Three summers ago, if you asked me the difference between an index fund and a treasury bond, I probably would have shrugged my shoulders in blissful ignorance.

I was younger and dumber, what can I say? I was also too busy grinding my days away on film sets to care about anything aside from getting up and going to work. The time I spent thinking about the future was… never. But hey, I was twenty-one, making bank, and living the Hollywood dream. I had my whole career ahead of me. Why would I ever need to invest?

The following summer, my burgeoning Hollywood career hit rock bottom.

Who knew actors and writers went on strike? Unions, what are they good for? Just kidding, they’re good for a lot… accept if you’re a lowly assistant hoping to pay rent. Aside from the few projects I had worked on, I had no qualifiable experience, no transferable degree, no non-film recommendations. I was a lost puppy in an human world and I couldn’t read any of the signs. Before too long, I was miserable.

Let this be a parable for anyone molding their personal identity around their work. Bad idea. When that work one day ceases to exist, your reason for enjoying life goes along with it. That was a hard lesson for me to learn, and an even harder one for me to accept.

My days slowed down pretty fast once all the work finally dried up. I went from being a social busy-body to a lonely, hyper-depressive slug. Actually, I spent a lot of time trying out new hobbies and exercising. I was in search of anything that would fill the void of not working, as well as quell some of the anxiety that had started to surface as a result of my savings account slowly starting to deplete itself.

If only I could figure out a way to make some extra cash on the side. Like, enough to live on when I wasn’t working, doing something that didn’t feel like a waste of time…

That was it. That’s all it took for me to get interested in investing. A bit of hair pulling, some subtle teasing, and a strong kick in the pants brought me to my senses. Nothing like watching your hard-earned cash wash down the unavoidable drain of unpaid bills. If I couldn’t do what I wanted to do (i/e work in film), and if I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) get a normal person job, then I would teach myself how to make money in the stock market!

Call that a done deal.

I gotta say, I was really impressed with myself the day I came up with this revelation. How easy it seemed. The clouds had parted and all of my worries fried to a crisp in the midday sun! The stock market would solve all of my monetary, emotional, and potential future problems!

This I believed because some guy on Instagram said that the stock market made him like $100,000 in like two days! This guys seemed reliable enough, I mean, the internet never lies, right? $100,000 seemed crazy, yet realistic. I was like “heck yeah!” and my wallet was like “help me!”

Anyway, it took me some time to figure out that I couldn’t just make $100,000 by willy-nilly investing in the stock market. If I was being honest, I couldn’t actually describe what the stock market was or how it made people money. I just knew that sometimes, some people could make free cash from the free market. How that worked, I had no idea.

The great thing about unemployment is you have boundless time, aimless motivation, and seemingly endless boredom fueled by the constant desire to do something, anything with your ever decreasing lifespan. That, paired with my shrinking bank account forced me to take a deep breath.

If I was gonna do this, I had to commit to investing the necessary time to truly learn about finances and the stock market. I was starting with absolutely no knowledge, no experience, and nobody to point me in the right direction. It was up to me to make sure that the information I read was accurate and reliable. I had a lot to learn, but hell, what else was I gonna do?

Welcome to ground zero. The reason why I got into this whole investing mess in the first place.