From time to time, I think it's necessary and healthy to take a step back and reflect on what you're doing and why. I recently did that with regard to my work and website.
When I quit my job on Wall Street nearly a decade ago, I had no idea how life would unfold. I walked away from a highly paid position to pursue some unknown future, a simultaneously exciting and terrifying decision. I was a single guy living in NYC back then, with no pressing obligations to anyone other than myself. I'm now married with three kids in Colorado.
I decided to leave financial services upon becoming disgusted by industry practices and the unconscionable public betrayal perpetrated by the U.S. government and Federal Reserve via its massive bailout of the few at the expense of the many. In short, the most powerful players in our society sacrificed the long-term health of the U.S economy and the nation's overall social cohesion to save a corrupt and unethical industry and reward the very people responsible for the calamity. We don't have a meritocracy or competitive free markets, we have a rigged system based on corruption and cronyism where the most dangerous and destructive amongst us consistently fail upward.
The Wall Street bailout, including the failure to prosecute bank executives for the extreme fraud of the pre-crisis period and subsequent economic catastrophe, was the most formative event of my life. It forced me to confront the reality of the sort of country and economy I was living in, and what I saw wasn't pretty. Since I could never look at the world the same way again, I couldn't live my life the same way either.
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