In The Great Gatsby, what else has Nick been doing, when he's not going to parties?

After recounting the events of the party in the New York
apartment with Tom Buchanan and Myrtle Wilson and the events of Gatsby's wild party at his estate
in West Egg, Nick tells the reader that most of his time was spent working in New York. He had
come East to begin a career in finance, supported for a year by his family, and he pursued it
with diligence:

Most of
the time I worked. In the early morning the sun threw my shadow westward as I hurried down the
white chasms of lower New York to the Probity
Trust.

Nick also says that he usually
ate dinner in the city at the Yale Club, followed by spending "a conscientious hour" in the
library upstairs where he studied investments and securities. Since few people came upstairs to
the library, Nick found it was "a good place to work." After work, Nick would sometimes walk the
city alone; sometimes he felt lonely.

This accounting of Nick's time
emphasizes that he possesses a strong work ethic. Furthermore, he needs to work. He must
establish a career to support himself; he is not a member of the idle rich who live on inherited
wealth, and he is not a gangster who will steal wealth. In fact, of all the characters in the
novel, only Nick and George Wilson hold down jobs.