Here's what I'm doing . . .
What I'm doing: Nicholas Gaffney
Marketplace presents "Here's What I'm Doing," a series asking people from all walks of life how they're coping with the financial crisis. In this edition, listener Nicholas Gaffney explains how he's learning to look away from the bad numbers.
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Tess Vigeland: For the last few weeks around Marketplace we've been asking, "What are you doing?" Yes, you -- and others who are deciding what changes to make in how they manage their money during this time of turmoil.
Today we check in with a listener who's learned to shut out the noise.
Nicholas Gaffney: My name is Nicholas Gaffney. I'm a partner in a public relations firm in San Francisco where I live with my wife Marie and son Quinlan.
I'm feeling fine because I think that I've exhausted the emotions connected to the financial markets.
A few weeks ago when the markets started to become frenetic, I was very tense and traumatized -- probably I was in a state of shock. I couldn't believe that so many people could lose so much of what they worked so hard for so quickly.
Really, I didn't sleep very well for a couple days; I would check the computer or my Treo constantly. I would refresh the Google business page or the Yahoo finance page that would show the Dow -- you know, a hundred times a day would not be an exaggeration. And probably when I was out and about, which a couple days I was traveling when the crisis was at its peak, I would be checking my Treo 200 times a day.
And I couldn't take it anymore. I just had had my fill. I couldn't experience any more anxiety or any more shock. I was done. So now what I've been doing is I've been investing, a regular amount almost every day that I'm doing because one, I believe in the system, and two, it at least gives me some sort of comfort that I'm at least making the best of an unfortunate situation.
And there's a quote that I found the other day that I thought was appropriate for this. It's by C.S. Lewis and it goes like this: "Faith is the art of holding onto things your reason once accepted despite your changing moods." I mean, it would be so easy now to just say this system is terrible and to just walk away from it because it's frightening, but I had faith and I think a lot of people in the country, in the world, had faith in our system and I think that we're going to make some changes in that faith we found to be something that was good and true.
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