Long time no here

I learned alot this past several months as I went radio silent into the abyss.
First, I had deluded myself into thinking that career success, industry position, and status were no longer important to me. I thought I had grown beyond those needs. I guess I wasn't looking at my behavior. It has not been a very successful year in terms of externalities of career and relations with my co-workers. This created an opportunity (read lots of pain and irrationality) for me to learn that indeed my self esteem is not coming from inside, instead it was coming from outside and is largely wrapped up in the status I perceived I had obtained in my career. Very disappointing. How very valuable. How fortunate to learn it now - not ten or twenty years from now. So I chose to try to eliminate some of the external trappings and power I had been holding onto in terms of industry involvement, such as stepping down as co-chair of the FIX Global Derivatives Committee. Now if I want to contribute it will need to be via the value of contribution not my position in the hierarchy and my access. Like when I first started contributing to FIX, it will be the quality of the work that counts.
Second, although I was always a pursuer of concepts and ideas and a seeker and even though I have a bumper sticker that says Minds Are Like Parachutes - They Only Function When Open it turns out that I am extremely judgemental about ideas. It took having to see the value and usefulness of buddhist / new age metaphysics to realize that in areas where there is unknowability - one can measure metaphysical beliefs on how useful they are in promoting one's existence. If eastern metaphysics were good enough for Jesus, I guess they should be good enough for me.
Learned a new term from Harvard Business Review - Middlescence - the state some of us in our forties go through when we start to question our lives. Are we doing something worthwhile? Are we spending our lives appropriately? Is this all there is? The article was entitled Managing Middlescents (think adolscent). How great there is a label for this phenomenon.
Following on that theme, I started reading a good book, What Should I DO With My LIFE? by Po Bronson. A good read. Really was a complementary follow on to a wonderful week Sonia and I spent at Journey to the Soul in Oregon.

Intuition, intention, synchronicity...
Most of my life I have had untreated depression. Actually strike that - I was quite good at self medicating it - especially with alcohol along with a myriad of other distractions/addictions (which is why as many of you know I stopped drinking five years ago). I revelled in Camus' absurd universe. How interesting then that with the simple change of intentions the absurd, impersonal universe can be truly transformed into one that is caring and purposeful, one that provides just the right opportunities at the right time for spiritual growth.
There was an article that found its way into the Greatest Spiritual Writings of 2002 {I need to check the exact year and title of this anthology}. The article was written by a 92 year old (at the time of writing the article) Methodist Minister who was in Paris during the post war. The minister claims to have had an indepth discussion with Camus regarding spirituality. When the minister, clearly versed in Tillich's Systematic Theology, discussed faith and spirituality, the minister reports that Camus stated that this is what he wanted. In Olivier Todd's excellent biography of Camus Camus: A Life - he discusses Camus' intention to use his Nobel Prize award to go to India and study Eastern Philosophy. His choice to travel to Paris with his colluders in addiction instead of taking the train with his family led to his death in a traffic accident. This accident cut short his spiritual quest, at least in this life time. Clearly the absurd impersonal universe so clearly elaborated in The Stranger(The Outsider) was no longer sufficient for Camus at the time of his death, so he moved on.