5:04 PM SAME DAY
Sometimes, in the vast data tapes provided to us, endless rows and columns that made up these portfolios, I looked at addresses and tried to imagine what these buildings actually looked like. I had only a flattened computer file. Yet these all represented real objects somewhere. I yearned to see them. Their beauty and ugliness. In sunlight and rain. Brand new and desecrated. I wanted to observe them in their entirety.
Not to judge them. I simply wanted to know them.
Long ago, I had been entrusted on the 21st floor to judge them by information in rows and columns. Their past and present summed up in numbers and characters. I digested clues, used math, put prices on all of them. It had felt powerful. Scalable. Precise.
Occasionally, I would search these assets on Google Earth. Not part of the valuation process. Something I did on my own, almost furtively, never telling anyone. Seeing them in that small rectangle, a flat image of a real place, made me feel something. A hurt I couldn’t name.
When I saw zip codes close to home, they made me feel homesick. Or what I thought was homesick. Hard to tell these days. Maybe I just wanted to be outside the 21st floor. Going on an aimless walk in the nearby blocks sometimes helped. I would avoid looking at the surrounding towers and retreat into my memories.
I would stare at those addresses. Black font in a white box. An LED rectangle. And I thought about the woods and acres of pastureland where I spent my childhood. Young, happy years exploring unsupervised the rural landscape of northern Texas. These days, more often, I tried to avoid these reminders altogether. I would speed past those rows if I sensed their presence.
There wasn’t anything for me back in my hometown. I had left behind my small, plodding county for a university full of quick people and quicker lectures. Following where my talents led me. Parents and teachers had encouraged it. Maybe they also felt relief that an incessantly questioning ball of energy was now someone else’s problem.
I had rarely been content to simply absorb. Everything had to be tested, retested, verified. This wasn’t contained to curriculum. Basic life lessons were learned the hard way too.
School years always presented some new slate of contradictions. Gaps in the curriculum where I could feel the emptiness of what we hadn’t been given. More tools had to exist somewhere. Yet we hadn’t been allowed them. Not enough time? Too many other priorities? Why?
I was certain other kids in other schools were being given these gifts. Had to be. Those hints of other methods, other tools, whether math or physics or chemistry or finance. So close I could taste them.
Even in the humanities. So many historical examples of real people solving real conflicts. A standardized history class couldn’t cover all the trials that generations before had faced. Where they succeeded, where they failed. How they wrote about it. In the library, I found more, for myself. I learned through their lives how to communicate, how to accomplish my ends.
All of this knowledge existed out there. An infinite fountain not covered in my classwork. Maybe others were getting it elsewhere. I didn’t know. I only knew that if I reached out and searched, whatever I wanted to know… there it was.
Thinking about those days, when learning didn’t fill me with dread, when the world didn’t beat me with unstoppable force and leave me pinned… left me surprisingly happy?
A dull happiness. Similar to the dull ache in my jaw. I was glad I could feel anything positive, even in some small way. Maybe it was still possible to feel it deeper again. Maybe I just had to grab one more promotion, become an MD, and the world would open back up to me. I could dedicate more time to the old flames I once nurtured.
I stared back at the data on my screen. It made no sense anymore. The numbers swam together. My thoughts were tangled in knots.
Then Mike C shouted for attention from his row. I stood up, saw him tossing a foam football from hand to hand. Fighting Irish. It had made its way from Mike D over the course of the day.
He was asking about formulas in my spreadsheet. The ones meant to correct discrepancies in Granite’s data tape.
I gave him an answer. Professional. Precise. But my mind was a thousand miles away, lost in the mess I was only half able to understand. It wasn’t a good answer, but it was delivered well. I had learned long ago that in this industry, delivery mattered more than content.
My brain registered panic. Mike C had asked a good question. The formulas weren’t optimal. Not the best practices I had harped on the Mikes for months. A slap-dash formula with nested IF statements I meant to come back and flesh out. I had a vague memory of pausing on that section a few nights ago to make coffee. Which night? I couldn’t remember. Those dark hours were blending together now. A blur where there should have been clarity.
I made a mental note to revisit a few areas in the model. There was very little room for error on the 21st floor. Even less on Granite.