At an office party in 2005, one of my colleagues asked my then husband what I did on weekends. She knew me as someone with great intensity and energy. “Does she kayak, go rock climbing and then run a half marathon?” she joked. No, he answered simply, “she sleeps.” And that was true. When I wasn’t catching up on work, I spent my weekends recharging my batteries for the coming week. Work always came first, before my family, friends and marriage — which ended just a few years later....I'm just grateful to learn that the real reason for the collapse of Lehman Bros. and the global financial crisis of 2008 was so that Erin Callan could learn An Important Life Lesson.
I have spent several years now living a different version of my life, where I try to apply my energy to my new husband, Anthony, and the people whom I love and care about. But I can’t make up for lost time. Most important, although I now have stepchildren, I missed having a child of my own. I am 47 years old, and Anthony and I have been trying in vitro fertilization for several years....
I have also wondered where I would be today if Lehman Brothers hadn’t collapsed. In 2007, I did start to have my doubts about the way I was living my life. Or not really living it. But I felt locked in to my career. I had just been asked to be C.F.O. I had a responsibility. Without the crisis, I may never have been strong enough to step away. Perhaps I needed what felt at the time like some of the worst experiences in my life to come to a place where I could be grateful for the life I had. I had to learn to begin to appreciate what was left.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Success and solipsism
This is a fascinating article in the New York Times. In addition to showing how high-flying career success aids women's marriages, we learn the real meaning behind the failure of Lehman Bros.:
22 comments:
Well now that's not going to go over well with the femnazis. Wait...never mind, it is clearly men's fault for not warning her.
I'm of two minds. On the one hand, I'm sorry that she - and millions of women have had to learn a very tough lesson this way.
On the other, I'm about hip deep in "screw you and the goat you road in on" sentiment. Women like her bear a good percentage of the blame for how screwed up our society and our gender relations are.
Ah, sleep, the vastly underrated bodily need in modern and massively fucked up American society.....
At least we don't have to worry about her genes polluting the gene pool anymore.
If only the global financial system had been considerate enough to collapse five years before it did, I could have a baby right now!
She did a great job earning her feminist merit badge...and failing as a woman.
Bah
hahahahahaha
Just nothing else to add.
Didn't we get years of crap about how the "testosterone-fueled environment" of Wall Street was to blame, and having more chicks on the street was the solution for less risky behavior? And the head gambler at Lehman was a woman?
Does she have a mustache?
I don't feel sorry for women who ruin their lives going to work. I feel sorry for the women who HAVE to work because their husband doesn't make enough money.
This idiot woman and the other like her planned their lives long ago and intentionally lead a barren existence so they could have something dramatic to complain about.
The college I attended had a decent criminal justice section in their library and I used skim through some of the books in between classes when I got bored of studying for my own major. I remember one written by a cop that was solely about the various kinds of skinheads and their gangs. One statement that he made, that sticks with me to this day, was that women that associated with the traditional skinhead movement were often opposed to the trend of more women in the workforce, quite simply because it took away jobs from their menfolk. The fact that members of such a seemingly anti-social group had that much sense, compared their more "peaceful" sisters, was striking to me.
I remember tracking that in the months preceding the crash. I always had the feeling Dick Fuld brought her in to carry the SOX can if the SEC ever needed someone to prosecute for misrepresenting financial statements. As it happened, SEC let all the broker-dealers get aware with severe misrepresentation.
As a higher up to Lehman, she shows no sense of responsibility for what happened.
"Lehman collapsed". Like it was just a natural thing that happens sometimes, no one to blame, nothing unusual. Just a collapse.
Typical.
The Important Life Lesson for women is: Find a good man whom you love, hitch your wagon to him, and marry him. Have his children. Because if you don't you'll run out of time.
It's too late for Erin Callan, but not too late for you.
deti
At least we don't have to worry about her genes polluting the gene pool anymore.
She's 47 and STILL trying for IVF!?
