Posts in this series are now listed at https://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/p/recovering-from-corporate-life.html.
PPS - see this interesting post on Medium titled “Retirement? If you must retire, start early and take it in chunks - create a cyclical career path and refuse to accept a life of “hanging on till retirement” ”.
I started into the corporate world in January, 1977, when I started what was termed a bond with a professional services company (now no longer in existence) in Queensland (similar to an apprenticeship, I think, except I also agreed to work for them after I had finished and I don’t know if apprenticeships include that).
The deal was they paid me a wage to attend Uni and obtain a degree, and I would work for them for three years afterwards.
Well, I did that, and found most people in that field of work had an utterly alien mindset to me (they were conservative, and quite anti- progressive politics and spiritual "alternatives") - although I did find an area I had a passion for and, unfortunately, was good at.
Unfortunately?
Well ... more on that later, possibly in coming posts.
Before I get more into the problems: for now, I will state that I had early indications of the problems, and, once I had completed the bond, I wound up trying to get an income in other areas (massage - but the business aspects of that plus the very low income weren’t goers for me, phone selling [no good], and even trying to make lamp shades [also was no good]), but wound up going back into the area I was qualified in as a way of making ends meet.
Right there and then, I had learned:
- society doesn’t like change;
- people have a massive and unreasonable bias towards getting degrees - while I was working off my bond, I was in quite isolated areas at times, and it was the aid of knowledgeable and experienced people without degrees that enabled me to get the work done;
- modern living wasn’t cheap.
Going ahead to around five years ago:
- life has also included major family issues (taking on step children, parents dying, etc), and my personal health was continuing to fail;
- because I was good in my field and was reluctant to say no to work (I am a member of two minority groups [secretly three], and I had a family to support, so didn’t want to jeopardise our security of income), I had had a long period of overwork - and had become so adapted to that that I found working when I had adequate time and/or resources difficult.
On top of that, I had a long history of intermittent depression - largely tied up with society’s discrimination.
However, in the last five years, another major family illness plus the pandemic plus a worsening of my physical health issues (comments about age effects in the 40s and 50s are lies [the problems are, IMO, due to lack of time to de-stress, exercise, etc, plus the stress levels of modern lifestyle expectations] - but there IS a major change at 60), and I experienced several major mental health issues where I could see no hope - no way of the nightmare ending. I nearly ended it all then - you can get an idea of the progression of events in my poems on my creativity blog (an obvious content warning: the content there includes mental health issues and self harm).
Writing things out is one of the techniques I use - as my therapists have all known. It is worth noting that I have sought and received help from professionals, friends, family, and my workplace when needed.
However, the biggest boost I got - the one thing that gave me hope - was an email around mid-last year from my superannuation company saying I could access my super this year - earlier than the official pension age, which stupidly keeps getting pushed back.
That changed everything.
It meant that there was a credible end point in sight - and, much as I love the technical aspects of my day job and passing my skills on to others (no point taking them with me to the grave - and this way, others can develop those skills and learnings/insights further), the workload, my declining health, increased (transphobic) regulation (with good reason, given problems that had occurred - although I consider ego/desire for status drove a lot of professionals) of my area of work, and the strain of working with people who are largely FAR more conservative, reactionary and bigotted than me (some aren’t - some are outstanding people) all combined to make continuing not a viable option for me (like the corporate-speak there?).
So ... I might get into diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), but I will definitely finish some writing projects and explore other areas of creativity.
I will also work at healing the damage of nearly half a century trapped in the modern industrial corporate world.
I had planned on possibly stopping by now, but family circumstances this have obliged me to keep working until I can my (well, our, really) super. Despite that, there have been some changes - good and bad.
Firstly, and most importantly, the hope that comes with seeing an end to a nightmare.
This is something society needs to address - especially as working lives are extended. Changing careers after 30 years or so needs to be something that is realistic, and that requires some of the things I’ve written about on my political blog. Just pushing retirement ages back in an economy that is unsustainable, not only on environmental grounds, but also the damage it does to workers ... is crushing.
That hope I had of an end point gave me a lighter mood and increased strength to cope with work, but it also - as I have given my company a year’s notice - involved training my successors, and thereby shifting more of the work to them.
So I had a lighter mood, and less technical work - although I need to focus on training courses in my remaining time.
This meant it was easier to start doing things I need to do more of, and more consistently - exercise, meditation and breathing exercises, and getting out and about and reconnecting with friends and family. That was especially so for the two week break at the end of the year (which is our summer, here in the Southern Hemisphere). I can't recall the last time I had a clear two week break - and not being able to get holidays when I wanted, and for as long as I wanted, because of multiple overlapping projects contributed to the wear and tear.
Having to defer my plans because of family circumstances was a setback - there's no doubt about that: it felt a little like being robbed of a prize, but my workload has continued to ease, and I am now starting to re-establish habits of regular physical, mental and psychic exercise - I want to do more of all of those, but the first step is to re-establish the habits that have been destroyed by the last few years. I can't put all the time and energy into that that I wish, as I am still working, but I can see a crack in the wall of overwork. (I was doing some of that quite well during my two week holiday, which gives me hope that getting back into good habits will come fairly easily - maybe within two or three months of complete retirement? On the other hand, much of the stress etc has been re-established two months after resuming near full time work after deferring retirement plans.)
I think I'll end this episode at that point. More to come, but I won’t commit to any regularity - just whenever I consider I have something worth reporting or writing about.
Blessed be.
I am writing this series in the hope that it will contribute to a better understanding - or at least better research into the effects of - the so-called developed world’s economic systems - which are based on the world-destroying amathia of perpetual growth, and patriarchal oligarchical capitalism expressed as often expressed corporatism and neoliberalism.
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Finally, remember: we need to be more human being rather than human doing.
