It Is Happening Again
If you don't like your job, you don't strike. You go in every day and do it really half-assed. That's the American way.
--Homer Simpson
One of the benefits (and drawbacks) of living in the information age is that anything I've ever written is right at my fingertips. For example, I can filter all of the email in my inbox to discover that the very first email I sent CK is dated April 9, 2007. It was in response to a trip report of an email she sent me after This instantaneous access to information has a heavy impact on my current job. I'm a corporate lawyer. I work for an investment company that invests in a mix of traded equities and derivatives, private equity and real estate in Eastern Europe. Sometimes we're buying or developing assets; sometimes we're selling them. For the last few years we've been investing in farms (I guess somebody in the organization saw the world food supply tightening long before the rest of us learned about it). When I'm not tending to the internal legal demands of a $7 billion enterprise, I'm involved in the deals that provide the legal framework for all of these acquisitions and dispositions.
This week we're preparing for the closing of the sale of a chain of Romanian retail stores we own. The buyers are based in Italy and the closing is scheduled to take place in Bucharest on Tuesday. There has been a predictable flurry of email (some attaching documents, some not) increasing day by day as we get closer to the appointed hour of the closing.
I have no idea how this deal would have been accomplished 15 years ago. I suppose people relied on fax machines to exchange drafts of documents and telephones for physical communication, but each seems terribly cumbersome for a deal that has a need for haste, some degree of complexity and a multitude of moving parts. Like trying to extract a tooth with only a flathead screwdriver. Theoretically it's possible, but if it were up to me I'd rather not.
The benefit of being able to more quickly and conveniently close a deal like this is touted as "increased productivity". And there's something to that. But it seems that a casualty might also be "quality of life". As it becomes easier to quickly close deals like this, the speed required to close the average deal increases. That translates into a more harried working life, longer hours, more stress. That in turn places a higher emphasis on really loving what you do. Because if you don't, there's no way to half-ass it.
The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy. It's that I just don't care.
--Peter Gibbons, Office Space
In summer of 2003, the New York office of the law firm that employed me was slowly driving itself into the ground. It should have been cause for a high-level personal alarm. I should have been pushing the pedal to the metal in terms of taking on work, developing relationships with partners and all that sort of good office political bullshit so that I could cement my place at the firm (or at least burnish my credentials to land a better job at a competitor). But the fact was that I just didn't care. And so on August 1, 2003 I bid adieu to law firm life. Five days later I boarded a plane with a one-way ticket to the city where, as M. Doughty once put it, "exit to freeways [are] twisted like knots" -- the City of Angels.That chapter of my life has been well documented in this space. There's no need to rehash it. Suffice it to say, although I loved LA, I wound up moving back to New York and taking my current job.
The first sentence of the second paragraph of that email that I sent to CK in April of last year reads "I'm probably going to look for a new job soon." After two and a half years of corporate lawyering I had again reached the point where I just didn't care. It was a combination of factors. Most of all I think I'm just really not terribly interested in what I do. That's a problem in a world where people expect to be able to reach you at all hours of the day and where you can't go home until the task is done. It creates a resentment that builds to a point where eventually you're going through the motions for the sake of cashing a paycheck every fifteen days. That's no way to live, even if it *is* a comfortable life. Which brings us to today.
I'm giving notice at my job today. My last day will be May 14. From that point forward, I'm going to try to figure out how to do things that I'm interested in (and get paid for it). Phase 1 is to hand over the keys to my apartment to a subtenant, climb into CK's car, and drive to Las Vegas with her. This is the 2008 version of the aborted attempt at change in 2003, except this time I'm headed to Sin City rather than the City of Angels. We've rented a house in Summerlin. Our plan is to stay in Vegas for the duration of the World Series of Poker, and then return to New York.
Stay for a few months. That was my plan in 2003 too.
If ever there was a time to do this, it's now. I have no kids, no educational debt, no mortgage debt and no credit card debt. I have savings and I have some ideas regarding the direction in which I want to head. I'm not taking up the life of a leather-assed grinder. That's better left for the Crazy Asian Gambling Girlfriend. Nope, once again I'm pulling down my shingle and taking out my pen. This time it will be a little more structured than it was in 2003. I've accepted an offer to work for PokerNews, joining their crew of tournament reporters covering the WSOP. (Who knows what may come after the WSOP.) I don't know if I'm going to like it, but I'm excited to be trying something new and to be trying something that might just interest me. The irony that this is an opportunity that didn't even exist prior to the advent of the information age is not lost on me.
The convoluted process that led me to this point started back in mid-January. Late one night CK said to me "This may sound crazy but I'm going to say it anyway. Lets quit our jobs, pack up my car and drive cross country." [My response was basically "Um. OK."] Our plan morphed several times after that until I lit upon the idea of working for PokerNews. Things moved quickly from there. It was an easy decision once it was clear that the opportunity really existed, but there were several people who helped me along the way. Some were New York friends; others were friends that I've made through this website. All of them are friends who took fifteen minutes out of their busy lives for a phone call, or an email, or an in-person chat. Their words and insight were invaluable. In no particular order, huge thanks go out to: Falstaff, Change100, MeanGene, Spaceman, John Caldwell, Betty, TxApril, Iggy, Grubette, Amy Calistri (for not outing me last week) and of course CK, my compadre in this whole adventure. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna have to ask you to just go ahead and come back another time. I've got a meeting with the Bobs in a couple of minutes.