So I Occupied Wall Street…

For weeks I’ve wanted to pass by lower Manhattan and see this movement from an objective perspective.  On Monday & Tuesday I was afforded the opportunity to do so.  At first I didn’t want to engage, just observe… But that led to eavesdropping and I was effectively forced into dialogue.  I quickly learned that these people are not as stupid as they’ve been made out to be.   I’m going to divide my initial observations into two categories…

The Good:

• At face value, the park has been organized into impressive little self-sustainable community complete with a library, news/blogging headquarters, prayer/meditation center, sanitation department, clothing depot, food dispensary, self-service medical shelter, and sleeping supply warehouse.  They’ve even gone as far as distributing free cigarettes.  If you’re homeless, hungry, or unemployed, broke or bored, there’s really no better place to be right now besides Zuccotti Park.
• They’re cooking fresh meals, teaching one another history, debating politics, and more importantly, inspiring an apathetic generation to start caring about their future.  This is something that I’ve personally never seen before.  Although I always took interest in it, my friends never did.  Having travelled a lot for my age, America seems to be the only country that its people don’t understand their own political policies, nor did they ever care to learn about them.  It’s clear that this movement is looking to change that dramatically.
• Regardless of the colorful outfits, bitter/ironic signs, or their generous consumption of controlled substances, they did have individual opinions on the economy.  They aren’t looking for handouts, and they know how to disagree respectfully.

So there’s no raw oyster bar, and king crab legs are not on the menu, but besides that, there is something for everyone.  That leads us to the bad…

The Bad:

• There is no clean-cut set of demands or proposed solutions that everyone agrees upon.  In the past, people who engaged in protests had something to the effect of a mission statement to lead people into a collective goal.  This just seems like an un-organized collection of movements bundled into one, and it makes following what’s going on challenging.
• The group is divided amongst people pushing multiple agendas and they can hardly find something they agree on beyond “We want change”.  Everything from cruelty to animals, legalizing Marijuana, Communism, Socialism, Anarchism, anti-Zionism, leftist ideologies, rightist ideologies, and the occasional person who contributes nothing while free-loading the supplies.
• The number of people frequenting Zuccotti Park has required internal security – and although they’re trying to be understanding, it’s difficult when conflict arrises and people are already in an argumentative state.  These clashes draw a lot of attention, and watching people yell at each other is counterproductive to a successful movement.
• There are entirely too many “Donation” jars beside people exploiting the movement solely to panhandle.  Don’t ever give money to people on the street.  You can donate online if you want to help the actual movement – handing money to people on the street only encourages more to come out and degrade the folks who are actually contributing.
• There is entirely too much drug use – hardly a way to have your message taken seriously.
• I love drumming too, but it’s so loud and it’s drawing too many noise complaints.  You’re asking to get evicted with defiant antics like drumming outside of the designated hours you’re allowed to.
• Every-day draws more free-loaders and more homeless people.  While waiting on the free food line, I stood beside a man who clearly hadn’t showered in a substantial amount of time – he randomly tried talking to me, but made little sense attempting to construct sentences, so I ignored him.  Meanwhile, I watched people screaming and cursing at the people preparing the food because they were hungry at that moment – not an hour from then (when dinner was scheduled to be served).  They then argued with everyone on line, agitating everyone around them.  Eventually security asked them to leave, but they just proceeded to the front of the line and continued to cause trouble.  When the food was unwrapped and ready to serve, a Chinese protester dropped his Tibetan pamphlets and dove head first into a tray, digging his hands directly into the container and stuffing his face.  It was disgusting.  Completely unnecessary drama like this lead to a tray of wasted food and it’s incredibly discouraging for the people who have donated their time to prepare the meal for everyone.  Security was radioed, but the damage was done, and because of his actions, a dozen people directly behind him in line will not get to eat until more is prepared.
• I’ve heard more stories about troublemakers and agitators, but I personally only saw a few.  This is always a polarizing topic.  You want to welcome everyone into a movement like this, but the reality is that not everyone knows how to behave, and you can’t.

