My Story

College was strictly dedicated to going into a career in finance.  After private equity classes, high GPA’s, CFA exams and hundreds of resumes, I landed a job out of college at Bank of America. This never really felt like a success and the ideal ends to the means was constantly out of reach; September 15th 2008 has something to do with this.  I’m currently working what has become a dead end job, which is alright by me because I can’t wait to end the finance path.  I’ve never enjoyed learning about money, I’ve always been more interested in learning about how to be a better person, live more effectively and experience maximum happiness.  After working for several months I quickly learned that work was teaching me none of the lessons. I’ve always had these feelings about what I want for myself, but it took the perfect storm of a massive economic downturn, specifically the collapse of the lords of industry in finance, and a liberating, spirited trip to Colombia to grow the nerves to follow the path and lifestyle I want to live.  So far this lifestyle has taken the form of vagabonding my way through the city with a $50k salary being banked away.  I have enjoyed saving every dime I make so much more than spending ever dime on stuff I get bored of days later.  Right now I have $10g’s of freedom banked that I will use to finance a trip through South America, for an undetermined period of time.  I’ve been on long liberating trips before, but this one differs in the fact that I don’t plan to escape the business world for a bit and come back, but rather indefinitely.  I want to use my time to better myself daily, learning from my experiences and begin surviving instead of setting myself into boring comfortable mold.  The main luxury I hope for this freedom is to use my time to build a brand or product that I can identify with and create value for people around the world.  Never changing the ideals that I believe in and know I need to live happily and enjoy life. Following other people’s stories is broken and it takes balls to realize this and write your own story. I want to stop relying on how other people make it, the only true way to live is to go for it and put my own skin in the game. Endless calculating and strategizing will never match up to action.

So I may not have done it, or anything yet for that matter, but I have a pretty strong vision of where I want to be and how I want to do it.  I’m slowly picking away the things that aren’t important in my life and once I start taking more risk and acting, I will be able to do everything I imagine in life.  Do what you want to do in life, be what you want to be? Do you really want to be a banker, a lawyer, no you want the money and things that being a this can afford, but I have some bleak news, at the end of the dad the materials matter nothing and the time wasted doing something you hate can not be taken back.  I’m starting to realize this by not caring so much about the things I purchase or surround myself with, and paying attention to the things that I get in each moment, working on my health, personal abilities, such as dancing, languages and general knowledge that interests me and helps me to develop.  Once you can look solely at these elements in life, you start realizing that this is what you should be using your time on.  I know what I want; now I just need to search for it.