About fourteen or fifteen years ago, I wrote a journal entry while sitting downtown at The Market on an early workday morning. I, of course, was not going to work. I had dropped off a lady-friend at work. I sat there, drinking my coffee, in the shadows of skyscrapers about the freshly washed sidewalks, watching the day start, watching the gears of commerce begin to turn. I'd been reading Celine and was feeling very anti-establishment. Watching people going to work, the buildings filling with workers, I wrote a journal entry railing against this world. It was all absurd and served no purpose, I wrote at the time. I had no idea then that many years later would find me at the same location in a very different frame of mind.
This Wednesday morning, I was back at The Market, having a coffee. Only this time, I was wearing a suit. I was wearing a suit and killing time waiting for an interview. An interview for admission to an Executive MBA program. So, however many years ago I had felt bad for those part of the large mechanism of capitalism, thinking about how the system had stolen their souls. And then there I was this week, eager to become further entrenched.
I'm not sure if it is simply ironic, if the system has stolen my soul, or if simply says something about evolution.
If you feel that very tension (as I regularly do, having had my MBA for fifteen years and now working in the stultifying world of commercial banking), then I think you'll enjoy my novella Wheatyard, which is now in its third draft. The two central characters are a recent MBA grad (based very loosely on myself) and a profoundly anti-establishment writer (not based on me, other than maybe the me I'd like to become), and much of their interactions center on the corporate-versus-independent mindset. I'll add you to my future mailing list.
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