Perhaps a thorough description may be a bit pre-mature as I’ve only been there for a couple of days, but I think I’ve gotten the gist of what’s going on.  My initial impressions remain mixed, but I’m glad I finally made it out there.  The discussions I had were interesting, and I hope people continue to engage with one another.  Exchanging stories and personal experiences will help this movement grow compassionately.  I also hope people continue to keep this movement peaceful, but I fear that it’s only a matter of time before the directionless messages start clouding the relevant debates.  Everything going on downtown has a “V For Vendetta” feel to it, but with one too many opportunists as is always the case in a place like New York City.  The potential for Occupy Wall Street to expand beyond their means could lead to a violence eruption in an attempt to contain the expansion – to some extent, it already has.  Most of the protestors say they’ll cross that bridge when they get there, and with the winter imminently drawing closer, the movement is sure to subside, so maybe the timing works in its favor.

To conclude, I don’t expect most people to begin standing up for what they believe in because they rarely do.  Maybe the economy has to get considerably worse before the mainstream makes their way downtown, but letting that be your catalyst only makes it a bitter journey.  It’s breathtaking to see people gathering and standing up for something as an all-welcoming group.  As soon as they figure out what they’re trying to tangibly accomplish, I feel that the movement will gain validity in the public eye.  I initially treated the protest dismissively, but I’ll acknowledge that wasn’t fair.  It takes commitment, conviction, and courage to speak your mind publicly – something I know people trapped in the corporate world (like I was) wish they could do if not for the fear of losing their jobs.  That fear is being is quickly being overcome as they continue hearing the story of what happened to me amongst the thousands like me.  If your job prevents you from freely expressing yourself – you’re in the wrong place.

TaKe On – Battle At Bally’s

The 12th installment of TaKe On Productions brought fans to the beautiful Bally’s Hotel & Casino in Atlantic City; where Full-Rules Muay Thai was the name of the game. For the first time in the young promotion’s history, we abandoned New York’s modified rules to watch elbows reek havoc. On tap was a pro-debut for the ages, an inaugural champion to be crowned, and a main event that would challenge two of the most respected fighters on the east coast to finally square off.  While it’s not the first time we’ve travelled to New Jersey to compete, it was certainly the finest.

I’ve spent a few days recovering from the some sleepless nights in Atlantic City, and the past 2 days Occupying Wall Street.  More on that will be shared in tomorrow’s entry, but today, I want to be brief and share some photos of what I experienced.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The trip cost me a bundle with the value of the belongings that somehow fell out of my pockets, but ultimately, it’s the cost of supporting some of best athletes in the business and a sport I’ve loved above all others.  It’s also an amazing feeling walking around one of the most famous casinos on the East Coast and seeing the posters I helped design plastered all over the walls.  Below is a brief slideshow of some of my favorite shots from the event.  I hope you enjoy them here before they hit the MSG Sports & TaKe-On websites.

Getting Punched in the Face is the Only Thing that Ever Made Sense to Me.

We all need to get punched in the face from time to time.  I’m a firm believer.  Imagine all those times you obliviously crossed the street while texting, and car nearly flattened you because you weren’t paying attention.  The zombieishness of your social networking ability to carry on two tasks simultaneously nearly cost you your life, but rather than stopping to acknowledge it, you proceeded to finish your text message and cross the street.  Let’s admit we’re all a bit at fault of being morons.  I’ll admit it.  Your turn…

Chris Romulo Shadowboxing in Battery Park, NYC - Photo by Bauzen

I personally don’t want to punch you in the face, but sometimes we have to punch ourselves.  Since our bodies can’t contort to those positions organically, I’ve confined in Muay Thai for many years; a sport that transformed me from an angry kid into the person I am today.  It’s not something I turned to as an outlet for anger, but rather a means to let go of that emotion entirely.  I haven’t been truly angry in about 5 years because I quickly discovered anger is a counterproductive emotion.  You can get mad when someone steps on your Nike’s or you can take a step back, reset, and approach the problem rationally.  Anger clouds judgement and complicates whatever situation reality serves you.  Having a short memory in the face of a less-than-pleasant situation in is the best way to push forward appropriately.  That goes for boxing as much as it does office work and personal relationships.

