One of the perks of working as a financial journalist is
that you sometimes get to go to parties in nice places where food and drink are
free. It doesn’t make up for working for years without a raise and being in
constant fear of being laid off, but it’s nice nonetheless.
Last evening was one such party, a charity event put on by
people in finance.
Ostensibly my coworker and I were there to meet people that
would help us do our job. Schmoozing with financial people is part of my job,
but it’s a part of the job that I am bad at.
I dressed well enough and was pleasant and polite and still
had no hopes of blending in. Members of the financial class are their own race,
though they are made of different races. They can look through you as if you
are not there and walk with a confidence that bristles with a condescending
hostility and feels perpetually offensive and false. I wore a nice suit but
maybe there was something in the way I said thank you to the caterers, or the
fact I thanked them at all, that gave me away as decidedly not one of the
financial class.
There’s nothing wrong with finance, but the people who work
in the higher echelons of finance today are not cut from the same material as
the people who invent things or pioneered and forged new industries. They are
custodians of other people’s money and often speak in a gloating jargon that moves
lots of money but creates little of value. I’m sure many of them are decent
people and good at their job, but they do not possess the fire of the
technology entrepreneurs or venture capitalists I met during previous jobs.
After thirteen years of working in financial journalism, I
have actually gotten worse at the art of fitting in at these types of
gatherings. My motivation for the easy smile and the glad-handed talk has waned.
But I am glad not to fit in among this alien class. Somehow I feel that in the
important calculus of life I’ll have more to show for it at the unspoken reckoning
at the verge of the great beyond.
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