Every asset allocator will tell you the same thing: don’t put all your eggs in one basket. So naturally, I spent sometime putting all my eggs in two baskets; one labeled “help rich people get richer” and one labeled “convince strangers that a villa in the hills is exactly what their family reunion needs.” Diversification, I was told, reduces risk. Nobody mentioned it also doubles your calendar invites.

Here is the truth Morgan Housel would tell you gently over three paragraphs and a fable about a farmer: net worth and self-worth compound on completely different schedules, and mine have never once been on speaking terms. I can build you a stress-tested retirement plan with a 40-year time horizon. I cannot reliably plan my own Sunday. There is a word for this in behavioral finance. I believe the word is “irony,” though my compliance training tells me to check the footnotes.

Here is the version Prof Galloway would give you, slower, louder, and with a chart nobody asked for: the modern professional doesn’t have a career, he has a cap table. I am long “wealth management,” long “hospitality,” and structurally short “free time.” My personal balance sheet reads like a man hedging against the possibility that spreadsheets alone won’t get him to the life he’s picturing; so he built a second business renting out other people’s dream houses while quietly failing to relax in his own. This is not a strategy. This is a coping mechanism with a business plan attached.

I collect certifications the way other men collect watches. I have read enough about promoter families and generational wealth transfer to know exactly how the ultra-rich stay calm during market chaos. I have not yet figured out how to stay calm when my partner asks me if we will be able to make payroll this month.

If there’s a lesson here, and Housel would insist there is, it’s this: the market rewards patience, and so, probably, does everything else. I’m still compounding. The returns just haven’t been audited yet.

Diversify your assets, they said. Nobody warned me I’d become one.