While I haven’t trained or competed in longer than I care to remember, I’ve been around the sport for the past 5-6 years as a photographer.  I can still relate to fighters’ pain, celebrate their victories with them as though they were my own, and rejoice in the beauty of a sport where people test themselves on a daily basis, subsequently growing as individuals.  Each person that steps into the ring is a winner regardless of the fight’s outcome.  They’ve made extreme sacrifices and put in months of excruciating labor that non-athletes can’t imagine.  They’ve cried in the shower; they’ve vomited after some of their workouts… Having their hand raised after a fight is only a bonus at that point.  People ask what my fascination is with a sport this brutal, but it’s the real world that’s cruel & disheartening; what we see in the ring is the only truth and triumph I understand from a tangible perspective.

The duration of my relationship with the Muay Thai has introduced me to the best friends I’ve ever had and a girlfriend more loving than I ever knew existed.  It’s the reason I continue to follow the sport and do my part to help it grow.  There isn’t a sense of entitlement where so many other combat sports have failed.  The prize money isn’t substantial either.  If you’re looking to get rich, there are less painful ways of going about it.  Consequently, a financially sustainable career path within the realm of Muay Thai photography rarely materializes from shooting this sport.  Plainly, we do it because we love it.

Rami Ibrahim mentally preparing for a fight - Photo by Bauzen

The ability is within everyone to dig into their primal instincts.  It may not be fighting, it might be getting out and riding a bike, even running.  It’s alone time to clear your head from the negativity that keeps you from attaining your goals.  You might not be able to perform like a champion every day of your life, but you can get closer every day you try…  Sports aren’t something most adults engage in as they rarely see the value.  The people I worked with in banking would wake up, come to work, go home, and go to bed.  There wasn’t time in their day reserved for challenging themselves beyond the bare minimum.  When I discussed boxing with them as a passion of mine, and specifically how I was excited to enroll into my health benefits to enable my return to the sport, they automatically got the wrong idea.  For the most part I kept it to myself, much like the remainder of my personal life.  Something I shouldn’t have to do anywhere.

“The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear – fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable.  What he wants above everything else is safety.”  ~Henry Louis Mencken

This weekend marks another chapter of my relationship with the sport I love as I board a bus to Atlantic City, NJ to support my friend Jay Matias who is making his pro debut as a professional Thai Boxer at BALLY’S for TaKe-On productions.  Also on the card are dozens of people I’ve admired watching over the past six years.  Some will win, others will lose, but all of them will inspire countless onlookers in person (& via live webcast) to strive harder in their daily lives.  It’s what the sport has always been about.  These are everyday people who push themselves hard and find meaning in fighting that can’t be communicated in a textbook of self-discovery from Barnes & Nobles.  They fight for their families, themselves, each other, but most importantly, they fight because they want to.  Whatever we try to accomplish in life is something we have to struggle with if we want to succeed.  You can’t trust anything that comes easy, nor can you abandon your dreams the moment you trip over a hurdle.  Those hurdles are there to make you stronger and leaping over them proves your worth as an individual.

Destry Dalrymple's hand raised by trainer Thiago Azeredo - Photo by Bauzen

This marks the end of the first week of my unemployment.  I’ve since de-cluttered my apartment to inspire productivity, exercised every day, eaten healthy, and been contacted by the New York Times about this this blog.  More details about that will be revealed next week, but I look forward to the near future and the potential of exciting things to come.  I’m glad I’ve started this transitional period energetically and enthusiastically.  I’m confident I can maintain the momentum.

Every day presents new opportunities and I’m happy I finally have the time to go after each & every one.

Offering a cigarette to a stranger.

