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Occupation

There are people on Wall Street who aren’t normally on Wall Street. Doubtless you’ve heard because the media coverage has been non-stop. If by “media” I mean “a bunch of my friends on Facebook.” Of course, some days, that is my media.

I don’t have time to have time. This isn’t an excuse or a complaint. It’s a statement of my state. I’m a parent and a freelance writer and someone who, when given a few moments, very much enjoys having a good meal or going to a movie. I’m not going to occupy anything but this chair where I work and where I hope to write something worth something. And by worth I don’t mean worth money. I mean worth my presence here. I mean: writing something that makes me worth having around as a writer.

I spent a few hours yesterday pining for a more innocent me. That innocent me believed that Tony Romo was a top NFL QB. These are the things that sometimes occupy me. I’m not ashamed of this. Without our diversions, we tend to be pricks.

But about Wall Street. I am not a rich man, but I am not hurting. I have a well-stocked bar and two working cars and I pay someone else to cut my yard. But there’s a stagnation here, a sense that my hard work—or, really, my wife’s hard work, because, God knows, she brings home the proverbial bacon—isn’t worth what it might once have been worth. And this time, by worth, I do mean money.

Let me just say this: when a small number of individuals or entities control large portions of the market, it’s not a free market. And you’re either for a free market or for a controlled one. And if it’s controlled, who breaks it up and spreads the power back around?

Seriously, Tony Romo hurt me yesterday. Cracked me.

But this Wall Street thing. Shit. I don’t even know if they want what I want. I suspect that they don’t. But for the love of God, do we not want something different? I mean, isn’t this the kind of moment where the best of us make us better? There ain’t nothing wrong about finding our diversions. But at some point, we’re going to have to find our purpose, too.