Wall Street

It's been a while, so I guess it is time to write another post. Might as well jump right into the fray, and comment on the Occupy Wall Street protests. Up to today, I haven't really cared about the protests. While I generally agree that our current political and economic climate is unsustainable, I find that most of the noise coming out of the protests is just noise. The original organizers may have had some good ideas and good intentions, but at this point the main points coming from the masses are crazy. Just search Google for "OWS Demands" and you'll find plenty of sites that will detail them.

However, none of this is what really sparked this post. The reason behind this post is far more selfish and petty. The protest hit me personally today when it stood between me and home after a long day of work. I work for a large investment bank in the Financial District of Manhattan, so I spend a lot of time in the vicinity of the protests (I don't work on Wall St. itself, so up to this point I had not personally seen the protests). Today as I was walking to the subway station to get my train home I ran into a march by the protesters. They were heading down one of the main streets between me and my subway stop. Not only was there the march, but because this is NYC there were also plenty of police officers and the portable barriers that they put up to control large crowds at event. All of this blocking my way to the station. I walked up to the next crossing to see if the police had left an opening for people to cross, but alas they did not. I walked a bit further and found a break in the march. I pushed my way to the barrier and caught the attention of one of the police officers and asked how I could get to the station. His response was excellent, and I greatly appreciated it. He simply said "come over here" and walked up a few sections of barrier, swung it open, and let me through. So, to him I offer a big thank you.

As for the rest of the protesters and the movement. I too am one of the 99%. I am, however, starting a career and working hard to make my way in this difficult economy. I worked hard my entire school, and I'm continuing to do so now. So, please, stop interrupting my trip home after a long day of working to make sure that I can support myself.

~Alex

Whew, What a Week.

The last week was positively crazy... It all started because I went home to Vermont last weekend. I decided to try flying instead of driving since it would get rid of 600 miles and 9 hours of time in the car. The plan was to leave directly from work to the airport on Friday night and fly home, spend the whole long weekend at home, fly back to NYC on Tuesday morning, and go straight to work.

The plan worked fine right up to the "go straight to work" part. I landed at the airport at 7:30, and intended to take a bus service that runs straight from JFK airport to Grand Central Station in Manhattan (3 blocks from where I work). I went out to get the bus and it wasn't scheduled to leave until 8:00. I didn't consider this too much of a problem, given my estimate of about a 1 hour ride, I'd still get to work at about 9. Later than I wanted, but by no means late. What I didn't know was that before we actually left JFK, we had to go to every other terminal at the airport to pick people up. So, by the time we actually left the airport, it was 8:30. Additionally, the ride was expected to take about 1 hour and 20 minutes. Add the 10 minute walk to my office, and it was going to be 10:00 by the time I got to work.

From there, everything went as planned and I did arrive at work at 10:00, but I felt absolutely dead. It was only 10am, but I already felt like going to bed. So, the first take away for me from this was: I AM NEVER DOING THAT AGAIN! By the time I got to work, I had been up since 4:00am, flown on a plane, sat on a bus for 2 hours, and ended up 2 hours late for work. I figure that if I drive home I can roll into my apartment at 11pm on a Monday night and be in bed by midnight. I would then wake up at my normal time and get 6 hours of sleep (the same I got before flying), get to work on time, and feel much better through the day.

Anyway, that trip set my week up for a long one. Before arriving for work the first day of the week, I was already exhausted. To add to it, my parents had some business that they needed to deal with in NYC on Thursday, so they came down Wednesday night and crashed at my apartment. This again decreased my sleep and threw off my getting ready for work routine. So, by the time Friday rolled around I was completely wiped and ready to crash. And crash I did. My sleep total for the weekend is 22 hours. I feel much better though.

Here's hoping that this week is a little calmer.

~Alex

What Motivates Me

What motivates me?  I find that this is an interesting question to explore because if I really take a hard look at what is really motivating me, not what I thought was motivating me or what I told myself motivates me, I can learn a lot about myself and hopefully that will lead to some self-improvement.

What motivated me to work hard when I was in school?  Impressing my teachers or making my parents proud wasn't a true motivator (though I am pleased that I seem to have done both).  Even the objective measures of success, grades, didn't really seem to motivate me too much.  The longer I was in school, the less I was upset by lower-than-usual grades even though I tended to improve throughout my entire scholastic career.  Continuing to dig deeper, I think that doing a good job, in and of itself, is what started me off.  Later, success became a "habit" and I was able to continue working hard on a particular task, even if it no longer interested me.

What motivates me to work hard at work?  I have had a number of jobs that didn't test me or fully utilize my skills, some of which I liked, some of which I didn't like.  Regardless, I wanted to do a good job and what I finally found worked as motivation was to find the co-workers that I cared about and work "for them".  Whenever I had to do an unpleasant, menial, or boring task, I would remind myself that the harder I worked, the easier and more pleasant my friends' work would be.  Hopefully they would reciprocate and work hard "for me" but I was okay if they didn't.  Now that I have a challenging job, I enjoy working hard to stretch my abilities and really utilize my gifts as much as possible.

What motivates me to work hard at running?  I used to train to run faster times, to place higher in important races, and to help my teammates beat other teams.  Those were easy reasons to find to get motivated to run when I didn't feel like it, when it was hot or cold or snowy.  Now that I'm out of college, I don't really have those reasons pushing me out the door and I really can't put my finger on what it is that keeps me running.  Racing with my co-workers doesn't really cut it for motivation and I'm not really finding it in myself to push the way I would need to to lower my times further.  Perhaps success at running has become another "habit" because I'm not sure that I could stop if I wanted to.  Perhaps there's something else there, but the thing I don't understand is that the discipline and hunger that I used to have is missing.  I have resolved a number of times to start running in the morning and have failed pretty much every morning.

What precipitated this introspection?  Strangely enough, it was a streak of recognition for success.  I was given an appreciation award at work for some work that I did and I also finished 4th in a local 5k in 16:40 which I believe is my third-fastest time ever (and fastest on the roads).  Now that I have shown what I am capable of, I suppose I'll have to keep it up.  One more piece of motivation!

-Lane