Greed or Gratitude - Guess what I picked ?

May 8

Hand drawn cartoon of hockey tickets with 2 hockey sticks

A couple of weeks ago a concert we were looking forward to was canceled. This was disappointing as we were looking forward to seeing the artist and it was going to be a fun weekend away. The good news is that the concert has already been rescheduled and the new dates do not conflict with our schedules.

Our airfare and hotel were refunded but we ended up stuck with 2 tickets to a hockey game. So I decided to put the tickets on the resale market and thought, "Maybe I can make some money on these babies !"

I checked out what tickets were selling for and the green eyed monster in me felt confident in a nice return so I set a premium price for our tickets. Acting as if I already sold them for my asking price, I started looking at other events.

Building on what I expected was going to be easy money, I thought, "Why not see what we can do by flipping a pair of tickets to the last game of the Maple Leaf's season !"

Now I've got two sets of tickets for sale. Not an entertainment mogul by any stretch but I was feeling quite smug.

By the day of the first game, my tickets have not sold. I can see from the app, that tickets are selling - just no where near my asking price and unfortunately, they are going for around half of what I paid for them. I take a bloodbath.

"We'll make up for the loss on the second set of tickets."

The sale goes down as a virtual replay of the initial ticket resale schamozal (scha-moz-el (n): a series of events characterized as uncontrolled chaos resulting in great hardship) except the sale gets cancelled at the last minute because I didn't transfer the tickets properly. And because I can’t get the transfer straight and the game is in just 3 hours, I get charged a penalty fee equal to the asking price of the tickets.

In case you’re wondering, I've retired from reselling event tickets.

There are a few lessons I learned over the years from my gratitude practice (but obviously forgotten) that are buried in this pirate tale of lost treasure:

you're ok just as you are now - you are enough.
focus on what you have - don't get caught up by the latest shiny attraction.
if it seems too easy, there's probably a catch.
don't compare.
don't wish something on yourself you're not ready for - like last minute pressure of knowing how and to increase or decrease the asking price in the hours leading to an event. If you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen.
know your gifts and stick to what you know - illustrated by my lack of familiarity with the resale system.
don’t think you have to do it (whatever "it" is) all by yourself. No one is self-made. I could have at least drawn on the experience from someone who’s been there and done it.

There's probably more to learn here. What am I missing ?