Posts in this series are now listed at https://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/p/recovering-from-corporate-life.html.
Living in the corporate world means living on perpetually high levels of adrenaline (and cortisol) - not because of excitement, but because of the stress of near-impossible to impossible deadlines in the interests of so-called “efficiency” (see here, here, here, here, here, and here - note that the person who assessed her partner as a workaholic may be wrong: their partner may feel driven to that level of work to keep providing family income).
When people in professional work pause for some annual leave, it is not uncommon for them to become ill for a while - but that’s possibly 3% of the total population according to the very tentative research cited in the links above, and advice on preventing this from occurring says reduce your stress before you start your holidays - which is so staggeringly amathiac the writers should, in my opinion, be sacked.
In the corporate world, reducing your stress by slowing down etc means you’re effectively signing a resignation - and trying to survive in the modern, materialistic, greedy world means having paid employment.
But what happens when you start transitioning to being permanently out of the corporate world?
Well, in my case, I now just don’t care about meeting deadlines and other people’s expectations as much - I can glimpse a distant vision of a life without that, and such things start assume the sort of perspective that they probably should.
I have found:
- trying to muster the energy for major work efforts is more difficult - in corporate speak, I am “less motivated”;
- I am also finding mustering the energy to exercise and meditate regularly more difficult, although the former may be connected to other health conditions, and both may be a reaction against the excessive levels of discipline/self discipline/time management of the last half century;
- I have had some increase in illness - notably, after reading one of the linked articles above, my migraines;
BUT - managing my diabetes is easier.
The biggest challenge in managing my diabetes while in the thick of the corporate work world was “why should I bother - what do I have to look forward to in life but more of this?” - in a word, despair.
Now, I’m finding the challenge to keep managing my diabetes is the exhaustion that comes after completing a major task or period of activity - we metaphorically pause, stretch, and take a breath and a moment to recover ... but my “moment to recover” is months long ...
The strange thing is, if I miss a step in my diabetes management, it no longer has the same immediately catastrophic impacts - I don’t have an immediate steep decline of energy or any of the other horrible side effects of sugar being too high.
So my physical reactions at this stage of my transition to retirement are a bit of a mixed bag.
One thing it does make me wonder about is my long held view that diabetes is, to some extent, a reaction against the abnormal and insanely frenetic lifestyles we have afflicted ourselves and others with over the last few centuries.
Hmm. Food for thought.
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.