Shortly after my departure from J.P. Morgan in late 2007, I boarded a plane to Paris with my camera, a notebook, and a medium sized messenger bag with a couple pairs of jeans & sweatshirts. I didn’t know how long the trip would take, but I wasn’t coming back until I cleared my head. The goal wasn’t to go shopping or to get drunk every night, just to separate myself from girl problems, career issues, and the kind of stuff every man goes through at some point in his life. I’d been to Paris before, but never on my own. Surprisingly, my high school French classes left me well-equipped to communicate adequately upon my arrival. I navigated my way from Charles de Gaulle airport to minimalist hotel in the 18th arrondissement, dropped my bag at the foot of the bed, locked the door, and pounced into the first bakery I could find. Coffee and cigarettes constitute le petit dejuner de champions in Paris – easily the most stereotypical French ritual this American looked forward to.

Every day in Paris started at one of those bakeries or a sidewalk cafe with a pack of Dunhills & a short espresso. I then wandered the cobblestone-lined city without an agenda, stopping only to eat, sleep, shoot, and write. It’s incredible how simple the French have made life for the Parisians: There’s a warm crepe waiting for you at every corner, cheap wine & fresh flowers at every news-stand, and a fresh baguette at any hour of the day or night. It’s as though you have no choice but to enjoy the little things in life; incredibly different values than I was used to as a New Yorker. I ate on-the-go as often as I could, but one evening it began to rain, and I huddled myself into the corner of a smokey bistro on Boulevard Saint-Michel. In walked a tall, handsome, & well-spoken American who didn’t speak a word of French. He approached the bar and asked the bartender for a cigarette, but none of the staff understood him. They collectively pointed at a vending machine where he could purchase a pack, but he insisted he only wanted a single cigarette. I interjected and invited him to sit down. He was grateful that this other American (me) had an extra seat & an open pack of cigarettes waiting for him. We talked about football, politics, and our respective careers. I then asked him what brought him to Paris and the response was a bit more than I bargained for.

His journey started in May of 2007 as a trader at Goldman Sachs. Every year prior to that consisted of a high six figure salary, that soared well into seven figures after his January bonus. The springtime was a bit of a slow season for him, so he made a lunchtime appointment for his annual physical. A few days later, the doctor told him to come back in and regrettably informed him that he had cancer. Here’s a guy with an ivy-league background, my fantasy job (at the time), a trophy wife, and he started every morning at 5:15am with a 6.6 mile run around Central Park while maintaining a fitness guru’s diet. He never smoked a cigarette back then, and he swore he only drank on special occasions. Getting a diagnosis like “cancer” was the most retarded thing anyone with his disposition could fathom. Before listening to the treatment options, he filed for an immediate medical leave from work and flew out to Vegas the same night. He took a few nights to gamble and indulge in various activities to feel what it was like to “live like a degenerate”. When he returned, he told his wife that he didn’t love her anymore, wrote her a check, and told her that he needed to be alone for the next few months. She didn’t put up much of a counter-arguement; he didn’t expect her to. Their marriage apparently only existed at face value and ending it was one of the easiest decisions he ever made. The next morning, he didn’t go for his morning run or answer any of the voicemails/Emails from his friends, parents, or the doctor. Instead, he sat there with a laptop mapping out a trip he wanted to take. By the end of that week, he loaded his backpack with the essentials and boarded a non-stop flight from NYC to Tokyo. A month later he had already visited Thailand, Singapore, Papua New Guinea, and was en-route to Eastern Europe. At this point, he had become a bit of a shepherd/drifter. He’d eaten lots of funky street foods, slept outside, and none of it phased him. In fact, it was liberating to experience things as other people experience them for a change. His upbringing was privileged and his professional life hardly challenged him with less-than-optimal accommodations.

