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A Little Further Up


by weaponstar

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Hi there. How to begin? I suppose a catch-up would help.

I wrote a certain article called An Endless Ladder. This was just short of two years ago, and nope, I can't believe it's been that long. Well, that article was something like a chronicle of myself getting to grips with money-making on Neopia. I went through my experiences with games, restocking and wiz sniping, and ended with the stock market. I got quite settled on the stock market, and my portfolio has grown some since the 300,000 NP worth of stocks I mentioned back then.

I'm a bit hazy on the whens and for how longs, but at some point after publishing An Endless Ladder, my time spent on Neopia each day shrank. I would cover my most important dailies, say Hi to my Neopian family, and that was about it. This did include the stock market and I was making neopoints, but there didn't seem much point to it.

The problem was that I had no goals. I had access to the Laboratory Ray through a side account, but I wasn't hoping for any pet or colour in particular. There were, admittedly, one or two things I quite wanted, but they were just so far out of reach... I couldn't see myself ever getting that far up. I'm a procrastinator. I can be determined, but I do waver in the face of, say, taking a whole year to save up eleven million neopoints.

Ha ha ha. Yes. Yes, I did. I said I'm hazy on the for how longs and I am, but I think I can honestly say it took 'approximately' a year. For those who may be blinking at the page here, eleven million neopoints is necessary for obtaining a certain avatar. What happened was, I did just what I was doing, coming on for half an hour every day... and my stock portfolio started to grow. And my sellings started to grow. So I waited for longer before selling; started waiting for +50 percent and then +60. And it all just kept growing.

I think it was around when my bank account reached two million that I decided to go for the avatar. I still wasn't hugely active around Neopia, but I was beginning to see hope and I started to play some games to earn that daily 15,000 I was putting into the stocks. The games were an on-and-off thing. Near the end (around six or seven million, when I realised I was actually going to make it) I made more of an effort, and for a terribly tedious time I was making twenty to twenty-five thousand neopoints a day. My stocks were what got me that avatar, though; overall, I gleaned much more from them than from playing games. That's how the stock market works. It takes time, but it gets you there. And no, it wasn't worth it for the avatar. It was the satisfaction that was worth it. And, oh yeah, it was fun.

And I was pretty pleased with myself. Why not? I know there are people out there with much more, but it was good enough for me. Just like one million was good enough some time ago, and before that 500,000. Sometimes I get feeling like it isn't enough - like the other day when I was on the Help Chat and found myself chatting to a girl who'd seen over thirty million neopoints. Of course that's fine as rain, but I did have a private jealous moment. Got over it pretty quickly, though. And that's fine, too. I was quite cheered to know I could prevent myself from letting these things get me down. Because it doesn't matter: if I'm happy with my current neopoint situation, and I am, I have no reason to long for the big numbers. And if I did want the money for something, I know I could make it eventually.

So whatever happened after I finally earned that avatar? Not a lot. I no longer have eleven million neopoints, though. Somehow I managed to think up quite an amount of things I wanted to spend it on during saving. In fact, at this moment I don't have a goal. Not one too heavily involving neopoints anyway. I'm attempting to get a certain pet with the Laboratory Ray, and while I'm expecting that to involve a lot of morphing potions to keep it to the right species, thus far I've had no call to shell out. You could say I'm back to square one - not doing much neopoint-wise besides slowly piling up the stocks. But there's one difference this time around. I have more of an interest in the community side of Neopia, for starters, and since a couple of years ago I have put that much more time and thought into my Neopets and other aspects of my Neopian life. You'll not be seeing the back of me for some time yet, if all goes well.

I've also started making item investments, for a hobby more than anything else. Laughable, I know - a hobby in a hobby. But it's fun trying it out, thinking of things that might inflate and doing some research. I haven't actually sold anything yet; it's that recent a venture.

I have a friend. A good friend, who I got talking to not so long ago and, well, it feels like long ago. This friend has set herself some high goals. There is no hope of them being lowered, and I'm pretty sure telling her to take things one at a time isn't going to do a whole lot of good. If you're that sure about what you want, it can be tricky fooling yourself into thinking you only really want one of those things.

So I'd just like to say (with an apologetic nod to all you cliché-haters - right there with you, buddy): I know you can do it. And I know you can, too.

 
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