Some "life lessons" have not been learned.
It's too late for Erin Callan
That's a hard truth, but truth nonetheless. It's too late for her. Now, at 47, she's desperately trying to get Science to give her a baby so that....what? Does she have any idea how much energy a 13-year-old brat will require when she's 60 years old? So that she can be 90 when her own daughter finally hits the wall and generates a grandchild just in time for Grandma to die?
The "career girl" option simply needs to be taken away from women. Most of them won't avoid it on their own because it looks like too much fun. Society (meaning men, mostly) is going to have to take it away from them. I don't really see that happening without an economic collapse. Fortunately, one is arriving right on schedule.
I'm glad she learned a lesson and she wrote an article to "educate" every single girl out there. I sense she didn't learn a thing. It all happened because it did. She stumbled upon it and it happened like Lehman Bros. failed and it was no fault of hers.
Actual lesson: Stop me before I self-destruct.
I'm glad she learned a lesson and she wrote an article to "educate" every single girl out there.
That would be good, but she never actually does that. She never says that she was wrong to pursue her career; she just suggests that maybe somehow if she'd done things differently she could have had more of a personal life -- while still juggling the career. Her conclusion is actually that she was more awesome than she realized, and could have handled both if she'd just tried. (Probably the patriarchy keeping her down caused that.)
So she plays right into the woman's desire for drama: be like me and do big dramatic things that teach you Life Lessons -- just set aside a bit more time for personal stuff.
I'm waiting for one to say flat out, "Don't do what I did. Careers are overrated, and will mean nothing when you're my age. Find a good man, settle down, and have kids." When that happens, there might be a chance that young women will hear it. Vague tales of woe like this one, that portray her only fault as being unaware of her own potential, are not going to get young women to read between the lines to see the pain and desperation.
"I'm waiting for one to say flat out, "Don't do what I did. Careers are overrated, and will mean nothing when you're my age. Find a good man, settle down, and have kids." When that happens, there might be a chance that young women will hear it."
The woman that does that will be shouted down or ignored like a black or latino conservative.
"I'm waiting for one to say flat out, "Don't do what I did."
That's going to be rare and probably nonexistent. Because for women, realizing the truth means knowing that there are things you've done that cannot be undone. She cannot go back and fix it now. She cannot go back and reduce her N from 30 to 0. She cannot compete with women 25 years younger than she is. Reproductively, she's dead or very close to it.
deti
If she had learned to appreciate what she had left, she wouldn't be abusing science in the effort to coincide her child's high school graduation coincided with the ten-year anniversary of her AARP membership.
Zoiks. It is as if she built an airplane out of her fertility, her role as financial system babysitter and her marriage, then offered her services as a kamikaze without even being asked. God was most certainly not her co-pilot in any case. Maybe Gallagher was.
"That would be good, but she never actually does that."
I was being sarcastic. Besides, she said enough to convey the message that she made a mistake. She didn't flat out say to not pursue the career as this will be ignored. These warnings seem to come after the fact and no one takes them seriously.
The only thing the woman wants is a chance to have children while should could have. This is the mere message. How you can do this is alluded in her article? Quit while you can. The failure of her company was an actual benefit and wake up call. It is just too bad it came too late.
One of the tragic things feminism has provided is the constant droning that they can have it all, and that even if they are in their mid-40's they can still have a baby (themselves, not surrogate). This is another media coverup, but the rationalization hamster is at work agreeing with the "have it all" message.
It is easier to be a creationist than to expose any well known medical myth, abortion kills and maims women, they can't have babies after 40, STEvaccines hurt more than they help, calories cause obesity and diabetes (not carbs), and I can go on.
Women aren't stupid, but gullible. Serpent to Eve: "How do you know you won't die, you've not performed the experiment?". Men aren't necessarily smarter, but tend to ask questions before accepting things. Yet the gifts of both Eve and the Greek Horse were accepted.
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