained since the midnight run — really been undone in just a single week?  Or was Anna, the inspirational Russian life coach I’d met in Dubai on an earlier trip, right when she said, “This is not a setback, this is a setup”

But after Sophia left, I found myself asking the tough question:  Is it really possible to survive indefinitely off trading alone, or at some point will I need a salary again?  Maybe the salary wouldn’t have to be something I depended on, like the paycheck slavery most people are trapped in — maybe it could just serve as a temporary launchpad until it was no longer necessary.  And with that I think I answered my own question.