Burnout

How time flies. It has been exactly 7 years since I started this blog. It has not been a continuous process, though, as I stopped blogging for exactly a year from Jun last year to Jun this year. The cause? Burnout.

For 5 over years, I have tried to blog at least once a week. It gives readers continuity, as they know that I am always around. This is especially important during times of market stress, as readers know that I do not talk about investments only during good times and leave them in the lurch during bad times. Also, they only need to check my blog once and only once a week. The inspiration for a weekly blog came from a current affairs blog that I regularly visited in the past -- www.littlespeck.com, which is now no longer updated as the author has passed away. I liked the regularity of his week blog, which provided updates on a sufficiently regular basis but is not too frequent to follow. I thought too that I could achieve the same kind of regularity, but alas, trying to think up an idea, research about it, organise the thoughts and write it out, and then repeating the cycle 52 times a year proved too much to bear and I burned out.

It was not just blogging that I stopped. Almost everything connected to personal finance stopped. I stopped tracking my expenses, which I had done for the past 24 years. I also stopped monitoring the performance of my portfolio, which I had done for the past 20 years. Naturally, since I stopped blogging, I also stopped thinking about specific stocks and bonds.

During this 1-year hibernation, I wondered whether my blog has added clarity to investment issues or simply contributed to the noise. Individually, each blog might have very good reasons for their recommendations, but because different blogs have different opinions on even the same topic, to a person who is trying to search for some clarity on the internet, he might end up being more confused after reading these blogs than before he started. Nevertheless, my wife consoled me that I have done my best to value-add to the investing community. There will be some readers who would appreciate the unique opinions that I have.

Although I stopped thinking about specific stocks and bonds, I was still keeping up with financial news and there were issues that bothered me and made me want to blog about them. Such issues include the restructuring of Hyflux and DBS Vickers' plans to move the retail stock trading into the bank. Although upset, I did not have the time and energy to restart my blog. 

The issue that finally made me restart my blog was the IPO of Astrea V bonds in Jun. Coincidentally, my last posts before I stopped blogging were on the Astrea IV bonds. In my second-to-last post, I had blogged that I would not be applying for the Astrea IV bonds, although I corrected my initial thinking in my last post of 2018 and acknowledged that the Astrea IV bonds had sufficient safeguards. Fast forward to 1 year later, I decided to apply for the Astrea V bonds and I thought I should come out and reiterate my thoughts about the Astrea bonds before I applied for them. See Astrea V 3.85% Bonds – Understanding What You Are Buying Into for more info.

Once I restarted, the inertia was overcome and it became easier to continue blogging again. Nevertheless, I am conscious of the demands of a weekly blog and I would only be blogging whenever time permits and when ideas come to me. It is more sustainable this way. 

During the 1-year hibernation, although there were issues that made me want to restart blogging, there was also an incident that made me felt that all these years of blogging had been wasted. In Jan this year, I attended the Astrea Investor Day. During the Question & Answer session, one participant asked "could we have more of Astrea bonds?". This was despite the ongoing debacle of the Hyflux preference shares and perpetual capital securities. While I acknowledge that the Astrea bonds have safeguards to protect retail investors, I do not think that they are sure-win investments. Is it a case of the bonds having no risks at all, or that particular participant being blissfully ignorant of the risks? After coming back from hibernation, I wrote a series of posts on the Astrea/ Private Equity (PE) bonds. They can be found here. Readers can read and gauge for themselves whether the Astrea/ PE bonds are really risk-free or not.

That question really hurts. It hurts much more than if someone were to criticise my blog posts. For so many years, I have been blogging and keeping the blog free for all so that it could add value to the investment community and make a small difference to the world. That question just proved that it was probably my wishful thinking and my blog never really made much of a difference. It made me wonder whether I should still continue blogging. So, please, do not let me hear such questions again. It really hurts. 

Finally, for readers who have been regularly reading and supporting this blog, I thank all of you for your time and sharing of your views.

See related blog posts:

• Where it all began: The Beginning of the End
• 1st blog birthday: A Year's Worth of Blog Posts
• 2nd blog birthday: About Blogging and Investing
• 3rd blog birthday: The Value of (The) Boring Investor Blog 
• 4th blog birthday: I Didn't Let My Alma Mater Down
• 5th blog birthday: How Long Can (The) Boring Investor Blog Continue?