Writer James Marcus joined Amazon.com as a book reviewer in the fall of 1996, grateful to earn a paltry salary. Within three years his stock options were worth $9 million. Then, as Marcus details in his recent memoir, Amazonia, the bubble burst and the money vanished. This is his take on finding joy:
[When I started at Amazon], I was just a naïve freelance writer who knew nothing about stock options. I had this vague idea that people at Microsoft get rich, but I didn't know how.
My personal life was in terrible shape during that entire five-year period. There was a chronic illness in my family, and then my marriage of 13 years fell apart. It put what was happening in the professional world in perspective. I was a really unhappy, anxious person a lot of that time.
Because the money never quite seemed real to me, it made it somewhat less painful to see it go. It's a totally different situation from, say, if I'd spent 20 years building a steel refinery and it went out of business. This was more akin to winning the lottery. Except everyone had won the lottery.