Although he wasn’t Jewish, he traveled to Israel and became fascinated with how people clung to their respective faiths there. He discovered his first kibbutz, proceeding to reside there for the following 3 months; describing how far he ventured from his comfort zone by forfeiting a $10,000 Duxiana mattress back home for a 3 inch thick cushion stapled to a bunk bed, stained with urine from the person who occupied it before him. He lived & worked on a farm in exchange for food and a place to stay like an indentured servant and he insists it was the greatest experience of his life. There were a dozen men from all walks of life sharing the barn where they rested, all sweaty & musky after 12 hours of work in the field. Some moved from place-to-place like this their entire lives, while others were just in transitional periods. They’d laugh and share their life stories in various languages/dialects, while others translated so the remainder of the men could understand one another. He told me about the food; that it was sometimes bland but always fresh, hearty, and he grew to look forward to it. A place like that challenges any man to see what he’s made of. It certainly challenged him. After 3 months to the day he started, he finally realized what it meant to put in a real day’s work. He also learned about true camaraderie with a group of guys that he never would have met outside of this experience, people who genuinely have no ulterior motives besides sharing a laugh and making the time pass. He was finally at peace with his life; it was time to move on, and he was ready.

The last leg of his journey brought him to Italy and along the French Riviera into Paris, where he had his first familiar meals in months. He drank wine directly out of barrels, slept outside on benches when the weather allowed it, and decided that once he got to Paris, he’d visit a specialist and see if it wasn’t too late to get a health evaluation. He had discovered that life was worth fighting for and he would find a way to face the chemotherapy he was originally terrified of.

An appointment with a renowned specialist for this form of cancer was scheduled within a week of arriving in Paris and they ran countless medical tests over the course of two days. In the week that followed, those tests were repeated to insure accuracy. The results were analyzed, and the doctors sat him down to offer-up an even more outrageous diagnosis than the doctor in New York. Not only did he not have cancer, this particular form of cancer was hereditary, and there was nobody in his family that ever had it. There wasn’t much more to discuss or decipher, it wasn’t a mystery, there was no treatment that could make him any healthier than he already was; the original diagnosis had to have been read off another patient’s chart, or originated from a mis-read X-Ray. It’s probably something he would have realized if he checked his voicemail or gotten a second opinion prior to leaving for Asia.

He insisted that being told he was going to die was what it took to start living. Six months after the voyage began, he shed his first tears; and they were tears of happiness. As he finished telling me the story, the emotions came out again. I asked him if he ever spoke to the doctor who misdiagnosed him again, he said “Yeah… I thanked him.”

That rainy evening of our encounter came to an end when we ran out of cigarettes then went our separate ways. I never bargained to hear a story like that by offering someone a cigarette… In fact, if we just argued about baseball for 10 minutes, I would have been totally satisfied with that. Generally, people would say “thanks for the smoke,” and continue about their business. It was one of the most impressionable moments of my life and it offered me the confidence to return to New York and give my career a second chance. I’m certain that meeting this random traveller was fate in many regards. It was a story I had to hear, and a story that was meant to be shared. My only physical memory memory of that night was a photo I took once the rain stopped. It turned out to be my favorite photo from Paris. It’s been something I’ve put off hanging in my apartment for far too long. A mistake I’m going to correct this weekend.

We still keep in touch on occasion. Back then he wasn’t sure what he was going to do next, but his lifelong passion was restoring vintage Jaguar automobiles from the 60′s. I later learned that he sold his 5th Avenue apartment for a loft in Long Island City. Today he spends his time doing what he always wanted to do for an irrelevant fraction of the income he used to earn, living upstairs from his garage, and he’s the happiest he’s ever been. Two summers ago he started dating again, and he plans to propose to girlfriend in the spring. Although the storyteller appreciates his anonymity, and I’ll respect his privacy, I’m thankful he’s allowed me to share what he told me in today’s entry; and while neither of us smoke anymore, if we ever find ourselves in Paris again, we’ll be sure to buy a pack of cigarettes and hand them out liberally.

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.

While I never slept outside the Apple Store on 5th Avenue for the newest iPhone, I remember the day I was turned onto Mac products.  I was in my senior year of college writing an essay for a history course when my PC went into its ‘freezing’ ritual.  I’d been meaning to purge the ad-ware/spy-ware/viruses at some point in the near future, but I had to get through that evening to submit the essay.  Rather than deal with Microsoft Word, I composed the entire essay in Gmail, just so the auto-save feature would protect me in case it crashed – It then crashed, and my fist traveled through the screen (at high velocity).  I reached for my coat and walked over to the Apple store at 2:00am.  40 minutes later, I was back in my apartment retrieving my essay from Gmail.  Another hour and my essay was finished, proof-read, submitted, and I was tinkering with my shiny new Starbucks-worthy accessory.  If CompUSA on 57th & 8th was still open at 2:00am – I would have ended up with another PC that night; something less expensive, but ultimately just as troublesome.  Opting for a new MacBookPro on a whim was instantaneously one of the best decisions I ever made.

