The Overwhelmed Brain by Paul Colaianni

Author:Paul Colaianni
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781612436586
Publisher: Ulysses Press
Published: 2016-11-18T00:00:00+00:00

Whether you’ve experienced that at your job or not, you can probably relate in some way. After all, how many times in your life have you put a lot of effort into something in hopes for a reward or some sort of payoff in the end? Many years ago, I decided to collect Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars—not for fun, but for profit. I looked up online auctions and found out how much the cars were going for, especially the older models, and realized I might be able to make quite a good side income.

I knew my mom always found the best deals going to yard sales every weekend, so I decided to ride with her and start my new venture. Soon, I was paying $10, $5, and even less for boxes of toy cars of all types. She and I visited many yard sales over several months and gathered hundreds of cars, both antique and modern. I knew that I’d at least get my money back and then some, but hoped I would be rolling in dough very soon.

Finally, I took inventory of everything we had and started looking up prices for each car. I separated the most valuable from the rest and decided to sell those worth the most in their own auction. I figured that I’d get at least a couple hundred dollars for these, as they were the rarest. I set them up side by side, took many pictures, and listed them on the auction site. I starting the bidding very low to garner interest and hoped that two or more buyers would want them so badly that they’d bid against each other until one of them finally stepped out.

The final day of the auction arrived and I sat there at the last hour wondering why no one had bid yet. Knowing the action in most online auctions happens in the last few minutes, I patiently waited until someone finally placed a bid. I thought, “Yes, this is where the frenzy begins!” Then I watched the clock tick down to the last 30 seconds. Then 15. Then zero. No one else bid; there was no frenzy. And because I set the initial price so low, that one bidder won the auction at my starting bid of nine dollars.

Months of buying, gathering, and planning, of hoping to cash in and be rewarded for all my hard work, came to an end with a nine-dollar profit. And you can’t even call it a profit, because I spent much more in gas money gathering those cars. It was a total loss and I felt completely defeated. I set myself up for failure by banking everything on one idea, then relying on the hope that everything would just work out for the best. Has anything like this ever happened to you? You put your heart and soul into a business, relationship, or project, then discover it was all a big waste of time?

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