Back in the Office

So I guess it’s been a while since my last post. And even longer since my last non-current event post (man, I REALLY wanted to write about Bush commuting the jail sentence of Scooter “I Can Reveal CIA Secrets and Avoid Jail Because I Used to Work for the Most Powerful Person in American Politics (Dick Cheney)” Libby, but I resisted for the benefit of my readers).

I guess one of the reasons I haven’t been posting much lately is because, well, I’ve been busy. Translation: I’m no longer in school (temporarily) and I’m back at a desk, in business casual clothes (the goatee is here to stay though) working my skinny ass off. My first year of the MBA program ended a few weeks ago, and after taking nothing more than a 3-day weekend off to recover, I was in the office, doing my thing (no, “my thing” does not refer to beating off, getting bosses’ coffee, or surfing the web…OK, a little surfing the web).

I’m spending the summer at a hedge fund in Century City. There’s been two big adjustments – one expected, one quite surprising - I’ve had to make, since it had been close to a year since my last day at my previous job. The predictable, not-getting-any-easier adjustment has been waking up at 5 a.m., NOT to work out, but to get my ass to work by 6 (market hours!!!). Needless to say, this is especially tough after a weekend in Vegas where the average go-to-bed time was around 4 a.m.

The bigger, surprising adjustment has been having to get used to a job that I actually enjoy. That’s right. I’m not just talking about the money (good, but not great), the location (right by the Century City Mall), or the perks (free lunch, snacks, soda and all the gum one can possibly consume), but the actual work itself. Researching industries and companies, meeting with management teams, and deciding in which companies to invest and not to invest has actually been interesting to me, compared to my prior (higher-paying) jobs of tedious number crunching and word processing.

Now that I may have actually found something that I can enjoy doing for a long time coming, I sure as f*ck hope I turn out to be good at it. More on that in about two months. Until then, Happy Fourth!