This entry isn’t actually about my admiration for Apple computers, but rather the man in the black turtle-neck who passed away two weeks ago.  Saying that Steve Jobs was one of the most influential figures in my lifetime is something of an understatement.  I never met the man, and I can only dream to scalably accomplish what he did in his lifetime, but I completely relate to him.  Disregarding his net-worth, he wasn’t very different than me.  Jobs was creative, a dreamer… Someone who had outrageous ideas, limited resources, and decided not to follow in anyone else’s footsteps.  While he certainly could have spent his entire life in a cubicle and kept his imagination to himself, he started his career in a garage with Steve Wozniak developing the first Macintosh computer.  The business boomed and computers were becoming household items, however, most Apple consumers are too young to remember that Steve Jobs was actually fired from Apple shortly thereafter.  He founded one of the most successful companies in American history, hired someone else to run it, and that person ended up firing him.  While it seemed like the end of the road at first, Jobs looked at the situation as an opportunity to revisit the creative energy that brought him to where he became successful in the first place.  It took nearly 5 years, but he swears they were the best 5 years of his life.  He met the woman that would eventually become his wife, paved the future of digital entertainment by opening PIXAR Animation Studios, and founded NeXT Computers – a company that his former company eventually bought, bringing Steve Jobs back to Apple.  This is one of three stories Steve Jobs shared at the 2005 Stamford University commencement ceremony.  If you haven’t already seen it, I urge you to watch it.  If you have, you should watch it again.

Had he not died two weeks ago, this video probably wouldn’t have surfaced to the top of 2011′s Facebook walls around the world.  The timing seems a bit coincidental (yet appropriate) considering the position I’m in, but sometimes that’s just how life works.  Planning for the future can be unpredictable, but you don’t always need to worry about it.  His speech resonates at times like these; it demands you be inspired and have faith those dots will eventually connect.  In the meantime, we all owe it to ourselves to stay hungry, stay foolish, and never settle.  It’s hardly cliché when you see what happens to the people (like me) who didn’t.  Going by the book is the fastest way to feel helpless when things don’t work out the way they’re supposed to.  The silver lining is that it’s never too late for a new beginning.

Was I ever really happy?

Losing your job can be emasculating if you let it be, but chances are you aren’t where you really wanted to be in the first place.  Think about that.

Did you really want to work there?  Were you happy?  Be honest with yourself: There are probably dozens of other things you would rather have been doing, but you were afraid to leave your comfort zone for a life plagued with financial uncertainty.

I’m right there with you.

I wanted to be a photographer.  Anyone who’s known me since childhood would have a hard time recalling an instance where I didn’t have a camera in my hands, framing a landscape or capturing candids of things I found interesting.  I got accepted to the best photography school in the country (R.I.T.), spent my Friday nights in the darkroom while my friends were out having fun.  I jumped on every photo assignment right after it was handed out, often finishing well-ahead of the deadline.  More often than not,  I was helping other photo students with their work because I loved it so much.  Unfortunately, digital photography was already starting to make film obsolete, subsequently flooding the job market with freelancers who could duplicate my years of education and experience with a couple of Adobe Photoshop tutorials on YouTube.  After shooting several weddings the summer after my freshman year, I soon realized that there wasn’t much of a future for me in a competitive industry like that.  What I loved my entire life quickly shifted from a career to a hobby, and I transfered from photography into a business finance/marketing major and finished my degree in Manhattan.  I still freelance with photography, but it’s hardly a means of earning a living.  A week at the investment bank earns the same income as a month of hustling for freelance photo gigs (except the iBank never bounced a check).  If it wasn’t photography, it was writing, cooking, or a slew of other possibilities.  I never went after them the way I should have because I lacked the confidence that I would succeed.

