corporate lies I bought into...
I've lived in New York City for 10 years now and reflecting back on how my life and the city itself has changed in the last decade is pretty remarkable. If you need evidence, just look at the Mayors then-vs-now... We went from Bloomberg - pinnacle of capitalism.... ....to Mamdani, a legitimate self-proclaimed socialist. And the reason why? Because the "Old Way" just doesn't seem to be working anymore. The idea in our head of how capitalism was supposed to work for the people who "followed the path" is patently false! When I went to college and decided to forego Film for Finance (yes i went from Art to STEM like a true sell-out) I had this big idea in my head about what it meant to work in NYC on Wall Street. We have all these images of Wall Street careers from classic movies like Margin Call, The Big Short, Wolf of Wall Street, Wall Street etc. In my young, twenty-something-year-old head, the idea of tons of money and tons of beautiful people was, as you can imagine, pretty appealing. The thing was, most twenty-something-year-olds don't care about the predictable character arc of the Wall Street heroes from those movies.... Generally....the hero of the story realizes it’s a corrupt cesspool and LEAVES IT ALL BEHIND. He doesn't feel fulfilled by the money and gets quickly tired of the late nights (whether behind the computer or under the influence).... And guess what, the crux of it all is that THE MONEY ISN'T EVEN THAT GOOD ANYMORE! It used to be that you could sell your soul, but at least it would be for a good price! Now you have to sell your soul, be unfulfilled in your job, feel like a hamster on a wheel.... And you don't even get fairly compensated for it! So back when I was twenty-something, I maybe should have guessed that my character arc would unfold in a similar way to all our favorite Wall Street Movie Heroes ....with me no longer working on Wall Street! This story rhymes with so many other big corporate jobs from doctors to lawyers to accountants - you name it and I’ve seen it.