Maybe we never really figured out what we wanted to do in the first place?  I’m bewildered as to why people go to college right out of high-school without figuring that out beforehand.  In retrospect, that same $30,000 I spent on my first year’s tuition would have been better spent traveling to parts of the world that my classmates never heard of.  I could have seen how other people lived, learned their values, seen their culture, and I might have even left New York City permanently to pursue an opportunity along the way.  People romanticize the prospect of doing exactly that for the rest of their lives while stuck in their day-jobs; They should have just saved their money and done it right out of high school.  The pessimists reading this while calculating the logistics & wondering “What if you don’t find whatever it was you were looking for?” – and you might not… But you’ll have a better idea than before you started your ‘adult’ life.  The alternative is being in the position I’m in now, alongside countless 30-somethings who all had the same 3.7 GPA, similar corporate experience, and absolutely nowhere to go as our jobs continue to be outsourced to India.

How many people even attempted to pursue their dreams?  In the corporate finance world, the ongoing lie we tell ourselves is we’ll get out after the bonuses arrive in January.  You’ll open a business, a boutique, a little restaurant in the West Village… Every January comes & goes, and so do the promises to ourselves that we’ll move on and find something new.  If there’s one thing people from my old job were guilty of, it’s becoming corporate zombies.  Nobody grows up with a passion for trading, or managing other people’s money.  They dream of being business owners, doctors, lawyers, something that can offer them a daily sense of accomplishment.  When was the last time we felt that?  For me, it disappeared shortly after getting hired and realizing that my day-to-day would revolve around escalating issues to VP’s & Directors when queries weren’t responded-to fast enough.  On a day I walked home from work alongside a co-worker from my team, I asked her what brought her to Credit Suisse, and she wasn’t exactly sure.  She had life-long goals of working in robotics.  A lot more suddenly made sense about her.  There was a reason I always liked working with her, and it was because underneath that ‘corporate mask’ she wears at work, there’s a personality, goals, dreams, and somewhere else she wishes she could have been.  People like her always feel alone, insecure, and lack the confidence to ever change.  Getting fired can sometimes be a motivating factor – I certainly hope it is for me, but in all honesty, what is it that keeps us lying to ourselves for so long that we can’t self-motivate to pave our own way out of the situation?  When someone asked me what I did, it always felt gross saying I worked for an investment bank. Telling people “I’m a drug dealer” shows more ambition and entrepreneurship than that.  I don’t condone selling drugs; breaking the law is not an alternative to finding a new career, but the point remains valid.

I’m maintaining the mindset that the choice to leave finance was made for me (more than once) after being laid-off several times.  Struggling to find a way back into a field that has rejected me this many times is like not knowing when to say goodbye to a dysfunctional relationship.  We aren’t married to our jobs, we never took an oath under God – we merely agreed to exchange our livelihood for compensation… Which is far worse.

You’re fired.

For months I walked in & out of Credit Suisse at 11 Madison Ave; and every day, I passed by more & more empty cubicles.  Over time, the offices along the perimeter of the floor also began to empty.  The furniture and paintings gradually disappeared and everyone around me knew what was going on, until there was nobody left around me.  I’d be naive to think my turn on the chopping block wasn’t around the corner, but I maintained the lowest profile in the corporate history.  Coming into work before the rest of my team, being on conference calls 10 minutes before anyone else joined, taking the stairs on my way out so nobody would see me leave for the day… I never even decorated the walls of my cube; My desk consisted exclusively of work related-charts, an iPhone charger, and a tray full of plastic forks.  The idea was to just to do my work, keep quiet, hoping they’d forget I even existed.

Every day for the past month, the Occupy Wall Street protest has grown into somewhat of a national phenomenon, and one of the highlights of my day was reading about it in the morning paper while I sat on the subway en-route to work.  I read about young adults taking an actual interest in today’s problems, and actually caring about it enough to leave their homes and sleep on the streets of lower Manhattan.  I read about people getting arrested, processed, then coming right back to continue protesting for socio-economic equality.  While their collective message was mixed, and they had yet to decide realistic solutions, the idea that they had gathered in protest of companies like the one I worked for had me inspired.  I found myself daydreaming about standing alongside them if/when I lost my job.

They fired my friend Jessica 2 months ago because she was brought in to do her boss’s work for her, and she ended up doing it faster & better than her boss could ever do it.  Jessica’s boss, a silver-spoon fed imbecile that was put in a VP position fresh out of college, was so embarrassed that she was forced into a 6-month sabbatical to re-evaluate if she really wanted to continue working (for a job she never had to earn) – she essentially had all the problems the rest of the world wishes they had.  In most situations, Jessica’s performance would merit a promotion, a bonus, or a firm pat on the back.  Unfortunately, investment banks are run like privileged petting-zoos, exclusively for gated-communities of people sitting atop the food chain.  They’re not interested in helping anyone succeed outside of ‘their own’ – because it’d make for awkward conversation that weekend at the country club.  If you’re reading this and you disagree… you have no idea what’s really going on this world, and you should just resume watching MTV.

It saddened me when Jessica left.  She was my only friend at work.  When I saw her packing her things, I followed her out just to give her a hug and wish her luck.  My only bitter reassurance was that I knew I wasn’t too far behind her, and I wouldn’t have to fear losing my job any longer.  Last Friday, I walked into work knowing I was going to get laid-off.   I actually packed the contents of my desk a couple of days prior, took it all home.  I wanted to make ‘getting fired’ as easy as possible, and not look like a moron when I ventured into a local watering-hole immediately thereafter.  When asked if I had any big objects I needed sent home to me, I said “No, just my jacket, headphones, and you’ll be rid of me.”

I don’t have hard feelings toward the person from HR they hired to give me the bad news, I just wish they could have found someone without the herpie-looking mole on her face and an inbred-English accent.  She didn’t offer a reason why I was terminated; just a reminder that I signed a contract saying the company can fire me anytime, for any reason, and they don’t owe me an explanation.  In fact, Credit Suisse had only converted me from being a consultant to a ‘permanent employee’ 5 days prior.  After all the time I spent there, I finally attended orientation for new hires, enrolled in my health benefits, only to get fired 4 days later.  Imagine going out to dinner with your family just a week ago, celebrating the start of something ‘permanent’, only to be sitting at the bar of that same restaurant a week later for the polar-opposite.  The irony of all this makes it hard to take seriously.

It’s partially my own fault for returning to a company that laid me off twice prior and having any faith in a potential career with an investment bank.  In retrospect, why I ever listened to my parents and followed their advice is somewhat bewildering.  My whole life, I’ve been told that my parents know what’s best for me.  Perhaps a generation ago, working in finance would have been considered a prestigious profession, one with a very bright future.  Unfortunately, parents don’t always know what’s best.  The world evolves, but oftentimes, parents’ mindsets remain in the past.

There are thousands of stories out there of people who rebound from situations like these where leaving a career only blossoms into something more fruitful; however, there are hundreds of thousands more of people who downward-spiral into nothingness.  Where I’ll end up in the next few months/years is much of a mystery, but I’ve made a conscious decision not to sit here and feel sorry for myself.  Truthfully, I couldn’t be any happier to close that chapter of my life.  Living with the fear of losing your job every single day is hardly a way to live, and it’s something I thankfully never have to do again.  My career in finance is over – I’m never going back, and I couldn’t be any more excited for what comes next.

My first priorities are to clean my apartment to the point that a guest would feel comfortable eating off the floor.  Clean surfaces encourage productivity, while clutter just keeps people discouraged.  Simultaneously, I want to regain the same physical conditioning I had back when I was boxing.  Beyond that, I’m going to remain inspired, creative, and find a way to pave my own destiny – one that never asks me to put on a tie to come to work.

I started this blog today to document my time for the next few months as I undergo some considerable life changes.  While I’m not certain where I’ll end up, I’m happy to say that today marks a new beginning.